Here’s part of a speech that Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, gave in New York in February:
There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is built on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never alter. First, there is the Quran, Allah’s personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect. Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about its goal. That’s a given. It’s fact.
Whereas here’s what a friend of mine living in Amsterdam sees:
Disenfranchised immigrants who were summoned here to do low skilled jobs, aspire to integrate into Dutch society, but are often systematically excluded by Dutch people. Â A lot of them don’t have much formal education. That doesn’t help.Even 2nd and 3rd generation Moroccan immigrants, many of whom are nice people and speak perfect Dutch, get treated like underclass by native Dutch people. Â It angers and depresses the parents, who feel shut out, and their kids suffer also.I find it terribly sad to think that the kids I fix bikes with have such a disadvantage due to their origin. Many of them are quite smart. It strikes me as such a waste of human potential.
There are some nice Dutch people who get along fine with the immigrants, but not very many.
They’re describing the same thing!
Are they? I read it differently that Wilders is describing Islam – the belief system – while the second writer is describing individuals and their experience. They are consistent premises.
Chris, yes, on a surface level they are describing different things. But they are both looking at the same thing — Muslim immigrants in Holland. Wilders sees “Islam” and my friend sees people. The only reason Wilders says what he says is that “its [Islam’s] goal” is, to Wilders, their goal. Because they are Muslims. “Its goal” wouldn’t matter if no one believed it.
Disenfranchised immigrants who were summoned here to do low skilled jobs,
More than Islam or whatever else this is the root of all problems everywhere, suppozing that metics are intrinsically “low class” and willing to remain so.
Importing cheap labor instead of forcing the always plentiful low skilled aborigenes to participate into society according to their mediocre competencies because they are “of our kin” is an illusory solution which has destroyed many a brilliant society and culture.
Stupidity and greed springs eternal.
The mayor of Rotterdam, the second largest city in The Netherlands, is a Moroccan immigrant who still holds Moroccan citizenship. Therefore there is much reason to doubt your friend’s contention that “2nd and 3rd generation Moroccan immigrants, many of whom are nice people and speak perfect Dutch, get treated like underclass by native Dutch people”. Just as in this country, any problems that minorities have get blamed on the majority.
@Dennis, Your logic doesn’t make sense. Barak Obama may be the first black President of the United States, but blacks in many areas of the US are still treated as second class (or underclass) citizens. My black friends in NYC still have difficulty hailing a cab (and not because their thumbs don’t work)–even from black taxi drivers. There may be more acceptance at the societal level for an ethnic class of people, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to the individual level, at least not for wholehearted embracement.
I’m not sure what is meant by juxtaposing these quotes. The first seems to say – Islam beckons problems, whether there are moderate Moslems or not. The second basically says Moslems are discriminated against in Dutch society. Seth, do you put these up there as 2 alternative explanations for Moslem violence in the Netherlands? I suppose both could be characterized as black and white thinking, and perhaps some combination explanation is better. But the target of violence, for example Theo Van Gogh, was chosen clearly for reasons related to the first quote; and secondly, the perpetrators of such violence are very often highly educated successful Moslems (for example, the train bombing in UK orchestrated by doctors). These are hardly the most oppressed.
As a former cabbie in Chicago, let me point out that black cabbie frequently refuse to pick up black customers. Too many cabbies are robbed and killed when they make this mistake.
What is meant by juxtaposing these two quotes? One is an example of black-and-white thinking, the other isn’t. My friend makes distinctions, doesn’t see everyone as the same. That’s why her comment isn’t black-and-white thinking. Wilders grants that Muslims vary (“There may be moderate Muslims”) but goes on to dismiss that variation by ignoring it.
i still think you are unfair to Wilders. There is a distinction between the “-ism” and the individual. He is criticizing the ism. His black and white thinking is with respect to the ism, not the individuals. He accepts that there may be moderate individuals.
True, he is criticizing the -ism. And the -ism is an example of black-and-white thinking, yes. So describing it in black-and-white terms could be said to merely be accurate. But I keep coming back to the idea that Wilders wouldn’t care about the details of Islam if he didn’t see it among Dutch residents. If he wants to criticize Muslim extremists in Holland, fine. But then he should describe their behavior, not abstract ideology. That would be a far more complicated argument. He is badly simplifying here — not simplifying Islam but simplifying the connection between religion and behavior.
@Seth,
Right, but he’s a politician, and he’s utilizing political rhetoric. He’s being alarmist in order to rouse Dutch people to action. It defeats the purpose to be nuanced and subtle.
“My black friends in NYC still have difficulty hailing a cab (and not because their thumbs don’t work)—even from black taxi drivers.”
This is clearly not an example of white establishment racism, since practically no American born whites work as taxi drivers. In fact, in Chicago and Minneapolis, 10-20% of cab drivers are Somalis.
Well, let’s not use such second-order quibbling to avoid discussion of the primary aspect of the situation – which is an historically-unprecedented population displacement currently being implemented by the European elites, probably motivated by their own cultural guilt and self-loathing:
https://www.spsw.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/pdf/WP33_Third_Demographic_Transition.pdf
I’m also living in The Netherlands, and I do see a problem with Islam, and a certain percentage of the Moroccan people. But these things are not that related as some might think. The larges group in Islam, Sunni, is a quite ‘rigid’ from, as Wilders describes when he indicates “there is no moderate Islam”. This form gives people a set of laws and a book that give them mandate to kill non-believers, start war or commit terrorist acts, as the laws and the book is the word from God. There are moderate muslims, but they are seen as non-true-believers in the eyes of some very strict muslims.
There was a intern from Pakistan at the company I worked for last year. He was a muslim, but was more geared towards the Sufism stream of the Islam. It’s a more mystical-ascetic form of Islam, and during our conversations, I thought many concepts were almost closer to Buddhism than the Sufism version of Islam. I do not have any problems with most people that are muslim. Most are fairly moderate and just live their lives in society. Strict (Sunni) Islam thought is scary, just as scary as strict Christian thoughts, like the Dutch political SGP, a orthodox protestant political party (no woman could have party membership before the year 2006).
‘The Moroccan problem’ is something else. Ok, most Moroccans probably are muslim, al least they consider themselves muslim, but might not behave as such. Coming up with “nice people that speak Dutch” does not make a huge impression on me. The percentage of criminal Moroccans is 17 times as high as the percentage of criminal Dutch (year 2006), in some regions this number is even higher. This is not because the Dutch have a problem with foreigners, but it’s a problem in some specific etnic groups.
When I worked at Philips, on our campus I worked with people from Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, UK, Spain, France, Romania, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, India, China, and Singapore that were living or studying in The Netherlands. Dutch companies do not have any problems with people with other cultural background, but you have to put in some effort. Behave well, study, get good grades, work hard to earn your cash, and you will make it just like anyone else. But if you don’t study, don’t get your grades, dress like a rapper, and behave and communicate like a criminal, people will treat you like one. It’s not because of your parents’ cultural background, it’s because you and your friends thought you did not have a chance, so you did not invest, so in the end you indeed are not going to set that chances. A self fulfilling prophecy. I’ve seen the same thing happen to Dutch ‘natives’. Why study and work 40+ hrs a week for someone else when you can make money yourself going in the illegal drug business?
Ok, I do believe it was easier for me to get support from friends when I was going to do a study in electronics and software. But do not blame it on the fact that your (grand)parents being from Morocco, you probably have to blame it on lack of support from friends and family…
Nice blog dude, but am I the only one having some problems with the interface i don’t know if it is because i’m using a old version of Opera!