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One paragraph stands out among many insightful passages in Ian Buruma’s new
Murder in Amsterdam, a meditation on the causes and meanings of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh’s 2004 murder:
By the middle of the twentieth century… the Netherlands had pretty much caught up with the world, and since then things often happened earlier than elsewhere: tolerance of recreational drugs and pornography; acceptance of gay rights, multiculturalism, euthanasia, and so on. This, too, led to an air of satisfaction, even smugness, a self-congratulatory notion of living in the finest, freest, most progressive, most decent, most perfectly evolved playground of multicultural utopianism.
Ian Buruma,
Murder in Amsterdam
And what better place for this flourishing multicultural paradise than the tolerant Netherlands of the Church-baiting Erasmus and the Portuguese-Jewish rationalist Spinoza? So is it too simplistic — too naive — to ask: what went wrong? Or, put another way: what exactly happened when the Dutch version of the Enlightenment dream of tolerant multiculturalism collided not just with a marginalized and radicalized homegrown Islam but with an increasingly vocal right-wing populism? It was all there in the different but not unrelated murders of Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn.
Ignoring the Dutch particulars — the fallout of the Dutch maritime empire, the aftershocks of post-colonial breakup, or the fact that, as Buruma notes wrily, both Van Gogh’s and Fortuyn’s murderers arrived by bicycle — can we look at the Netherlands now and see ourselves in five years, or ten, or two? If so, what are the lessons we should draw? And, while we’re asking naive questions, is there any way to bring back that sense of multicultural utopianism, a kind everyone can somehow believe in?
Ian Buruma
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Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, Bard College
Author, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
Jacob Vossestein
Slimane el Hasnaoui
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Moroccan-Dutch economist
- Extra Credit Reading
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Theo Van Gogh, Theo Van Gogh, wikipedia.org, October 4, 2006.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, wikipedia.org, October 5, 2006.
Pim Fortuyn, Pim Fortuyn wikipedia.org, October 3, 2006.
Geoff Coupe, Murder in Amsterdam, Part II, Geoff Coupe’s Blog, October 5, 2006: “In a perverse parallel, it seems to me that Bouyeri has retreated into his world of religious zealotry from which he will never escape. He sits in his prison cell surrounded by his holy books and continues to dream his revolutionary fantasies. I think we’ve lost him. But we cannot afford to lose more like him.”
Cordula Meyer and Caroline Schmidt, Europeans have stopped defending their values, Der Spiegel, October 2, 2006: “It means that we share the same rules and values, and are still nevertheless different. Islam doesn’t have this idea. And Islam also has no tradition of tolerance.”
Timothy Garton Ash, Islam in Europe, New York Times Book Review, October 5, 2006: “Such suicide killers are obviously not representative of the great majority of Muslims living peacefully in Europe; but they are, without question, extreme and exceptional symptoms of a much broader alienation of the children of Muslim immigrants to Europe. Their sickness of mind and heart reveals, in an extreme form, the pathology of the Inbetween People.”
The Economist, Look Out Europe, They Say, The Economist, June 22, 2006: “Yet, for Europe’s angriest Muslims, their host countries’ gravest sin lies precisely in their alignment with America–both as partners in the global capitalist system and as supporters, in varying degrees, of American foreign policy. So the suggestion that America may have something to teach Europe about how to make Muslims feel more comfortable (and therefore less extreme) looks at first sight rather strange.”
Michael van der Galien The Intergration Debate in the Netherlands, The Moderate Voice, October 4, 2006: “Muslim immigrants are more than welcome, but they will have to adapt to our way of life. They will have to embrace our values: even when they collide with the values of the Koran.”
I’m dying to see the guest list.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
“Is there any way to bring back that sense of multicultural utopianism, a kind everyone can somehow believe in?”
Maybe you don’t have to bring it back, you just have to see what’s in front of you. I see it every time I walk to get a coffee from my apartment in Central Square, Cambridge, MA. Take a quick walk with me and have a taste. As we leave my door and walk down Lee St. with it’s cool variety of architecture, we come up on the “Peoples Republic,” a Marxist bar that means it. All I can say is, if Socialism means PBR beer for $2.75, I down with it (just not this early in the day). The next door over is a cool Asian store called “Lucky inc.” owned by a Chinese lady ever who stops smiling about as much as most of us smile. I was browsing in her store the other day and she gave me some fresh cherries, after a few minutes she came up to me with a napkin for the used seeds (luckily I hadn’t spit them out yet).
So, onward we go for that hot cup of joe. Look across the street, next to that great Mexican place, is a nice Ethiopian restaurant (if you go, ask for mild, please). But here we pass the “Cantab lounge†home of Little Joe Cook. He is a legendary R ‘n’ B singer who had a number one hit in the 50’s called peanuts. He still belts out the grooves on the weekends and I love his souped up caddie with the “Peanuts†license plate he keeps parked outside. If Bluegrass is you thing, come on Tuesdays.
Now that we have come up to the actual square, look to the left. That little barbershop has been owned by John the Greek for 50 years, he doesn’t wash you hair or do hair colorings. Across from that is “Art Interactive”, a place that showcases modern artists using modern technology, and you CAN touch. If we took a right and passed that Greek Church and falafel place, we would run into a Jamaican club called “Western Front” or my favorite Irish pub “River Gods,” or that great Italian bistro “Basta Pasta.”
Before we step into Dunkin Donuts and get some coffee from the friendly Russian girl Sandra and her Brazilian co-worker Fernanda, look down the street. A few blocks before MIT University on the right is “The Middle East.” On any given night you can see punk bands, hip-hop, country, belly dancing, ext…
Ah, now that we have our toasty coffee in hand let’s step outside into the crisp Fall air of New England and sit on a bench. Now do me a favor, slow down for a minute, take a deep breath and gaze lazily at the faces zig zagging by; brown faces, freckled white faces, freckled black faces, Asian faces, Middle Eastern faces, Latino faces, distinguished faces, downtrodden faces; notice how all the faces are beginning to blend, the colors and complexions and countenances are coalescing into a kind of bumbling brook. Do not focus you eyes yet, the kinetic waters of this brook are crystallizing and what you are beginning to see will feel like a revelation. You are starting to see a reflection emerge from the blur – your own reflection.
Whoa! You snap out of it, what was that you ask me? I know I know I say, it’s freaky. You look around; a Latino woman with a brief case walks briskly by, next to us a young black man is putting some change into the cup of an old white homeless guy, Off to the side an old Muslim shopkeeper leans in a doorway and smiles at you quizzically, you smile back; the smile on your face lingers, and lingers.
And what better place for this flourishing multicultural paradise than the tolerant Netherlands of the Church-baiting Erasmus and the Portuguese-Jewish rationalist Spinoza?
Let me be frank, this makes great rhetoric, but the reality was far less peachy. The Calvinist confession dominated Dutch society and tolerated a level of dissent, it did not accept or celebrate it. Baruch Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community in part because the Portuguese Jews were terrified that they were violating the agreemant they made with the Dutch powers to not make trouble or disrupt society. Spinoza certainly did that, and more, later bringing upon himself charges of atheism after publishing Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. I also dispute that the “Enlightenment dream” was about tolerant multiculturalism in a sense that we understand it today. It is true that the Enlightenment, in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion, forwarded religious pluralism, but its commanding heights also demanded a dampening of religious enthusiasm which is not a hallmark from what I can see in European multiculturalism, which has transformed a Muslim confession into a Muslim ethnos and fostered a religious revival. Moses Mendelsohn ushered in the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, by opening the door toward assimilation and accommodation with the ways of the gentile world. His last Jewish descendent died in the late 19th century (Felix Mendelssohn, his famous grandson, was a Christian). One Enlightenment creed was “As a nation the Jews must be denied everything; as individuals they must be granted everything!”
The best model for multiculturalism today, and especially in Europe, is the Ottoman millet system where each community organized itself and had its own representatives. So, you have Muslim “community leaders” who intercede on behalf of their community, who speak for their community, to the powers that be (Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac). What is happening in Europe is what Amartya Sen terms plural monoculturalism, as bureaucratic machines are generating manipulable blocks in which to assign individuals for their own administrative convenience, where community leaders are forcing and forging a constituency which they can turn to their own purposes, where people are left without choices in an economy that doesn’t need them, and a welfare state which will give them unquestioning succor. Where cultural elites are telling them to be “authentic,” and racists are telling them that they can never be real citizens.
can we look at the Netherlands now and see ourselves in five years, or ten, or two
No. No need for rhetoric, the numbers are plain
1) Muslims are 5% of The Netherlands population, and not ethnically diverse (Moroccan, Turkish, etc.) vs. Muslims are no more than 2%, and probably closer to 0.5% of America’s population, and very ethnically diverse (large numbers of Arabs, Africans, black Americans, South Asians, as well as white converts)
2) In most of Europe Muslims are overly represented in the underclass (in places like Sweden they are part and parcel of the welfare class, except perhaps for exceptions like the Iranian emigres who left the shah) vs. in the USA where selective immigration means that Muslims are more well educated and affluent than the norm. Upward mobility correlates with spatial mobility, leads to desegregation, professional jobs mean that you have to socialize even with kufirs and humanizes the Other.
3) The USA is not ambivalent about absorbing immigrants, but many European countries are. Germans don’t consider themselves a nation of immigrants, despite the Germanicization of the Sorbian minority in the East, or the fact the the Prussian state invited French Protestants to settle in Berlin until they were 25% of the population in Frederick the Great’s time and influenced that dialect of German. Myths matter. Memories are short. Humans are capricious and narrow-minded. The fact that Americans revere their history and give due reverance to the Constitution means that those of us who came to this country from elsewhere can appeal to the founding documents to assert that we are entitled to the ground which we plow and work.
And, while we’re asking naive questions, is there any way to bring back that sense of multicultural utopianism, a kind everyone can somehow believe in?
The sense of multicultural utopianism only exists in the absence of the hard reality that the world is filled with constraints. You can’t idefinitely raise taxes and increase spending, unless that is you invade other countries and plunder them. Is that a solution? Similarly, you can’t promote equal rights for women, sexual libertarian and acceptance of homosexuality as a banal and convential lifestyle with the understanding that minorities have Different Ways of Knowing, which include a pipeline to the Almighty who demands that pig-eaters be shunned that that homosexuals are dogs. Nozick was wrong, society isn’t a collection of consenting adults engaged in capitalist transactions, it is not bounded simply by blind and just law, it is cemented by values and myths we hold dear together as one people. Fundamentally the Godly will always be at tension with a liberal secular society because they are a people set apart, and groups likes Orthodox Jews and shariah observing Muslims who demand orthopraxy, rituals and laws meant to keep them separate, can only be tolerated in small doses before they subborn the amity and fellow feeling necessary for a unitary society which can reach across the bounds of kin, ethnicity and gods.
ah nother… dang, here I’d just suggested (on the meta) we come up with some way to technically cut posts off after 200 words… but you… you are the exception. I very much enjoyed reading that post. Thanks!
Wow, and you to Rabiz. What a thoughtful and very informative post. Thanks.
OK – I give up my automatic 200 word limit enforced by a robocop idea.
and nother– that’s the spirit, you captured Central Square so beautifully. Little Joe is an institution.
razib– thanks for your post, very informative. I’ll only add that a separate interpretation “rituals and laws meant to keep them separate.” Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the UK, wrote in his book The Dignity of Difference that the laws of separation in Judaism should teach us to recognize the differences in others. Wow. That’s a nice normative idea, and I can’t say Jews have followed it throughout time, or even now. But he coupled this with the point that particular rituals and laws also serve to reject universalism (ie., religious laws applying to all of society).
“Let me be frank, this makes great rhetoric, but the reality was far less peachy. The Calvinist confession dominated Dutch society and tolerated a level of dissent, it did not accept or celebrate it. Baruch Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community in part because the Portuguese Jews were terrified that they were violating the agreemant they made with the Dutch powers to not make trouble or disrupt society. Spinoza certainly did that, and more, later bringing upon himself charges of atheism after publishing Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
Spinoza never published his Tractatus in his life time. The tolerance in Dutch society, btw as evidenced by the lynching of De Witt brothers.
As for why Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community, it is still a mystery. There is a lot of self serving speculation but no hard evidence.
Here is a respectful but critical review of Buruma’s book:
“Out of Faith
Murder in Amsterdam:
The Death of Theo van Gogh
and the Limits of Tolerance
By Ian Buruma
Penguin Press. 288 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by
Kay S. Hymowitz”
http://commentarymagazine.com/article.asp?aid=12203074_1
Spinoza never published his Tractatus in his life time. The tolerance in Dutch society, btw as evidenced by the lynching of De Witt brothers.
the sources i’ve seen suggest that the tractatus-theologica was published in 1670, and spinoza dided in 1677. i was working off memory, but wikipedia agrees.
sorry for the long post guys
1) i don’t post much, so i figured that had some slack for hogging some lines
2) i’m an atheist, but from a muslim family. i’m tired in the interests of sensitivity of people acting as if still am muslim. i’ve been active in the atheist movement and no one has ever felt they had to respect the christian background of my fellows. similiarly, the apostate ibn warraq has been referred to has an ‘atheist muslim.’ and yet i never see richard dawkins referred to as an ‘atheist christian’ (he was a believing christian as a child, i’ve never been a believer myself).
I’ll only add that a separate interpretation “rituals and laws meant to keep them separate.†Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the UK, wrote in his book The Dignity of Difference that the laws of separation in Judaism should teach us to recognize the differences in others. That’s a nice normative idea, and I can’t say Jews have followed it throughout time, or even now. But he coupled this with the point that particular rituals and laws also serve to reject universalism (ie., religious laws applying to all of society).
sure. but two points
1) there is a limit how much religious particularity we can tolerate. e.g., an airplane can offer veggie, kosher and general foods. but what if there were 15 sects with exclusive dietary restrictions? we pick and choose. hasidic jewish separatism in brooklyn is tolerated. amish separatism is tolerated. but, these groups are both less than .1% of america’s population! what if they were 1, or 5, or 10 percent?
2) the idea that separation allows us to respect differences is fine. but, there is a dark side to that, and that is that it is the same sort of argument used for racial segregation, for separation of the races. because you know, god set his chosen people apart, god separated the nations after the tower of babel. when jews, who are a minority that has been oppressed and persecuted, say these sort of things they don’t elicit alarm, to wit:
We will work to end all non-white immigration, We believe that all aliens (to include all Jews and Arabs) should be removed to their own areas and separated in due course from Kinist held territories, without respect to persons. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the worth and value to God of all ethnic division of men and would labor diligently to establish godly, honorable relations with our ethnic neighbors.
awesome post, nother. You brought me to Central Square completely. Triggering smells, sounds and images.
Razib – that was such a well-informed post that I don’t think any of us are minding the length. This is why I like to set “guidelines” not “rules”. Thank you.
I’ll be thinking about this quandry of acknowledging and respecting our differences vs. using them as a source for persecution and prejudice. I think that with a lot of social questions like this we would like to have easy solutions or guidance systems. Unfortunately human relations are complex, so the truth is that we can never be complacent. We must continue to examine how we’re doing, where we could make adjustment, how to teach our children and each other. It’s a piece of pertpetual and rather tedious work.
I just checked my edition of Spinoza’s TPT and it says that it was published anonymously in 1670.
It was the Ethics that were published posthumously:
Here is the Wikipedia entry on its publication.
“The text was published anonymously in 1670. It is unlikely that it ever had political support of any kind, with attempts being made to suppress it even before Dutch magistrate Johan de Witt’s murder in 1672 (Israel, 2001). In 1673, it was publicly condemned by the Synod of Dordrecht and banned officially the following year.”
I just checked my edition of Spinoza’s TPT and it says that it was published anonymously in 1670.
yes, and according to matthew stewart’s the court and the heretic it was an open secret that spinoza was the author of the work.
Razib: to underscore your point (a point which was used to undermine my question!): according to Buruma’s figures, if current projections prove correct, the Netherlands will be about 25% Muslim by 2015.
Without getting into Dutch tolerance in practice (the red-light district and the marihuana bars were in distinct parts of Amsterdam if my memory of the place is right–meaning that pot wasn’t being sold to schoolchildren and protitutes weren’t plying their trade at the airport), the gist of Van Gogh’s argument seems to me to have been that while taboos are fine for people to hold on to, what is not fine is for a group to enforce its taboos on others: when Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death for writing a book, the distances between rhetoric, metaphors and reality have been shattered.
Here in Boston the putative free-thinking Boston Phoenix refused anything to do with the Danish cartoon controversy because–as was claimed in an editorial–the Phoenix did not want to sentence its staff to death [at the same time the Phoenix abdicated all credibility to first ammendment rights]. So, if it can happen in the streets of Amsterdam, the argument goes, it can happen in the streets of Jamaica Plain or Harvard Square.
The real canary in the coal mine was the individual who was murdered in relation to the publication of The Satanic Verses. Van Gogh’s assasination was the logical outcome of a society (the West, that is) that has utterly failed to recognize the threat. To know this, we didnt need Rushdie or even the Taliban, when psycho-islamists were cutting the throats of little girls in Algeria.
One more thing, before all religions are grouped into the red-herring of being the cause of all wars, etc., etc., I would like those who believe this to first add up the number of wars related to private property. Afterwards, then those same people can argue that to end all wars we should first put an end to private property; let’s put things in perspective.
Razib: to underscore your point (a point which was used to undermine my question!): according to Buruma’s figures, if current projections prove correct, the Netherlands will be about 25% Muslim by 2015.
sure. but one has be careful of linear projections based on invariant rates of growth. haven’t seen the number crunching, but many projections of muslim population don’t take into account three long term factors:
1) defection
2) outmarriage
3) convergence with native fertility
also, americans have to keep in mind that segregation isn’t just an american thing. i have a dutch friend who notes that he never sees muslims because he lives in an affluent suburb and goes to an elite university.
oh, and on the numbers
today the netherland’s pop is 16.5 mill. assuming .5%/year growth rate (numbers from CIA factbook) you get 17.25 million in 2015 (X = Xinitial*e^(r*time)).
today muslims are 5.5% of The Netherlands’ pop, so, 910,000. If they are 25% of the pop in 2015, using the number above you get, 4,300,000.
That is an increase of 4.75 in absolute numbers (remember that the base pop is growing too, so that’s why it isn’t 4 X). That implies that the Muslim population will grow about 16% per year for 9 years…which seems implausible to me. Am I missing something?
for perspective, here is the pop growth rate for the top 10 nations in the world:
1 Liberia 4.91
2 Mayotte 3.77
3 Gaza Strip 3.71
4 Burundi 3.70
5 Kuwait 3.52
6 Yemen 3.46
7 Uganda 3.37
8 Oman 3.28
9 Sao Tome and Principe 3.15
10 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 3.07
Demographers are actually pretty good at figuring these things out, using data from all kinds of sources. The projection reminds me of a quote from Mark Twain about the rate at which the Mississippi deposited sediment on the Gulf of Mexico and how in 5,000 years the river would reach the coast of Africa.
However, there are two points made previously:
“1) defection [and] 2) outmarriage” from Islam. Can Muslims convert to other religions the same way a Buddhist can become a Catholic and vice-versa? Can the children of a Muslim man be brought up to be anything other than Muslims? Can a Muslim woman marry a non-Muslim man?
I believe the answer to these questions are no, no and no, respectively. If anyone can disabuse me from the notion that apostacy is impossible in Islam I would appreciate the clarification.
I believe the answer to these questions are no, no and no, respectively. If anyone can disabuse me from the notion that apostacy is impossible in Islam I would appreciate the clarification.
i’m an apostate technically. i’m not dead
though sharia generally implies that.
to be precise, yes, all the things you refer to are verboten in many parts of the muslim world, but not all. e.g., in indonesia many nominal muslims converted to hinduism in java after the 1960s. in africa muslims do become christian in many nations (e.g., pat robertson once bragged about the conversion of hundreds of thousands from islam to christianity in burkina faso). many muslims converted to (via force, or not) christianity in spain after the reconquest (the ones who refused to fully convert were finally expelled in 1600, the moriscos). in china there are villages who do not offer their ancestors pork because they were originally muslim (now they are convential chinese folk religionists). about 10% of sikhs were of muslim origin. one of the major early devotees of krishna in 16th century bengal was a muslim (who was eventually killed for his devotion). the key is not to concede to muslims the values they hold in their own nations as being transferable to the west if they move to the west.
you might find this post of interest, France, its Muslims, and the Future:
Statistics on intermarriage and minority groups generally are difficult to find in France, partly because of the ban on the collection of information on religious affiliation and ethnic background in the French census after the Second World War. The authors of Sixty Million French claim, on page 301, that half of immigrant men marry non-immigrant women, and that one-quarter of immigrant women marry non-immigrant men, for a total intermarriage rate of roughly 40%. This figure is high, and is only a shade below the 60% intermarriage rate for North American Jews that encourages many to doubt the future of North American Jewry.
Not to step too far out of the ongoing fundamentalist vs. secular discourse (which is very big, and very interesting). It seems like hate crimes took place and a healthy society can absorb them and prosecute them as such in the same way that has happened with dismantling the criminal white supremacist organizations here in the US.
I’d like to know how the Netherlands experienced urban renewal in the mid-twentieth century and whether they had similar racist and classist institutional entities at work segregating populations like large US cities did.
It appears France, England, and other segments of post war Europe reap some of the same (or worse) negative social phenomena from the extreme side of mid century urban planning as Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and other American cities have experienced. How big and isolated are the housing projects of the Netherlands?
Amsterdam does not have “Projects” in the American sense, but it certain has neighborhoods that will make you swear you’ve stepped into another country. And let me tell you, it is a beautiful thing. We may live in the Netherlands but if you walk for 10 minutes to get to travel and experience the sights, smells and sounds that cultures from the middle east have brought here.
And while some people, especially populist politicians seeking to build a career, will point and say what a horrible occurance this is, and how these people should conform to dutch language and dutch culture, those of us in these neighborhoods live the reality and all its rewards and YES we deal with misunderstandings as any mutlicultural society would.
The biggest problem is how isolated some people have been raised in this country, to never have truely experienced or enjoyed the above mentioned. They grow up and become rabid voters, afraid of what they do not understand, and eager to install new rules and regulations to force change on those they believe are a danger to their world.
We may live in the Netherlands but if you walk for 10 minutes to get to travel and experience the sights, smells and sounds that cultures from the middle east have brought here.
and 10 minutes later you get to walk away and go back to your own life. some people, for example young women, are continuously bathed in the “cultures from the middle east.” experiencing the beauty of a culture from the outside is different than having to grow up within it. myself, i prefer that most aspects of middle eastern cultures stay in the middle east, after all, it isn’t like there are western immigrants travelling there and exterminating that culture. if you want to truly smell another culture you can buy a plane ticket. i don’t think that pre-modern subcultures are worth preserving and fostering if that means we get more authentic food in ethnic restaurants. yes, i’m trivializing, but bear with me, i’ve talked to many whites who use these arguments to support diversity because they never reflect on how ‘beautiful’ cultures can be oppressive toward women and their own minorities (oh yes, they aren’t monoliths!).
i want the west to remain the west. i think it will stay the west, because europeans will not allow their societies to be transformed into muslim ones. in muslim societies i would be persecuted and executed for being an atheist. how beautiful is that? fundamentally those who will feel the wrath of the backlash will be muslim individuals, white liberals can always blend back into society.
i was born in bangladesh, if i miss bangladesh i can always move back. my family moved to the USA for a reason (e.g., my father doesn’t have to worry about having to take bribes to make ends meet because salaries are discounted under the assumption you will take bribes). this is not to say that change and some evolution does not occur, curry was invented by the east india company and then eventually brought to the UK. but diversity is a terrible price to pay if it means that we’ll allow the growth of pre-enlightenment minorities. i wish those who would criticize white xenophobia would hold non-whites to the same civilized standards and see that beauty the cultural authenticity you see a mentality untouched by the wars of religion and the sexual revolution. the deadly serious reprecussions of assimilation affects all of society, but it will impact muslims are individuals to a far greater extent than the surrounding society.
Been really enjoying reading the posts in this thread…
Looking again at the show’s lead-off questions, I’m inclined to say a few things:
– What is the alternative to multiculturalism (whatever that is)? If I were in a coal mine and my canary died, I might think it time to leave, but the ‘coal mine’ here is just the world. We can’t leave.
– I suppose there are better and worse ways for societies with people with multicultural and multireligious identities to organize themselves. Perhaps the ‘coal mine’ in the analogy is a version of multiculturalism that ought to be abandoned. What exactly is that organizing principle?
– In the hopes of generating a better model of what multiculturalism should be, what societies have successfully established legitimate pluralist systems? What can be learned from studying these societies?
Looking forward to the show…
Razib: your posts, from top to bottom, have been outstanding. Thank you. (And keep ‘em coming!)
Fannishly,
oN
What exactly is that organizing principle?
the key for me is the abandonment of the idea of basic universal values and individuals as the organizing principle of society. instead some are resurrecting a pre-enlightenment concept that the proper frame from which to start is the group, instead of the group being a higher order system that emerges from individual choice. that’s the pithy way to put it though there are strands.
what societies have successfully established legitimate pluralist systems? What can be learned from studying these societies?
the usa has been multi-religious since the founding. the jeffersonian principle of state neutrality in denomination was revolutionary at the time. as for what can be learned, i’ll let others answer what can be learned from the US experience.
razib, I’m inclined to agree with you on abandoning the idea of “universal” values being, well, universal, and also with the universality of the “individual as the organizing principle of society”. But from there, I’m not quite sure what to do. In looking to groups, we are faced with the problems of defining the boundaries of the group (a problem that appeared in your earlier posts on ‘apostasy’ and ‘atheism’).
Nevertheless, it does seem like some acknowledging of the legitimacy of groups within the larger grouping of a society is important for curtailing radicalized responses to the social forces that pull communities apart (perhaps due to the emphasis on individual choice). But some of your remarks on conversions and assimilation — which I, too, enjoyed reading — seemed to suggest that assimilation to the (not-universal) values associated with individual liberty would be good for immigrants (and needed for ‘the west to remain the west’).
Perhaps some combination of cultural/religious identity and respect for individual liberty is called for. The American system makes the former private and the latter public. But this system probably could not work everywhere. What other possibilities are on the table?
But this system probably could not work everywhere. What other possibilities are on the table?
well, i’ll dodge the general issue since i personally favor the model which you want alternatives to, but, i think denmark is on the right track i doing things like limited cross-national marriages which foster a continuous immigrant culture which never assimilates. that is, a danish kurdish finds a young wife from “back home,” and their own children doing the same. numbers are crucial. the assimilative powers of western civilization diminish as the critical mass is passed where the newcomers can live indefinitely within their own subculture with no need to venture out.
razib Says:
October 5th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
“yes, and according to matthew stewart’s the court and the heretic it was an open secret that spinoza was the author of the work.”
“Open secret?”
He did show the manuscript to Leibnitz and people did speculate that it was written by a “heretical Jew” but he still did not put his name to the published book. I also think that the book was published in Germany and not in Holland.
Holland was indeed more tolerant than most other countries in Europe at the time to Jews. This was a period of warfare between Catholics and Protestants and Jews were tolerated because they were not Catholics and their trade was an aid to the State.
In any case, I don’t what all this is supposed to prove. How do we go from Spinoza to modern day Holland?
A lot of history happened in Holland between the 17th century and the 21st including the Holocaust. Over 60% of Dutch Jewry perished in that event; the highest in Western Europe, much higher than in Vichy France with its stringent anti-Jewish laws.
The reading links given above (“Extra Credit Reading”) are excellent. Especially the interview with Bassam Tibi.
It exposes, for Americans, the qualitative differences between the American kind of multiculturalism portrayed so lovingly by nother, and the “plural monocultural” problem detailed in razib‘s outstanding contributions on this thread.
Read it. It’ll teach you a lot.
I like the way the Muslim economist said that anyone in Holland who supported Israel did so out of guilt and not out of justice.
Is he supposed to be the moderate voice of Islam?
These shows have nothing to do with reality.
For the real story try this, “Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims police unio
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent
(Filed: 05/10/2006)
“Radical Muslims in France’s housing estates are waging an undeclared “intifada” against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/05/wmuslims05.xml
Of course you’ll never hear this from Chris!
If you think the US is immune check this out, “Muslim Cabdrivers May Have to Signify Alcohol-Free Cars”
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/us/01taxi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
This is our own country!
“Some travelers are taken aback by the idea that they might be refused a ride.
“They’re really kind of imparting their religious views on the public,†said Katie Patterson of McKinney, Tex. “I can understand if somebody’s drunk; that’s a whole different issue. But to just bring in a closed container, maybe you should look for other work.—
Yeap, they sure are!
Especially liked the cabbies of Minneapolis, that has got to be driving MADD crazy!
That’s funny, Ben.
“Off to the side an old Muslim shopkeeper leans in a doorway and smiles at you quizzically, you smile back; the smile on your face lingers, and lingers.”
ROFLOL
something tells me that Nother is not a tax payer.
Fiddlesticks: I don’t even know why I’m taking this bait, but what the hell:
What’s so funny — or so absurd, or so impossible, or so scary? – about the idea that Nother might share a small, private moment of amusement with an old Muslim shopkeeper?
Is it that Muslims, ALL MUSLIMS, are trying to blow you up? Is the shopkeeper’s broom a bomb? Is Nother — freeloading, tax-evading Nother — also courting disaster? Is that why you are rolling on the floor?
David, thank you. LOL, for real.
Olivier Roy describes what we might call early 21st century Islamism not as ‘Islamism’, but as neofundamentalism: “a closed, scripturalist and conservative view of Islam that rejects the national and statist dimension in favor of the ummah, the universal community of all Muslims, based on sharia (Islamic Law).†Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (p.1).
Which more or less jibes with what we heard about tonight on ROS. And which is a plausible definition, as far as it goes.
On the next page:
“The spread of a radical and militant neofundamentalism has developed in parallel with two growing trends: the burgeoning throughout the Muslim world of networks of more or less private madrasas (religious schools), with curricula based on a Salafi or Wahhabi doctrine; and the deterritorialisation through migration of a huge proportion of the Muslim population.†(p.2)
Later: “The contemporary wave of re-Islamisation is, even unconsciously, a quest for the autonomy of the religious in an already secularized society.†(p.4)
Then: “The difference is not the overwhelming influence of religion on politics in Muslim countries, but rather the predominance of political (and sociological) factors and actors (not necessarily the state) that, because they have instrumentalised religion, are at ease with a conservative inward-looking and ossified religion.†(p.5)
Lastly,
(quote)
The multiple forms of religious revivalism and expression in Muslim societies bypass or ignore the state. This also occurs when there is no state to be fought for, and where Muslims are in a minority that is, moreover, divided and lacks cohesion. Islamisation in this case accompanies the privatization of faith, the formation of closed religious communities, the construction of pseudo-ethnic or cultural communities and identification with Western forms of religiosity or with the choice of a new kind of radical violence, as embodied by Al Qaeda. There is definitely a link between the growing deterritorialisation of Islam (namely the growing number of Muslims living in Western non-Muslim countries) and the spread of specific forms of religiosity, from radical neofundamentalism to a renewal of spirituality or an insistence on Islam as a system of values and ethics.
(unquote)
Hmmm…Lots of food for thought here. At the very least, it fits tightly with the conversation in this episode of ROS. Maybe Monsieur Roy would make an interesting guest for a sequel show…?
“Is it that Muslims, ALL MUSLIMS, are trying to blow you up? Is the shopkeeper’s broom a bomb? Is Nother — freeloading, tax-evading Nother — also courting disaster? Is that why you are rolling on the floor?”
none of the above, dave.
Judging from his post he sounds like he has a lot of free time on his hands.
“Olivier Roy describes what we might call early 21st century Islamism not as ‘Islamism’, but as neofundamentalism”
Can ON tell the difference between a fundamentalist suicide bomber and a neo-fundamentalist suicide bomber?
I can’t.
I think the larger question might be whether fx can tell the difference between jihadis determined to earn martyrdom, and ordinary non-radicalized Muslims. Do they all deserve the ‘terrorist’ stereotype?
Which, it’s obvious to me (and probably to the majority of the other readers of this page), is what David was getting at.
It’s also obvious to me that our cultural veneration of ‘faith’ and ‘the faithful’, coupled with indoctrination of the faithful by fundamentalist preachers (who don’t go much for martyrdom themselves), is the real villain.
Not ordinary Muslims whom nother might smile at in Boston.
Thank you David.
“I think the larger question might be whether fx can tell the difference between jihadis determined to earn martyrdom, and ordinary non-radicalized Muslims.”
Why is this the larger question? ON needs to tell us who confuses ordinary faithful from Jihadists? Non Muslim leaders go out of their ways to talk about the difference as did Benedict and Bush even as large masses of Muslm faithful burn down embassies and attack non Muslims in many parts of the Muslims world.
“Not ordinary Muslims whom nother might smile at in Boston.”
“O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, my tables,—meet it is I set it down!
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!”
“Thank you David.”
Does that mean that you actually pay taxes? LOL
The few categories of issues affecting the above populations are as follows…
bewilderment about the other (who are these people?)
associating self with a nation state -
creation of belief systems, and systems of measurement within such systems
lack of contact with “the other”
lack of understanding of “the self”
The cognitive distance created by the wooden desk, set in a space in a cozy neighborhood, and that tool-computer, hammering away words at the empty space:
come on now…, understanding “fundamentalism” or “radicalism” will do you no good. YOu are all fundamentalists, and somewhere deep inside you WISH you were radical.
We must invent new methods of communication -, and we must stop ourselves from accumulating in large groups of bullshit
I thoroughly enjoyed my walk through Central Square with Nother. I live there years ago and it sounds like it has only gotten better. I used to live in upper west side Manhattan before it became fancy- Broadway from about 70th to the 95th Street was like that in the sixties. I head now to a similar experience that I have every couple of months, in Brooklyn along Kings Highway. This is not unique I am sure, but it’s what I know. I know it’s is skimming the surface because you do not know what is hidden in people’s hearts (yes you can feel the vibes- good and bad) but I know too that time is working on it.
Every time I take a cab I have a conversation with someone here from somewhere very distant and totally different who is bending to be one of us. If the driver will tell me his story, I will listen and feel myself expanded, grateful, grown larger for it. Every encounter confirms that these folks are only happy to be here to pay their taxes and send their remittances, bring their loved ones here to be with them; they struggle for that and to send their kids to school here. They go deep. They long for the old landscape. When you ask why they don’t go back, invariably they say no with certainty and sadness.
There is so much complexity to this important discussion. I am in awe of it.
Thank so much to Razib and the for thoughtful responses.
I recommend to everyone a walk around some such place as Central Square or Kings Highway in Brooklyn
“Europe’s difficulties with its Muslims are also the subject of hysterical oversimplification, especially in the United States, where stereotypes of a spineless, anti-American, anti-Semitic “Eurabia,” increasingly in thrall to Arab/Islamic domination, seem to be gaining strength.[2] As an inhabitant of Eurabia, I must insist on a few elementary distinctions. For a start, are we talking about Islam, Muslims, Islamists, Arabs, immigrants, darker-skinned people, or terrorists? These are seven different things.
“Where I live—in Oxford, Eurabia— I come into contact with British Muslims almost every day. Their family origins lie in Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh. They are more peaceful, law-abiding, and industrious British citizens than many a true-born native Englishman of my acquaintance. As the authors of an excellent new study of Islam in France point out, most French Muslims are relatively well integrated into French society.[3] Much of the discrimination Abdelaziz Eljaouhari complains about, which exists in different forms and degrees in most European countries, applies equally to non-Muslims of immigrant origin. It is, so to speak, indiscriminate discrimination against people with darker skins and foreign names or accents; plain, old-fashioned racism or xenophobia, rather than the more specific prejudice that is now tagged Islamophobia.”
– Timothy Garton Ash:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19371
A more realistic view from Europa:
“Europe Is Growing Skeptical Of Dialogue With Muslims
BY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
October 6, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/41106
After years of dithering over political correctness with Muslims and Islam, Europe is waking up to a different morning.
A three-week tour of Italy, France, and Britain last month was enough for me to conclude that Western Europeans have moved way beyond dialogue. Confrontation, indeed even provocation, is their preferred approach to the Muslims in their midst….”
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=41106
FS is right the distinction between radical and ordinary Muslims is one of degree and not an absolute one.
I know a number of Iranians who grew up Muslims but are not religious anymore and this is what they tell me.
Islamicism is like Communism not every leftists is a Communist but most support its goals of a classless society.
The same with Islamism not all Muslims are willing to use violence to advance the cause of Islam but most support the goal of a world wide Ummah.
As one writer put it ‘the difference between a Muslim fanatic and a non fanatic is that the fanatic wishes to see Islam triumphant in his lifetime while the non fanatic doesn’t believe that it will happen in his lifetime but that it will happen eventually nonetheless.
Finally,
Chris advocated vis a vis Islam “the tolerance of Intolerance.”
Doe she advocate the tolerance of intolerance vis a vis Christian fundamentalism or anti-gay views, or any other type of intolerance.
Why is he so ready to give a pass to Muslim intolerance? Does he know what he is advocating?
There is a huge disconnect between Chris an most of his listeners.
There’s a negative bias in the question “A Dutch Canary in the Multicultural Coalmine?†I have pointed out many times on these threads that the issue here is FEAR driven. This question says: Should this event (Theo van Gogh’s murder) constitute an alarm – which the gassed canary provided the miners, (definition from Answers.com Alarm: A sudden fear caused by the realization of danger. A warning of existing or approaching danger. ) that we are in danger of physical violence by persons that share the radical worldview that they need to eliminate by any means, anyone who ideologically crosses whatever threshold they have in their mind.
It is obvious that this FEAR exists in the mind of many people, some of whom blog here. Let me echo the group that commends nother & razib for their FEARLESS and excellent posts. Violent actions of this sort (I maintain most violent actions and intolerance are FEAR based) are the product of misguided unbalanced minds that are convinced they are serving a higher purpose than themselves. There are examples of this sort behavior in every walk of life. The common thread is fanaticism and FEAR, to paraphrase jdyer above: A fanatic (any fanatic) believes that THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS and will rationalize any actions to achieve the end because the fanatic is impatient, (afraid) that with out those actions the desired results will not occur (the current administration meets this definition.)
Even if one believes that there is a danger over which there is no control, the statistical odds of being a personal VICTIM of fanaticism are miniscule at best.
See http://www.radioopensource.org/fear-factor/#comment-18557#comment-18557 .
If one attracts a violent energy to oneself and becomes a participant in such an event then it is the responsibility of ALL the participants in the drama. Casting the debate in FEAR based rhetoric just perpetuates stereotypical beliefs.
Peace to ALL,
Jazzman
jdyer Anent the tolerance of intolerance: As long as the intolerance is mental or verbal, in a society that guarantees freedoms of speech, press, religion and above all thought, (although lately freedom of thought is under fire in this country and the others have had constraints applied limiting absolute interpretations), one must be tolerant of ALL beliefs, no matter how foreign they are to one’s sensibilities, until beliefs are translated into anti-personal action.
People who are intolerant of intolerance in any other than a conceptual way are the same in that regard as the object of intolerance and pay the price accordingly.
We could all benefit from the example demonstrated by the parents of the murdered children and community of the Amish this week, of forgiveness and tolerance toward the violent perpetrator of the event (tragedy) in Pennsylvania. If everyone behaved similarly there would be far more peace in this world.
Peace to you,
Jazzman
If only the world had a religious leader that had been shot and then survived. And then forgave his attacker. And then the society where this crime took place eventually set such a man free. Imagine. That would be such a tolerant place. Of course fanatics would never dream of taking advantage of such a world, no never.
And of course, if we all just took a deep breath and each of us spent a long weekend by the seashore or maybe in a cabin up in Maine all of these problems would disappear. For you see, it is us who live in the comfort of the first world who are entirelly to blame for the fact that fanatics are tolerated to rampage in Darfur or to murder entire villages in Algeria. It is us who are to blame for adulterers being stoned to death in Nigeria.
What I can’t wrap my brain around is which is worst: the condescending apologist who–as excellently summarized in the analogy about leftists not subscribing to communism, but nevertheless expecting its ends to be achieved–tells us that we just aren’t smart enough (or worst: totally ignorant of human history) to comprehend what’s really going on, or the hopeless optimist.
How dare we insinuate that the politics of hate should be met head-on and defeated.
Jazzman, “There’s a negative bias in the question “A Dutch Canary in the Multicultural Coalmine?†I have pointed out many times on these threads that the issue here is FEAR driven. This question says: Should this event (Theo van Gogh’s murder) constitute an alarm –…”
I agree that fanaticism is the problem.
Two points though. Fanaticism and fear often go together.
Secondly, the title of the program, I think, was meant to be metonymical of a larger problem.
It isn’t just the murder of Van Gogh, if it were just one murder and one fanatic then the problem would be purely local and easily handled by the police.
The problem, though is more far reaching.
We need to wake up to its proper dimmensions precisely because by doing so we will be able to deal with it. The alternative is to give in to fear mongering.
Jazzman, “jdyer Anent the tolerance of intolerance: As long as the intolerance is mental or verbal, in a society that guarantees freedoms of speech, press, religion and above all thought, (although lately freedom of thought is under fire in this country and the others have had constraints applied limiting absolute interpretations), one must be tolerant of ALL beliefs, no matter how foreign they are to one’s sensibilities, until beliefs are translated into anti-personal action.”
I am not sure I follow your argument.
Is it OK for some white Kuklaxer to hurl insults at Black children? This is a purely verbal act, no?
Still, the intolerance we are talking about often does cross over into action, sucide bomings, killing for the faith, etc.
I don’t see how any argument for the tolerance of religiously motivated acts of violence will stand up in a free society.
chena Says:
October 6th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
“If only the world had a religious leader that had been shot and then survived. And then forgave his attacker. And then the society where this crime took place eventually set such a man free. Imagine. That would be such a tolerant place. Of course fanatics would never dream of taking advantage of such a world, no never.”
Well, of course the late Pope John Paul ll was shot and survived and forgave his attackers as did the Nun who was shot and killed in Somalia but survived long enough to forgive her murderer.
But this people are in the business of forgiveness and I don’t think their acts will make much of an impression on people intent of Islamicizing the world.
For the record I am aware that the assault on the Pope was not religiously motivated though the assassin did become religious later on, or so I read somewhere.
“We could all benefit from the example demonstrated by the parents of the murdered children and community of the Amish this week, of forgiveness and tolerance toward the violent perpetrator of the event (tragedy) in Pennsylvania. If everyone behaved similarly there would be far more peace in this world.”
And if everyone was an angel oh what a lovely world this would be.
GROW UP JAZZMAN!
Chena Well said:
How dare we insinuate that the politics of hate should be met head-on and defeated
And how dare we suggest how.
Bravo Jazzman! Forgiveness has to do with dealing with one’s own feelings and not making the problem worse, not spreading it, at the very least. At best it has to do with turning hate into it’s opposite in oneself and others.
One who gives in to hate and anger in response, or who reacts with fear and fear-mongering,is giving the offender justification to offend. Fearmongering is dangerous.
Those, especially who lump together people who have thoughts or wishes about spreading their faith with those who actually act violently are spreading fear. That is precisely where the “battleground†is or should be in this so-called “war on terror†that we made worse by our reactions.
Jazzman: If one attracts a violent energy to oneself and becomes a participant in such an event then it is the responsibility of ALL the participants in the drama. Casting the debate in FEAR based rhetoric just perpetuates stereotypical beliefs.
Yes and reacting with fear, fearmongering and anger makes one into a participant.
The weapons against such thoughts are expressions of good will, kindness, an embrace especially to those who could absorb it and who might be turned. Those who make fun of this notion are at best simply foolish and at worst help to drag us all down into the dark.
The Pope took awhile but he was setting an example.
bikoluna14 from the other thread: http://www.radioopensource.org/when-tolerance-is-just-tolerance/#comment-32714
European govermnents are being tolerant with intolerance because they are afraid of a backlash. They are trying to sell this tolerance as multiculturism.
While multiculturism is be a wonderful thing, immigrant communities need to integrate themselves into the culture of their new land. They should be able to practice their faiths freely and openly, but need to accept the laws and rules of their newly adopted countries.
Razib: “It won’t be easy, and it will require subtley and finesse, and different tacks from different groups, but it needs to be done. Yes, some people scare-monger, but some people are also entirely too sanguine.”
And regarding your:
http://www.radioopensource.org/a-dutch-canary-in-the-multicultural-coalmine/#comment-31747
I’d like to think that if the percentages were higher here we would accommodate, acclimate all the same, especially if it happened slowly enough and there were obvious benefits. Maybe this is the key. We have a tradition of acknowledging the benefits of immigration., enabling people to be free to accomplish that which benefits us all. In these dark days of failed US administration policies abroad and at home, this is one thing we can feel good about (but okay not sanguine).
About Muslims who have come here (also see NYT article below):
1) Immigrants, specifically Muslims are coming from many different countries and not culturally the same.
2) are productive, more educated or ambitious
3 ) are a tiny minority compared to the general population and post no threat to our culture, institutions, etc. ie we are a big country and can absorb immigrants more easily.
3a) If people do not want to mix for religious reasons or ethnic comfort, they can isolate themselves somewhat. Still it has to be obvious that well-being, survival and thriving, depends on the larger society functioning. This is certainly true of orthodox Jews here in America for instance.
4) we are a country of immigrants, hyphenated Americans almost all, if not all. There is little pretension to the contrary. Many, if not all can at least relate to the hardships of their grandparents who came here with, for instance, one suitcase, a Samovar, and set of brass candlesticks, lived apart for awhile, their children and grandchildren assimilating. Note how many took to the street recently regarding changing immigration law.
5) Maybe too that we are harder, less tolerant of violation of our laws regardless of our multiculturalism.
See from NYTimes 9/10/06 article by Andrea Elliot: More Muslims are Coming to the US after a Decline in Wake of 9/11
”I got freedom in this country,” said Ms. Fatima, 25. ”Freedom of everything. Freedom of thought.”
The events of Sept. 11 transformed life for Muslims in the United States, and the flow of immigrants from countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Morocco thinned sharply.
But five years later, as the United States wrestles with questions of terrorism, civil liberties and immigration control, Muslims appear to be moving here again in surprising numbers, according to statistics collected by the Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau.
Immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia are planting new roots in states from Virginia to Texas to California.
In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.
More than 40,000 of them were admitted last year, the highest annual number since the terrorist attacks, according to data on 22 countries provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Many have made the journey unbowed by tales of immigrant hardship, and despite their own opposition to American policy in the Middle East. They come seeking the same promise that has drawn foreigners to the United States for many decades, according to a range of experts and immigrants: economic opportunity and political freedom.
Those lures, both powerful and familiar, have been enough to conquer fears that America is an inhospitable place for Muslims.
it’s a crying shame that Bruce Bawer was not invited on the porgram.
He has a terrific review of the book in the Boston Globe:
When worlds collide
The tension between radical Islam and European secular values is explored in Murder in Amsterdam
By Bruce Bawer | October 8, 2006
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
By Ian Buruma
Penguin, 278 pp., $24.95
When worlds collide
The tension between radical Islam and European secular values is explored in Murder in Amsterdam
By Bruce Bawer | October 8, 2006
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
By Ian Buruma
Penguin, 278 pp., $24.95
He offers an incisive critique of the book:
“For example, he characterizes politician Pim Fortuyn, murdered in 2002, as a “potential menace” because of his “loathing of Islam” — hardly a fair description of a gay liberal’s unease over the growing number of people in his country who considered homosexuality a capital offense. Similarly, in Somali-Dutch legislator (and van Gogh scriptwriter) Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “battle for secularism,” we’re invited to see “echoes” of her youthful “enthusiasm for the Muslim Brotherhood.” These are heroes , yet Buruma focuses repeatedly on their supposed arrogance, fanaticism, and personal eccentricities. He even calls them dangerous — while insisting that Abdelhakim Chouaati, a history teacher who thinks “9/11 was a Jewish plot,” isn’t. Buruma argues that if only Muslims can be made to feel truly “at home” in the Netherlands (where they make up nearly half the urban population), all will be well.
Never mind that Chouaati, who does feel at home there, still wants to see it under sharia law.
Chouaati isn’t the only Islamist sympathizer depicted here as gracious, sensitive, and quietly thoughtful. Nora, a student, sweetly endorses jihad; Farhane, an actor, owes his career to van Gogh but won’t explicitly condemn his murder. “I can see how one can be pushed into it,” Farhane admits, calling “Submission” “an insult, the kind of insult I could never forget.”…”
He also says that
“True, some European Muslims are painfully vulnerable — notably girls forced into marriage by their fathers, and women whose husbands see wife-beating as a sacred right. Also vulnerable in Europe today are groups that are the special objects of Muslim contempt. The leading Dutch gay rights organization admits that thanks to Muslim gay-bashing, tolerance in Amsterdam is slipping away “like sand through the fingers”; a 2004 French government report asserted that “Jewish children can no longer get an education” in France , owing to abuse by Muslim classmates.Continued…”
Finally,
“Significantly, one category of Dutchmen is conspicuously absent from Buruma’s interviewees: ordinary non-Muslims whose lives have been transformed by Islamization. You’d never know from Buruma that while Islamic immigration continues, emigration is skyrocketing as ethnic Dutchmen flee a country where they feel increasingly unsafe.”
For those of you who want to see more Muslim immigration into the US take heed.
Here is the link to the previous article:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/10/08/when_worlds_collide/
jdyerI agree that fanaticism is the problem. Two points though. Fanaticism and fear often go together. They ALWAYS go together.
We need to wake up to its proper dimmensions precisely because by doing so we will be able to deal with it. The alternative is to give in to fear mongering.
Scared people are ALWAYS ripe for giving in to fear mongering.
Jazzman quoted by jdyer: one must be tolerant of ALL beliefs, no matter how foreign they are to one’s sensibilities, until beliefs are translated into anti-personal action.
jdyer I am not sure I follow your argument. Is it OK for some white Kuklaxer to hurl insults at Black children? This is a purely verbal act, no? Yes – repugnant as it is, it is legal to insult people under free speech (their age or ethnicity notwithstanding.)
Still, the intolerance we are talking about often does cross over into action, sucide bomings, killing for the faith, etc.
As I stated above we don’t have be tolerant of intolerance once it is translated into anti-personal (physical) action, but it is the action that is the issue, not the thought or verbal abuse, thoughts cannot harm another without the other’s co-operation.
I don’t see how any argument for the tolerance of religiously motivated acts of violence will stand up in a free society.
I wouldn’t say that there’s a good argument for violent acts in a “free†society either, however the current POTUS claims he was “told†by God to spread democracy in the world and I would call the invasion of Iraq under that pretext a religiously motivated act of violence and that along with other similar acts of violence continue to “stand up†in a large segment of this society.
War will not be ended by hating war, but loving peace. On today, John Lennon’s birthday, Yoko Ono announced that she will be giving out “peace grants”, She an John once said “War is over – if you want it.” Enough of us obviously “Don’t want it” – yet.
Peace to ALL,
Jazzman
Sorry for the missing Italics cancellation above.
fiddlesticks And if everyone was an angel oh what a lovely world this would be. GROW UP JAZZMAN! Everyone in my worldview IS an angel. Devils are just angels in disguise to demonstrate how not to treat our fellow humans. If growing up means losing my Pollyanna childlike optimism, then who needs it? Children are naturally ingenuous and only start to think in “good vs. evil†after adults program them by example or inculcation.
For those who are still reading this thread there is an eye openning artilcle in the NY Times today about the reaction to Islamicism in Europe.
October 11, 2006
Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER
“BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.
“You saw what happened with the pope,†said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. “He said Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere and make his point.
“Rationality is gone.â€
Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.
For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, a prominent Labor politician, seemed to sum up the moment when he wrote last week that he felt uncomfortable addressing women whose faces were covered with a veil. The veil, he wrote, is a “visible statement of separation and difference.â€
When Pope Benedict XVI made the speech last month that included a quotation calling aspects of Islam “evil and inhuman,†it seemed to unleash such feelings. Muslims berated him for stigmatizing their culture, while non-Muslims applauded him for bravely speaking a hard truth.”
Read the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/europe/11muslims.html?ei=5070&en=a4c0e3c5844fe96b&ex=1161230400&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
[This post -- and five subsequent ones, totalling 8800 words -- was deleted by Open Source for not following the Commenting Guidelines.]
In case you missed it, Sylvia Poggioli gave an update on the latest difficulties in Europe’s hopes to integrate its Muslims, here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6376585
She even mentioned the nascent progressive Islam movement.
David has politely and apologetically informed me via email that my Ayaan Hirsi Ali posts are too darn long.
And he’s right.
So I’ve reposted them here .
(Although I sure wish I knew of a more attractive blog format. Like this one, Word Press, but for free? Anyone know anything about this?)
Go ahead and whack my posts, David. I don’t mind.
Unsurprisingly, yet underpublicized, progressive Islam is not a movement confined to Europe. You can find it in North America too: Progressive Muslim Union whose director, Mona Eltahawy, was a part of Diane Rhem’s panel on Monday, Nov. 1st: Muslims, the Veil, and the West.
Here’s a snippet from the PMU’s home page:
(quote)
4)We affirm the equal status and equal worth of all human beings, regardless of religion, gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. We oppose any restrictions on women’s full participation in society and believe that separation and segregation of men and women is contrary to the equity among genders enshrined in the Quran. We endorse the human rights and liberties of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual individuals. We believe that Muslim women and men, gay and straight, of all nationalities, ethnicities, and races should work together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in their effort to rejuvenate our community.
5) We affirm that justice and compassion should be the guiding principles for all aspects of human conduct. Islam holds that these qualities are characteristics of God as revealed in the holy Quran, divine qualities that are the ethical virtues to which all human beings should aspire to emulate.
6) We affirm our commitment to social and economic justice and our opposition to the culture of militarism and violence. We will support efforts for universal health care, public education, the protection of our environment, and the eradication of poverty around the world.
7) We reject the authoritarian, racist, sexist and homophobic interpretations of our faith as antithetical to the principles of justice and compassion.
9) We call for critical inquiry and dynamic engagement with Islamic scripture, early Muslim sources, the Islamic intellectual heritage, and traditional and current Muslim discourses.
(unquote)
Contrast that please with the much more fundamentalist adherence to scripture of ‘mainstream’ Islam. And then consider the importance of talking up progressive Islam every chance you get!
This movement, in Europe and North America alike, needs and deserves the oxygen of publicity.