A 26-year-old man of Moroccan origin is in custody in the Netherlands in connection with the Nov. 2 murder on an Amsterdam street of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who directed a film many viewed as critical of Islam. The suspected gunman has not been identified, but many Dutch newspapers have alleged he is linked to an 18-year-old Moroccan arrested in June on suspicion of plotting attacks in the Netherlands.

Furthermore, seven other Moroccans and an Algerian also were arrested in connection with the murder, although Dutch Interior Minister Johan Remkes said the gunman "moved on the periphery of a group of Muslim militants, but he was not part of the hard core of the group."

It seems apparent that the suspect killed van Gogh because of the director's perceived anti-Muslim stance. In fact, he reportedly pinned a page of the Koran to van Gogh's body.

The case raises the issue of "lone wolf" jihadists — individuals not directly recruited by or affiliated with any particular group but inspired by rhetoric or an individual sense of duty to carry out acts of violence. Violence spawned by such rhetoric resembles hate crimes perhaps more than terrorism, but is of concern nonetheless — especially if it were to become a trend.

The possibility of an individual turning rhetoric into action completely independent of the group that spouted the rhetoric is not new. Western Europe has seen many cases of anti-Semitic, white hate and anti-Muslim violence in recent years. For example, none of the following attacks was ever linked to a known group:

• March 2003: A synagogue in the Paris suburbs is firebombed.
• March 2003: A Molotov cocktail is thrown into a synagogue in Brussels.
• November 2002: A mosque in the Dutch city of Venlo is firebombed with 10 people inside.
• November 2002: A mosque is fire bombed in the German city of Wolfenbuettel.

Furthermore, radicals motivated by rhetorical hatred — white hate, anti-Semitic, anti-abortion, for example — also have turned to violence in the United States.

The van Gogh case, however, is noteworthy because violence spawned by rhetoric is a relatively rare occurrence among the Muslim community in the West. The fatwa issued against author Salman Rushdie following the publication of his book, Satanic Verses, likely resulted in the 1989 firebombing of a California bookstore, a 1993 attack against a Norwegian publisher and other acts of violence. Additionally, the 1990 murder in New York City of Rabbi Meir Kahane came at the hands of El Sayyid Nosir, inspired by the rhetoric of blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rehman, who is behind bars in a federal penitentiary in Minnesota.

There also have been calls to action from Muslim leaders to Muslims in the United States. For example, Iranian Ayatollah Muhsen Mujtahed, though only a minor figure, recently called for the death of leading U.S. religious figures Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham because of their anti-Muslim sermons.

However, the Muslim communities of the United States and Western Europe are decidedly different. U.S. Muslims are — for the most part — far more assimilated into the culture than their European counterparts and as a result less prone to extremism. Furthermore, the social pressures in each culture differ, while Europe's virtual welfare state allows idle young men to be more easily exposed to the radical discourse without the worries of securing employment and the like. Finally, relatively lax immigration laws in Europe (in comparison to the United States) have allowed for more radical Islamic leaders to operate unfettered on European soil for years.

It is too soon to say whether more lone jihadists operating in the West will take a cue from others who have been inspired by rhetoric to commit acts of violence. But the possibility merits attention.