November 14, 2004
WHY WOULD YOU PRESERVE IT?:
A battle is raging between liberals and radical Islamists. Can Holland’s tolerant society survive? (Angus Roxburgh, 11/14/04, Sunday Herald)
WHERE else could this happen? It’s the funeral of a film-maker, brutally murdered – butchered – by a Muslim extremist. Thousands line the streets of Amsterdam to mourn. Among the flowers are some less common tributes – cactuses (the dead man was a prickly character) and bottles of beer. Lou Reed’s Perfect Day is playing. You catch the smell of cannabis and turn around. The smoker is a policeman in uniform. Only in the Netherlands. In no other country in the world has the phrase “anything goes” been so apt. At least, until now, until something – the murder of documentary film-maker Theo van Gogh – went just too far, bringing in its wake an upheaval that could change the Dutch culture of liberalism and tolerance for ever. [...]Suddenly this nation where anything goes is seized with anger and fear. An opinion poll conducted for RTL television found that 93% of Dutch people were afraid there would be more victims as a result of Muslim extremism. Almost half the respondents said they were now less tolerant towards Muslims than they had been the previous week.
The country’s Muslims, meanwhile, are growing steadily more fearful of burgeoning anti-Islamic sentiment. Outside a largely Moroccan mosque in the Hague, police are on patrol, while inside prayers attract a larger than usual crowd. As the men emerge into the street, they overwhelmingly condemn the murder of Theo van Gogh.
“We were offended by some of the things he said,” a Moroccan who has lived most of his life in the Netherlands tells me, “but we understand that there is freedom of speech here. Now we are afraid of what will happen. We don’t even feel safe in our own homes any more.”
The head of the mosque, Ali Bilhaj, says: “We are all working together. We’re working with the Christian and Jewish and humanist communities to try to calm things.” He admits, though, that what happened was “an earthquake”. Everyone, he believes, is reacting wrongly to the murder and its consequences.
Imran Ahmad, owner of a Pakistani food shop just down the road, is equally baffled. “We’ve got to stop saying ‘this religion is good, that religion is bad’.”
The events have raised all sorts of questions about the limits and dangers of total freedom of speech. Should the Netherlands continue to be tolerant of people who are so intolerant of others’ views that they take the law into their own hands? Has freedom of speech gone too far if it allows public figures to publicly insult entire religions and cultures? (Van Gogh had referred to Muslims as “goat-f***ers”.)
Not too quick on the uptake, are they? Posted by Orrin Judd at November 14, 2004 10:54 AM
I had thought that he was being insulting to the goats.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 14, 2004 11:35 AMAnyone who lets muslims into their country is an idiot.
Posted by: Amos at November 14, 2004 11:43 AMUnless an evangelical movement rises up in Holland, the country will die.
Posted by: Vince at November 14, 2004 11:51 AMI hesitate to predict anything. But, it seems to me that the affairs of men seldom progress in straight lines. It has been easy to draw a straight line and predict Europe's doom.
We may now be near a turning point. Europe once festered with nationalist and fascist (and, if you can tell the difference, communist) movements. After WWII they were suppressed and the official range of parties was limited to the (more)center--(less)right (not-very)Christian--(not-exactly)Democrats and the (less)center--(more)left social(ist)--(ha-ha)democrats. Just last week a Belgian "Court" ordered a nationalist party suppressed.
But the official parties do not have the guts to suppress Islamo-nazisn. And the reaction that its continued depredations will provoke may destabilize the equilibrium of Post-WWII politics. Add the sclerosis of European economies, the inevitable crash and burn of the "EU constitution," and the failure of French foreign policy after American Voters rejected the Democrats attempted surrender, and the future looks grim for Euro-elites. The shrillness of their reaction to the American election shows that they fear the precariousness of their own position.
May it happen speedily in our day.
If it's true that "freedom of speech [has] gone too far if it allows public figures to publicly insult entire religions and cultures" then the entire left wing of the political spectrum should be locked up for their post-election meltdown.
Posted by: brian at November 14, 2004 5:34 PMFreedom of speech is just that. If you don't like what's being said, open a dialogue, sue for slander, prove the speaker lied or was mistaken. Muslims who live in other countries are bound by the laws of that country. The mistake in the Netherlands was letting the Muslim community take care of their internal affairs instead of making them obey the law of the land. The same thing is taking place in other European countries, Denmark for instance.
Canada is making that same mistake.
The sea change brought on by Bush's overwhelming victory may prompt people in those countries to open their eyes and see what they've done before anymore people are killed.
Posted by: erp at November 14, 2004 5:53 PMWe are all working together. Were working with the Christian and Jewish and humanist communities to try to calm things.
The entire reason this whole problem is occuring is because there's no such thing as the latter.
Posted by: Timothy at November 14, 2004 7:00 PM"The mistake in the Netherlands was letting the Muslim community take care of their internal affairs instead of making them obey the law of the land."
Pim Fortuyn's main point during his final campaign.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 14, 2004 9:01 PMThis calls to mind a story of a British colonial judge who was pronouncing sentence in a case of suttee-murder. When told that it was part of the prosoner's "culture," he replied that while he understood that murdering widows was part of the the natives' culture, hanging those who did so was part of his.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 14, 2004 9:29 PM"The events have raised all sorts of questions about the limits and dangers of total freedom of speech." It has "raised all sorts of questions" only for those foolish enough to believe that "total freedom of speech" or the perfectly open society is an actual possibility.
Posted by: Paul Cella at November 14, 2004 9:48 PMBjorn Staerk has/had a really interesting conversation on this topic.
The Dutch gov't barely survived a no confidence vote.
Tolerance is the problem--no society can endure without an inquisition.
Posted by: oj at November 15, 2004 12:54 AMOJ:
Tolerance is one thing, acceptance is another. The West seems to be confusing the two.
Posted by: mike earl at November 15, 2004 10:51 AMTolerance is one thing, acceptance is another. The West seems to be confusing the two.
Tip: Scare up a copy of the South Park episode "Tolerance Death Camp". The whole episode is on the difference between tolerance and acceptance.
And there's a button sold at SF conventions that goes something like this:
Tolerance: The level of abuse a system can take before it breaks down completely.
The overdogs always think they can dispense with tolerance.
Then, when times change, they whine endlessly, like Solzhenitsyn.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 15, 2004 10:21 PMThe problem isn't that the Bolsheviks were intolerant, but that they were evil.
Posted by: oj at November 15, 2004 10:32 PM