Earlier relevant writings on free expression and Islam:
2004-02-13: Oops!… I did it again, on banning of headscarves in European schools.
2004-01-21: France’s theatre of the absurd, on the banning of headscarves in France.
2002-05-22: Europe’s illiberal liberalism, on how Islam is being cast as the new communism by people like Fortuyn.
2002-05-17: Giuliani on immigration, a great speech on America’s admirable tolerance of immigrants.
2002-05-07: Sullivan loses it, as he doesn’t understand why Fortuyn was wrong.Upon first hearing of the gunning down of flamboyant anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn in May 2002, everyone, including me, assumed the perpetrator was likely to have been an extremist Muslim. We thought wrong — he was killed by an ethnic Dutch militant animal-rights activist. The murderer’s actions were not subsequently interpreted as the will of a larger collective, there was no broader soulsearching among meat eaters, hunters or vegans, and there were no vigilante reprisals and counter-reprisals on slaughterhouses and forests.
Last week’s murder of Theo van Gogh, a strident/boorish anti-religious filmmaker, saw no such restraint. This time round, a Dutch-Moroccan murderer’s actions are being seen as the harbinger of larger, darker forces, with the very fabric of Dutch society supposedly stressed by a stubborn minority of anti-assimilationist cultural refuseniks.
And yet the actions of the two murderers are directly comparable: They both unpardonably stepped outside the realm of discourse into barbarism to settle their grievances. Why then has only this most recent murder caused the public debate to lurch towards violent groupthink? Because Mohammed B. saw himself as acting in the Muslim interest? Or because the ethnic Dutch see him as doing so? Dutch Muslims reacting on the largest Dutch-Moroccan internet forum certainly aren’t embracing Mohammed B’s actions.
The primacy of free expression by individuals in a liberal democracy works both ways: Just as van Gogh must be allowed to make a film that can be interpreted as insulting to IslamSubmission (see it, the main part is in English) is provocative, topical, possibly not entirely accurate, and almost certainly insulting to observing Muslims., so must Muslims be allowed to choose the manner and extent of their assimilation into Dutch society. Forcing such assimilation denies cultural minorities the very same right to individual expression that the cultural majority takes for granted, and makes a mockery of the liberal foundations of western society. The French forbidding headscarves in schools is a choice example of such illiberal liberalism.
The Dutch already have laws criminalizing murder, incitement to violence and domestic abuse, and these are perfectly adequate for punishing rabid mullahs and actions based on mysogynistic readings of the Koran. Further laws compelling immigrants to assimilate or leave, as are now being publicly mooted, would be a gross breach of the rights of individuals in society. An obligation to be like “us” cannot ever be construed as a right (despite Andrew Sullivan’s best efforts.)
Furthermore, such laws would be useless in preventing future Mohammed Bs. It’s become clear that the 26-year old had in fact assimilated perfectly — one Dutch Arabist expert points out in NRC Handelsblad regarding the letters pinned to van Gogh’s body:
I understood then that the farewell letter was written by a Dutch polderboy. Somebody who’d have passed his assimilation course with flying colors. Somebody who writes his testament in the same manner as we write Santa Claus rhymes. And then you realize that this is not somebody who belongs to “them”. It is somebody who is part of our society, who is Dutch through and through.Ik begreep toen dat de afscheidsbrief geschreven was door een Hollandse polderjongen. Iemand die met vlag en wimpel voor zijn inburgeringscursus zou zijn geslaagd. Iemand die zijn testament heeft geschreven op een manier zoals wij Sinterklaasrijmpjes maken. En dan realiseer je je dat het niet iemand is die tot de ‘zij’ behoort. Het is iemand die onderdeel uitmaakt van onze gemeenschap, die door en door Nederlands is.
This man’s actions were not culturally preordained. They came through a conscious embrace of the Al Takfir wal Hijra strain of terrorism. The threat, then, is not cultural, but ideological, and Dutch police today were targeting these cells, as well they should. Forced assimilation, however, would be a sorry overreaction to this threat.
Stefan, about your post “Cold comfort” and some of its comments: those might have come from Flashback. 🙂 http://forum.flashback.info/scandinavia/showthread.php?t=159026
“Illiberalism.” Phrasing it like you did there implies an acceptance of the American right-wing’s characterisation that “liberal” means “anyone less right-wing than themselves, on whatever issue.” Which I’m sure you don’t have 🙂
No, I use liberalism in its classical sense, the sense of Locke and Mill. (The use of the word “liberal” as a insult in the US a little comical and entirely irrelevant to serious debate.)
Illiberal liberalism, to my mind, is the incomplete expression of liberal notions: Where only a subset of society is allowed free expression, or where society is only allowed to “freely” express an allowed subset of possible opinions, which have somehow been prevetted by the moral majority.
(Caveat: There are of course universally disallowed expressions such as defamation, fraud and incitement to violence, but there are clear legal tests for these.)
I totally agree with you, though the only thing that I wonder after reading your post is this: how can the ‘perfectly assimilated’ Mohammed B. be attracted to such radical ideology and consequently do such a brutal thing? I am starting to get the impression that he is not the only young Dutch person attracted to such ideas. From the article that you link to, the Takfir wal Hijra movement is described as part of violent political islam, as a sect that wishes to destroy modern western society from within. If people within Dutch society are attracted to such ideas, there must be something wrong here. I am thinking of silent discrimination and unequal job opportunities and consequently social isolation. If I am right, then there are cultural factors that underlie this terrorist threat.
It may be true that some European-based Islamic extremism is fuelled by social frustrations. However anti-Western terrorism has also often been a traditional preserve of posturing young middle class folk. (The Baader-Meinhoff gang in Germany was just one example of this.) The climate which enables this kind of rebellion is that of propserity. The ardent young European “freedom fighters” are products of this. And they want to kill us all because it makes it is the only way they know to make themselves feel superior. Yet to try and inculcate “Western values” into these eminently Western people would clearly be futile. If going through the entire educational system of a western country produces graduates like the Meinhoffs or Mohammed B, “more of the same” is unlikely to be effective. The same surely applies to the less socially favoured immigrants who are usually fingered as the villains of the piece. In fact, the vast majority of these simply want to propser. If their children instead wish to destroy and terrorise, it may be because they have assimilated too well.
Quote: “The Dutch already have laws criminalizing murder, incitement to violence and domestic abuse” That is great, except these laws don’t apply to minorities, because they are, by Multiculturalist doctrine, exempt from criticism. As everybody knows, the mosques have been preaching hate for decades and the authorities have done little to stop them them. Europe is in for a very rude awakening.