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Yes, indeed Sir, isn't it revolting? Furthermore, at full moon, they slaughter virgins while howling 'Allah akbar!' at the sky. And every fortnight, they steal candles from Catholic churches to torch young choir boys with. That is, if they don't use said candles to stick them up their...
Get out yer pitchforks!
Yes, I am being sarcastic. Because this load of drivel in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf can hardly be taken seriously. It tries to ridicule the members of the radical Islamic Hofstadgroep by asserting that they - gasp! - sleep with different girls by calling it a 'trial marriage'. They're hypocrites!
Coming from an orthodox protestant background (no longer religious though), I of course know that adolescents never, ever would try to find excuses to satisfy their natural urges.
Anyway, De Telegraaf goes about this the wrong way. When taking the piss on someone, make sure it is apparent that you do so. Do not try to give it the legitimacy (if there's any left) of journalism. There's a word for that, and it's "propaganda". It's not the job of journalists to engage in that (unless you print it on the Op/Ed page).
Plus, this kind of reporting negates the real danger. Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Van Gogh, is a foot soldier. As are his peers in de Hofstadgroep. Likewise, the London suicide bombers were clean skins: they'd never been engaged in terrorist activities before. The people around them had no clue.
Now, there are a few conclusions to draw from that.
First, the fact that their career was rather short-lived makes it obvious that they are disposable.
Second, these foot soldiers often manage to remain invisible to security services, and in fact, may have been recruited for the very reason that they are not acting all that Islamist. Many are arrested only after they've perpetrated their attack. Mohammed Bouyeri was on a secret service watchlist, but was considered not dangerous until it was too late. The London suicide bombers were not even considered all that radical by their environment.
'Hypocrite behavior' may thus be very helpful to the terrorist masterminds. In fact, the Al Takfir Wal Hijra sect expressly uses this modus operandi. (I do suggest that if you're interested, you read the article I'm linking to. There's some helpful background information there.)
Third, I know of no case where it has become abundantly clear how and by whom the perpetrators of an Islamist attack were (1) recruited, (2) trained, (3) financed. The 9-11 case comes closest. As far as Van Gogh's murder is concerned, the Dutch D.A. couldn't even prove that Bouyeri had had help. Yet, it is obvious that this was the case. Bouyeri had no job and no money, but nevertheless managed to buy an expensive gun and to sustain himself for months on end.
So the point that De Telegraaf tries to make should be reversed. The problem isn't that some Islamic terrorists are hypocrites. The problem is that adolescent hypocrites such as Mohammed Bouyeri, not just pious zealots (if there is such a thing), become terrorist foot soldiers. De Hofstadgroep is a group of useful, albeit dangerous, idiots to the real culprits.
The organizers of terror lurk in the shadows, and ridiculing the danger that comes from them may be rather misleading, to say the least. Surely, they see no problem in recruiting more hypocrites such as Bouyeri, and, as stated before, there's an added advantage. The more normal (i.e. engaging in sex) a person will seem, the less likely it is that security services will take notice.
I expect journalists to try to penetrate said shadows, rather than using sex tales to rally their readers into a primal frenzy.
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