Last year, Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke had the bright idea to travel to Afghanistan to do a sympathetic interview with Taliban jihadists who had just killed ten French troops. Unsurprisingly, the jihadists were not in the mood to cooperate with her plan to conduct her sympathetic interview. They abducted her, held her captive for six days, repeatedly raped her, and freed her after receiving $137,000 (100,000 euros) in ransom money.

Mrs. de Rijke’s insane take on the ordeal? She’s not angry at the Taliban, because they “respected her” and “couldn’t help themselves”, and wants to make it clear that they are not monsters. She’s pretty pissed off at the Dutch and Belgian governments for taking so long to pay the ransom, though.

Mrs. de Rijke is an attractive 43 year old Dutch free-lance journalist with long blonde hair. Though she is a Dutch citizen, she does not live in the Netherlands but in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of neighboring Belgium. Most of the time she writes for P-Magazine, a glossy Flemish men’s weekly which features pictures of girls in lingerie and skimpy bathing suits, pornographic cartoons, articles about fast cars and political pieces.

Last Fall, de Rijke was traveling in Afghanistan for P-Magazine. Dressed in a burka, she tried to get in touch with the Taliban to do a human interest story about them. She managed to contact a group of Taliban fighters who had ambushed and killed ten French soldiers in August. De Rijke arranged an interview with Ghazi Gul, the commander of the group. When she and her interpreter arrived for the interview, however, Gul abducted her. He sent the interpreter back to Kabul with a message for P-Magazine demanding a ransom of $2 million for the journalist or he would slit her throat.

The Dutch government refused to pay. So did the Belgian government, although Michael Lescroart, P-Magazine’s editor, claims that initially the Belgian authorities were willing to pay but later changed their minds because they are “cowards.” Lescroart also said that he believed the group which abducted de Rijke were not real Taliban but

“some sort of Taliban ‘freelancers,’ scum who were after money. They did not want the real Taliban to know what they were doing, because the real Taliban do not accept that kind of behavior.”

Given P-Magazine’s anti-Americanism and leftist inclinations Lescroart probably harbors sympathy for the Taliban and finds it hard to accept that the “good guys” do evil things.

During her captivity, de Rijke was raped repeatedly by Gul. In her book In de handen van de Taliban, which she published last month, she writes that the Taliban commander

“could not control his testosterone. I had the impression that afterwards he regretted what had happened. He knew it was wrong.”

The noble savage even “invited her to a threesome,” i.e. to have sex with him and one of his three wives. “Ghazi was a very religious man. It is all so hypocritical. He was a complete fool,” she writes.

Because the Dutch and Belgian authorities refused to pay, P-Magazine raised 100.000 euros and offered it to Ghazi in return for the journalist’s release. The commander accepted. De Rijke was freed after six days in exchange for the money, which, says de Rijke, was transferred to the Taliban with the aid of the Dutch authorities.

… After her release, Joanie de Rijke, too, criticized the Dutch and Belgian authorities for their refusal to pay ransom. “The Belgians have done nothing. They said it was a matter for the Dutch. And the Dutch authorities said they never pay ransom. In Afghanistan they know well enough that Western governments pay up after an abduction. Germany, Italy and France have all paid ransoms.”

Though de Rijke was angry with the Dutch and Belgian authorities, she told the Dutch media in interviews given after her release that she was not angry with her abductors. “I do not want to depict the Taliban as monsters. I am not angry with Ghazi Gul. After all, he let me live,” she said. About the rape ordeal she declared that though the experience had been horrible, she was also shown respect. “It’s not black and white. These things can exist side by side. That doesn’t mean that I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome.”

Geert Wilders set off a firestorm when he spoke about the abduction before the Dutch parliament. Apparently, using commen sense is outlawed in certain parts of Europe.

“She was raped, but she was not angry. The journalist who went looking for the Taliban in Afghanistan saw her curiosity end in a cruel ordeal of multiple rape. While this would make others angry or sad, this journalist shows understanding. She says: ‘They also respected me.’ And she was given tea and biscuits.”

… “This story is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims – that is the one thing they will condemn.”

His words were met with instant condemnation. Femke Halsema of the Green Left Party yelled, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called Wilders’ statement “extremely painful and tasteless”, and said that he was shamefully abusing de Rijke by turning her into a defenseless victim again. Het Parool, distributed in Amsterdam, wrote that “everybody is angry with Wilders”. Conservative blog De Dagelijkse headlined the story with the proclamation that “Geert Wilders insults journalist raped by Taliban.”

This is a perfect example of the problems with so many liberals today. They are so terrified to call Muslim jihadists what they are — terrorists, murderers, monsters — not because they might be physically harmed in some way, but because they might be branded intolerant. People like Joanie de Rijke don’t look at themselves as sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome, they look at themselves as righteous and intellectual and open-minded and modern. What Mrs. de Rijke, along with so many others on the left, do not understand is that we do not call Muslim thugs and murderers (like the coward who abducted and raped her) monsters or terrorists simply because they are Muslim. We call them monsters or terrorists because they are murderers, rapists, and terrorists. Unfortunately, situations like this are black and white, even though liberals love the idea of moral relativism. There are no shades of grey. Murder is murder, just like rape is rape. A rapist cannot “respect” you, and rape is not something beyond a man’s control simply because of his “high testosterone”.

Also interesting is de Rijke’s description of Gul as a religious man, yet also a hypocritical one. She, of course, is holding Gul to Judeo-Christian religious standards, not Islamic ones. The truth of the matter is, that his actions would indeed be considered hypocritical (and monstrous) by Judeo-Christian standards. By Islamic standards, they are not only not hypocritical, they are expected and acceptable. Muslims are commanded in the Koran to rape and kill infidels, and de Rijke would be considered an infidel. Of course, that little nugget of truth does not fit very neatly into her enlightened liberal worldview, so she ignores it.

It’s terrible that Joanie de Rijke had to go through such an ordeal, even one that was partly of her own making. It was incredibly stupid and naive for her to go seeking Taliban jihadists, and not be at all prepared for what might happen to her. Still, as stupid and naive as her actions might have been, she didn’t deserve what happened. What she does deserve, though, is every ounce of condemnation that comes her way for her reaction after the ordeal. If she is truly so indoctrinated that she cannot condemn someone who abducted and repeatedly raped her, simply because he is a Muslim, then it seems to be that she is beyond all hope. And unfortunately, given the response of the Dutch community to the common sense of Geert Wilders, so is much of Europe.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit