A number of readers sent me a link to Johann Hari's piece Islam in the West in Dissent, which I discussed earlier here. Still it is worthwhile to revisit this article.

In it Hari highlights the schism between the two camps that are framing the debate about Islam and in particular, Islam in Europe. On the one hand there is what Hari calls the "Clash of Civilizations" crowd and on the other the group that doesn't necessarily dispels the basic claims of the 'Clash Crowd', but one that strongly believes in a moderate Muslim strain that can help bring about fundamental change to the troubled religion.

This assessment is largely correct and an excellent and recent example of this division can be found in that well-known laboratory for Western-Muslim relations, The Netherlands. Take a look at this interesting piece of news, Hirsi Ali's ally attacked by fellow Islam critics. The basic argument is that emerging "Clash of Civilization" style politicans have rebranded the original debate about the conflicting Western and Muslim values into a hard and uncompromising political agenda:

Early this month, columnist Afshin Ellian dealt the first blow: Mr Wilders, Afshin Ellian wrote in his column in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper of 3 March, is radicalising and rapidly developing into an extreme right-wing politician.

Notably, Afshin Ellian backed his criticism with a reference to former conservative VVD politician Frits Bolkestein who, in the early 1990s, opened the attack on Islam but has been saying for some time now that people like Geert Wilders have taken things too far. Others, including author Leon de Winter, philosopher Bart Jan Spruijt and Labour ideologist Paul Scheffer have made similar comments.

It is an interesting observation and it is correct. Perfectly well reasoned criticism of fundamentalism has in many cases mutated into a sort of hateful bile that no longer offers solutions, but only bitter confrontation. Enter one of The Netherlands most respected academics, Professor Van Doorn - whose 'Organizational Sociology' class I attended in the 80s - with the following comment:

According to Professor Van Doorn, commentators like Afshin Ellian and Sylvain Ephimenco have for years been 'prompting' Geert Wilders. He is their disciple. But now that Geert Wilders is putting their words into action, they are taking fright and turning their backs on him. However, Professor Van Doorn argues it is now too late to pull back: "The aforementioned commentators would do better to ask themselves whether they are not complicit in Geert Wilders' crusade."

Even left-wing magazine De Groene Amsterdammer has devoted a sarcastic commentary to the 'change of heart' on the part of the Dutch Islam critics. The item's author, Hubert Smeets, says that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her friends appreciated the outspokenness of the late populist politician Pim Fortuyn who was killed in 2002.

But Geert Wilders actually puts his money where his mouth is, and that's giving The Friends of Ayaan Hirsi Ali a bad case of cold feet.

Not necessarily so and it has always been a trademark for the leftish establishment to equate the pioneers in the debate - Ellian, Fortuyn, Hirsi Ali, Van Gogh etc. - with some of history's less palatable characters. And that is a very flawed approach as all of them in essence were and are free-thinkers whose quest for openness and debate unfortunately enabled real hate-mongers and closeted fascists to emerge. Not that Wilders is one, but his rhetoric has reached a level at which it has become difficult to consider him a credible and reasonable voice in this debate.

Exactly the same phenomenon has surfaced in the right-of-center blogosphere where previously well-written or original blogs have descended into being repetitive cesspools of Islamophobia. Not good. Fortuyn, Van Gogh, Ellian and Hirsi Ali initiated a debate in order to ensure that viable criticism of Islam and its radical offshoots could finally enter the mainstream, not for it to become a radical and divisive ideology on the fringe. I suspect that the parting of ways within this group has only just started, to the detriment of the issue that all were once so vigorously debating together.

UPDATE: Here is another voice weighing in on the debate:

Fortunately because I have lived and worked in a more cosmopolitan world than most of America, my views of Islam and its followers has been quite different from what is being advertised by many non-Muslim voices with political agendas running past their ability to reason or engage in reasoned discussions. Radio talk show hosts come to mind, although print and cyber sources are just as polluted by ignorant, broad-brush rants as their big-mouthed broadcast brethren.

Read the entire post here.

The German weekly Der Spiegel chronicles the outrage and confusion across the political spectrum over a court ruling which cited certain passages of the Koran in its ruling in a divorce case. It's a lengthy piece but worth your time as it goes right to the heart of the discussion about integration vs. the 'parallel' society.

Radio Netherlands is running a series of interviews with Muslim thinkers. The first one is Syrian Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, a retired professor of European philosophy at the University of Damascus a city where he still spends a part of his time. Sadiq al-Azm is above all a secular thinker which hasn't made his life any easier, but he decided to stay put in Syria and Lebanon. I do not share his idea that secularization has become an irreversible process, but he is most likely correct in stating how difficult it will be to reform Islam from within:

The problem is that most of my colleagues who claim to reform Islam from the inside do not address this problem, probably because they fear it will alienate them from their audiences. Modernists such as Fatima Mernissi keep playing this game of quoting texts of Koran and Prophetic Traditions in support of their case, implicitly assuming the literal truth of these texts. And if they do not find anything that supports them, they twist and torture the meaning of the text until it suits their demands.

Will keep you informed if an when other interviews in this very insightful series appear.

There has been some buzz around an article - It is not the lie that governs, but the dark threat - by Dutch Islam expert Hans Jansen in the new online newspaper named Opinio, arguing that the Dutch remain far too tolerant in confronting radical Muslim excesses.

There is a summary of what he said in English here but it doesn't quite capture Jansen's argument. Of course, I read the original Dutch piece and noted that it is really about the omnipresence of threats in Dutch society and how that has dramatically affected freedom and an open debate. The various threats are often explained away (“he or she has probably deserved it”) or is it safely assumed that only a few high profile personalities have been served death threats. Not so, says Jansen who also underlines why so many well-meaning Muslims remain quiet too in summing up a list of groups that have been forced to be very careful about what they say and do:

Moroccan writers, columnists, TV-personalities, politicians form all sides, publishers, journalists, entire editorial boards (not just newspapers, but from publishers too), comedians, Muslim schoolgirls, translators, ghostwriters, teachers at higher professional education and universities, bookstores – and more – are all on the list of people that have been or are threatened.

And he presents a recent case of how threats generated some self-censorship during one of the nation’s pivotal literary events:

The participants of “The Evening of the Book”, a literary quiz from public broadcaster NPS and the NRC Handelsblad, were kindly requested to not talk about the threats that have recently victimized writer Naima El Bezaz. If Elsbeth Etty had failed to report that in the NRC of March 13 no one would have known about that immoral request. “The Evening of the Book” continued as scheduled and viewers have again without being aware of it, watched a censored show on public television.

[Editor's Note: Naima El Bezaz actually withdrew from the show altogether after receiving numerous threats following the publication of her recent book which deals with a young Moroccan woman falling in love with a Jewish man]

Jansen goes on to point to the general unpreparedness to wage a struggle to defend core democratic values. The Dutch are indeed notorious non-fighters and Jansen talks about it as follows:

Even verbally we are not all that good in dealing with violence, so it is not hard to see how we will deal with it if real blood is spilled and things get serious. In order to increase our general well being we have rebranded the police as ‘neighborhood support' and the army focuses on ‘reconstruction', something in which the army’s top brass appear to take pride. The AIVD (Ed.: Dutch intelligence service) is restricted to analysis and observation. A report from the AIVD is not all that different from a thesis or a dissertation. Research and analysis are of course of crucial importance, but who will carry out – without us knowing it – the dirty work?

We suffer from the collective amnesia that a peaceful enclave like The Netherlands can not rely on its own peacefulness but that a number of disciplined bastards are required to fight a shadow war and get their hands dirty in their fight for peace and freedom. It will not be an easy task to explain that to all these nice people from the Christian-Democrats and Christian Party (Ed.: parties currently in the coalition government). And to the rest.

It is important that once more we are reminded of the steady advance of self-censorship in Europe's free and democratic heartland. Many media outlets are increasingly reluctant to talk about it and as a consequence sanitized content has become an integral part of media distribution as we have seen in this particular Dutch case.

The Opinio initiative by the way is a good one and can hopefully be a counter-voice in this increasingly difficult climate. Note that it has been funded by former Compaq executive and venture capitalist Roel Pieper who has appeared on Peaktalk’s pages before after an encounter with a knife wielding man in his backyard. At times he must wonder why he ever returned home and didn’t stay in the US.

Bernard Lewis picked Europe and Islam as the topic for his 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture. It condenses some thousand years of history, defines the current challenges today within Europe and the Muslim world and offers a way out for future relations between the two. Recommended reading.

As the Daily Kos puts in a fairly favorable review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel', here. Key quote:

The "Clash of Civilizations" folks would use Christians and Jews vs. Muslims as their rallying cry. But I think Hirsi Ali cuts right through all of that stuff. It's really the battle between secularism and rationality vs. religious intolerance.

Being the secular feminist that she is, it's been an odd experience to see how Hirsi Ali has become a darling of the right. Of course it is the warped legacy of political correctness and the left's reluctance to abandon it in favor of a new brand of radical feminst thinkers. It looks as if the success of her latest book is allowing for some tentative movements to give Hirsi Ali a fair hearing on the left side of the divide. A good thing as that to a very large extent has been the point of promoting her views all along.

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This time it is Hitchens who takes on Buruma and Garton Ash who have relegated our good Dutch-Somali heroine to the absolutist corner and questioned her ‘enlightenment-fundamentalism’.

As you may recall Buruma is one of the more nuanced writer-historians who was vilified for taking a seemingly neutral stance in his excellent Murder in Amsterdam. His crime? He was insufficiently clear in taking Theo van Gogh’s side and failed to denounce Muslim fundamentalism in an unequivocal manner. Yes, ‘fundamentalism’ has become a very fashionable term and given our inherent suspicion of the extreme we should, I think, be thankful that writers like Buruma try to take a step back and paint a more dispassionate picture of the news.

Personally I do not think that Hirsi Ali can credibly be pictured as a fundamentalist. However one can understand Buruma’s point that her training in the Muslim Brotherhood perhaps has exposed her to a certain kind of zealousness. And that she is now applying in defending western freedoms with sometimes mixed results. Most Dutchmen will recall her visit to a local Muslim school where she tried to argue her point by asking twelve year old pupils to make a choice between the constitution and the Koran. Actions like that can be interpreted as waging a personal secular war against anything that would remind Hirsi Ali of her own religious upbringing. Getting schoolchilden into the debate in this manner is of course fodder for her critics who have qualified this sort of behaviour as utterly reckless and in that they have a point. And it is precisely this approach that irks measured intellectuals like Buruma and Garton Ash, but I do agree with Hitchens that does not make one a fundamentalist. At the same time I sense that Hitch’s diatribe against these two writers is not just about Hirsi Ali, but probably about something that runs quite a bit deeper.

NOTE: Our good friend Myrtus whose own biography is very similar to that of Hirsi Ali (Muslim from Africa → Holland → USA) has a few critical thoughts too.

By the way if you haven’t already, buy 'Infidel' here.

And here is round-up of some of Peaktalk's key posts on Hirsi Ali.

MORE: Laura Ingraham interviews Ayaan.

Last Friday, I watched Glenn Beck's show and his guest was the inimitable Irshad Manji - Muslim reformer and author of The Trouble with Islam Today. These interviews always have a few memorable moments and I found this exchange between Beck and Manji both perplexing and revealing:

BECK: OK. Real quickly, we have about a minute. What -- who is standing with you as a woman`s organization? Who -- what National Organization of Women is coming up and saying I`m with you?

MANJI: You know there isn`t one.

BECK: Why?

MANJI: Fear. Fear of offending. So many people today in America come up to me to say, "Irshad, I wish I could support your call to reconcile Islam with human rights, but if I do, you know I`ll be called a racist for sticking my nose in somebody`s else`s business."

During the interview Beck laments that we live in a 'PC World' making it difficult for the viewpoints of someone like Manji to be aired. Well, a lot of progress has been made as having commentators like Beck and Manji discussing Muslim fundamentalism and reform on a CNN outlet would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. So yes, there are notable changes in breaking the mold of political correctness in the mainstream media. At the same time, it is both dispiriting and disquieting to note that someone like Irshad Manji will have to wage her fight for reform and justice without any support women’s organizations.

Just got a note from Bruce Bawer mentioning that his book While Europe Slept finally gets noticed by the NYT. Well, it took a controversy over the book's nomination for the National Book Critics Circle award to get it, but there you are. Apparently the debate within the nominating committee wasn't all that pretty, but I like this part of the NYT's piece however:

Mr. Bawer’s book jacket is covered with admiring blurbs from well-known conservatives, but he does not fit the typical red-state mold. An openly gay cultural critic from New York who has lived in Europe since 1998, Mr. Bawer has published books like “Stealing Jesus,” a harsh critique of Christian fundamentalism. “Some people think it’s terrific for writers to expose the offenses and perils of religious fundamentalism — just as long as it’s Christian fundamentalism,” he wrote on his blog.

Imagine someone who is critical of radical Islam not fitting the pre-fabricated stereotype.

If you haven't already, buy Bruce's book, it is the only book on the market today that has a quote from yours truly in it.

Ian Buruma tries to unveil Tariq Ramadan, to some the face of moderate Islam in Europe, to others a radical waging war against the free west. Not sure if Buruma unravels it all, but it is a worthwhile read.

UPDATE: Frum is more certain:

Tariq Ramadan, however, is not that person. He is doing precisely the opposite: seizing on European Enlightenment liberalism and exploiting it for his own very different ends.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book tour is in full swing and so there is lots to be had in terms of interviews and press commentary. Here is a selection of worthwhile pieces that appeared in the following outlets: The Guardian, The Times and the WaPo.

There is too much to excerpt, but if I had to pick one it would be this one:

But for all her clinical rhetoric, Hirsi Ali is not really interested in carving the world into two blocks of clashing civilisations. At heart she is a universalist, a passionate believer in human rights. If you believe in equality for women, then you must believe in equality for all women, regardless of their culture or religion. Her deepest wish is to allow the world's oppressed peoples, especially women, to share in the fruits of reason. 'And to do that,' she says, 'someone's got to shake the tree.'

As I have mentioned earlier Hirsi Ali's new book is a definte must-read and you might as well buy it now by clicking here.

Talking about multiculturalism and some of its consequences, here is a TV-interview with Munira mirza one of the authors of the hotly debated report ‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism’. Note the last part where the interviewer tries to steer Mirza towards the 'Clash of Civilizations' theory. In response, she makes it very clear that conflicts and confusion within the West as well as ruptures within the Muslim world are the key dynamics that are currently fueling radicalization and jihadist sentiments.

While the blogosphere jumped on a British report which argues that multi-culturalism has driven an entire generation of young Muslims to radicalization, few noticed how some jurisdictions try very hard to pre-empt this phenomenon. A town in Quebec (!) passed a drastic motion seeking to preserve certain 'western values':

A rural Quebec town has taken the unusual step of formally declaring that it is forbidden to stone women in public — part of a list of “norms” that it says is aimed at potential immigrants.

Herouxville, about 165 kilometres northeast of Montreal, passed a document at a town council meeting this month that outlines what it considers to be its official behavioural norms.

The document, sent to both the provincial and federal governments, states that “a woman can. . . drive a car, sign cheques, dance, decide on her own.”

However, covering one's face other than on Halloween, burning women alive or burning them with acid is not considered acceptable.

Let's just say that its rural location helped in getting this motion in place, as I am not too sure it would have received a particular warm welcome in some of Quebec's urban centers.

UPDATE: Of course, a backlash against Herouxville's attempt to curb the excesses of multiculturalism is underway and when that happens the distinctions between 'race' and 'religion' blur almost instantly:

But some Muslim leaders have called the code a thinly-veiled example of xenophobia.

"Racism is coming out of the woodwork now, and it's not being obscure or subtle," said Salaam Elmenyawi of the Muslim Council of Montreal.

NOTE: If you have the time, you may want to consider reading the entire report about the British situation at the website of the think tank, Policy Exchange, here. Its lead author, Munira Mirza, has been featured on Peaktalk before.

Henryk Broder, one of the few non-Anglo-Saxon writers to focus on Europe's dark future has written a book called "Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren!" ("Hurray! We're Capitulating"). Judging from the excerpts there are probably few new insights offered by Broder, but the German setting gives us some fairly unique anecdotes. This in particular struck me as, well, instructive:

Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time chairman of the Social Democratic Party and German chancellor candidate, sees "commonalities between leftist policies and the Islamic religion." In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he says: "Islam depends on community, which places it in opposition to extreme individualism, which threatens to fail in the West. The second similarity is that the devout Muslim is required to share his wealth with others. The leftist also wants to see the strong help the weak. Finally, the prohibition of interest still plays a role in Islam, much as it once did in Christianity. At a time when entire economies are plunging into crisis because their expectations of returns on investment have become totally absurd, there is a basis for a dialogue to be conducted between the left and the Islamic world."

Lafontaine called upon the West to exercise self-criticism ("We must constantly ask ourselves through which eyes the Muslims see us") and expressed sympathy for the "indignation" of Muslims. According to Lafontaine, "people in Muslim countries have experienced many indignities, one of the most recent being the Iraq war. What we are seeing here is resource imperialism."

Lafontaine's theory of "commonalities" is a very good example of how Europe's future might unfold and I find it a more realistic scenario than the demographic takeover Steyn pictures. At the same time it is equally scary, maybe even scarier if you contemplate that it is Europe’s progressive camp that is now more than willing to subordinate freedom and western values in order to fish in a pond of huge electoral potential.

Some may consider Lafontaine to be on the fringe, but his Linkspartei (‘Left Party’) did extremely well in the last German federal election. As the traditional Social-Democrats are increasingly moving to the center as Merkel’s coalition partners, there is room on the left and Lafontaine’s party will no doubt move into this fresh and attractive space. That by the way is not dissimilar to the Dutch situation where Labour was pounded in the recent election, forced to join a coalition with the Christian-Democrats and the Socialist Party is cleverly picking up the traditional left and new-left voters. They too will have discovered the benefits of finding ‘commonalities’.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has started promoting her new book. As always, book tours are good for some interesting snippets of news and during her stop in Barcelona Hirsi Ali revealed more about the sequel to Submission which is currently in development.

Note by the way how one book is branded for different geographical markets. In Dutch - the version I read - it is 'Mijn Vrijheid' or 'My Freedom', in Spanish it is 'Mi Vida, Mi Libertad' which translates as 'My Life, My Freedom'. The English is blunter: 'Infidel'.

Richard Fernandez returns to The Philippines to write a fascinating essay about the century old Muslim insurgency in the southern parts of the island nation:

Dalasi, the King of Bulig had crossed from Basilan with a hundred ships. Three thousand kris-wielding Muslims closed in on on all sides of the fort to annihilate the Spaniards. Amid the noise of battle, a desperate council was held in the Spanish commander’s quarters. One priest volunteered to descend the walls by rope. He evaded the Moro pickets, stole one of Dalasi’s sailing vessels and made his way alone five hundred miles north to Manila to get reinforcements. Dalasi was killed and Fort Pilar beat back a two-month siege. The garrison’s survival was considered a miracle by the local community. But though that battle of Zamboanga was over the Moro war continued. It continues to this day.

It is revealing to note that successive presidents in Manila have never been able to either quell or settle the conflict. And as Fernandez reports, the initiative may now be firmly in the hands of the Muslim forces, funded through various overseas sources.

Tomorrow you can read Part II.

Johann Hari reviews the recent avalanche of books on Europe and Islam and is able to muster some optimism:

It is a long, slow process, but it has already begun. Amidst the sound of suicide-murders and screaming on European streets, it is possible to hear the slow creaking of those gates – and the low rumble of the Islamic Enlightenment.

While I do not as yet share Hari's confidence about Europe being the cradle of true Muslim reform, I have noted the signs of progress that he refers to in the past: here and here. Not so much a 'cracking of the gates' but rather some sparks of hope. And note that these examples revolve around progress effected by Muslim women who have grasped the opportunities that are on offer in the free west. Any Islamic enlightenment will start with a redefinition of the role of the sexes and in that Europe is probably one of the better places to get this process started.

Amid tight security and an ongoing debate, the opera Idomeneo finally took the stage in Berlin last night. Still, a bitter taste lingers:

Director Hans Neuenfels did not attend Monday's performance and publicly ridiculed the Deutsche Oper's performance.

Although Neuenfels complained that the rehearsals hadn't gone well, he also said he was still sore over the Oper's original decision to cancel the show.

In this case the absurd act of self-censorship sparked a debate and an eventual reversal, but Neuenfels is right in pointing to the stain of stifling free speech which will forever be associated with this opera.

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Kirsten Powers, a former Clinton appointee and columnist, is as perplexed as I am by what is on offer these days as role models at your local toy store. Powers has some revealing photos on her blog in order to illustrate the sad state of affairs.

There are however ways in steering our kids away from Britney & Barbie and of course the Bratz - which our girls find extraordinary cool - and that is by encouraging other options. And believe it or not, our kids have developed an unusual ability to translate our disapproval to finding workable alternatives. Last week they submitted their wish lists which are quite wholesome with the Cabbage Patch doll probably as the best example of a return to basic values. No idea where they got it from and I have also no idea how they cope with schoolfriends that drown in Bratz-stuff, but they do it.

Yet, there are other less ambiguous options to neutralize the confusion resulting from the Brat-Hilton-Whore culture and that is Fulla:

Fulla as you can see has discovered virtuousness, something we can't instill early enough in our young kids. And what's more, Fulla bucks the trend of being young and independent:

Maan Abdul Salam, a Syrian women's rights advocate, said Fulla was emblematic of a trend toward Islamic conservatism sweeping the Middle East. Though statistics are hard to come by, he said, the percentage of young Arab women who wear the hijab is far higher now than it was a decade ago, and though many girls are wearing it by choice, others are being pressured to do so.

Trying to find a middleground between Britney and Fulla and taking the time to learn young girls to make positive choices may seem obvious, but there are few parents that can actually manage it. It is too easy to succumb to the crass culture on offer, or, to just accept that "a certain idea of womanhood" has some undeniable and easy answers. Take your pick.

Ayaan Hirsi’s tainted relationship with her adoptive homeland. The latest:

The [Dutch] cabinet has denied that it put Ayaan Hirsi Ali in political isolation following the terrorist murder of Theo van Gogh. Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin rejects suggestions that Hirsi Ali was sent to the US to prevent her unleashing more Islamic violence with her sharp tongue.

Columnists Afshin Ellian and Leon de Winter wrote in an article in newspaper De Volkskrant in October that the government decided to send Hirsi Ali temporarily to the US following the 2 November 2004 murder of her friend and filmmaker Van Gogh. A Muslim cut his throat on the street in Amsterdam and on his body, stuck a knife with a letter saying Hirsi Ali would be the next victim.

In her biography – English version to be released in February 2007 – Ayaan Hirsi Ali devotes some twenty-four pages to her bizarre adventures following Van Gogh’s murder. The Dutch security services arranged, as a precautionary measure, for her to disappear from the public scene, which resulted in two separate overseas stays in the northeastern US and a brief sojourn in Germany. The levels of security as well as the various actions of the justice apparatus appeared to be overzealous and at times even illogical.

Hirsi Ali describes that initially she was barred from phone and internet access, allegedly to avoid her being tracked down by would-be assassins. A curious approach as I can’t imagine any jihadist monitoring internet activity would instantly conclude that someone googling ‘Van Gogh murder’ in a Best Western in Portland, Maine would pinpoint that as the secret location of the infamous Dutch parliamentarian of Somali descent. At the same time her security detail went to the extreme lengths to avoid her being recognized, but when a Turkish hotel proprietor in Germany identified her correctly as that Dutch-Somali parliamentarian “whose friend had been murdered” Ayaan was told it was late, not that big a deal and asked to stay in the said hotel where she consequently spent a restless night.

It is beyond the scope of this post to summarize the whole two month adventure, but in view of the news above and what Hirsi Ali says in her book, I believe the claim that she was ‘neutralized’ in the immediate aftermath of the Van Gogh murder is credible. What is also evident to me is that this was not a deliberate move by Dutch authorities, but that its potential became evident during the process of securing Hirsi Ali. She was moved around a lot the first few days and security levels went up steadily, while at the same time the reactions to the murder in Dutch society accelerated to levels where the outcome was increasingly unpredictable. The Dutch government had an obligation to protect Hirsi Ali, but in doing so realized it had the perfect means to silence her too. And surely, that is something that will never be formally acknowledged.

Hirsi Ali herself won’t speak out on this either, and for good reasons by the way. Although she has moved to the Washington, DC area, her security is still partly provided by the Dutch government and it would be rather counterproductive and ungrateful to question their work based on what essentially is a theory of some of her friends. That by the way should also be taken to heart by journalists who can’t resist asking her about her security. Hirsi Ali can’t and won’t answer these questions not because she needs to remain tactful towards her minders, but because her life remains on the line for as long as she lives.

Here's an interesting podcast over at PJM by the Sanity Squad, discussing Europe and the latest from Iraq. There is quite a bit that needs to be added to the discussion I think, but for now suffice it to say that there are limits to explain the continent's future from a perspective of 'demographic dogmatism'. There is for instance also a trend reported by Dutch statistics that immigrants over time adapt to European birth rates as economic pressures force women to start working – after all we’re debating burqa bans not because Muslim women are all confined to their homes.

What I do believe is that Europeans will disengage and adapt rather than fight. Most of my family and friends are right-of-center in ideology, but they don’t hesitate to vote for parties on the left as a way of preserving the status quo. Many did so in last week’s Dutch general election. Peace and stability above all.

The Peters-model of radical ethnic cleansing is more likely in Eastern Europe where the population has a materially different economic and social history, but also less immigrants – at least at the moment – to contend with. Again, this also brings home the point to start making the clear distinction between the three tiers of Europe (Old/EU, New/Eastern and Russia) and bring in economics as one of the key drivers for social and cultural change.

The debate gets more complicated, but it is getting better too.

Well, here is the hallmark of a free society. If the government plans to outlaw your habitual garb, you can protest it:

About two dozen Muslim women protested Thursday outside the Dutch parliament against a proposed ban on the burqa, the head-to-toe Islamic robe.

Several protesters wore long robes and veils exposing only their eyes, known as a niqab.

"We live in a free country and the government cannot tell us what to do with our religion," protest organizer Ayse Bayrak told The Associated Press. "We don't live in a dictatorship. We don't live under the Taliban, which oppresses women."

Apart from the impressive turn-out, the utilization of the Taliban as an argument in favor of wearing a burqa can only lead to hilarious situations. Luckily, a reporter with a brilliant sense of humour went out to find them, and here is his video report, in Dutch. And while the protesting burqas did not exactly share his wit, one lonely hijab wearer at the scene broke down in laughter at the suggestion she looked like a whore.

Once more, a ban on burqas is ridiculous and any free society to propose it should be embarrassed. At the same time the burqa-wearing protestations over ‘free choice’ and ‘respect’ sound highly suspicious, but at the very least a free society gives these ladies a constitutional option to take it off. That choice is usually not offered by the Taliban.

There was a lot of mail and news over the past few days on the proposed Dutch ban on burqas. Various blogs weighed in too, but it was Thaddeus Tremayne at Samizdata who posed the essential question:

The more interesting question, as far as I am concerned, is whether this is (a) an unacceptable state repression of personal liberty and freedom of choice or (b) a necessary and welcome bulwark against the growth of radical Islam in Europe?

Judging from the comment section those answering 'A' are well ahead of the 'B' contingent. Unfortunately, the real answer is both 'A' and 'B' knowing that in fighting radical Islam we are poised to make steps that we will regret dearly as time passes.

David Frum has an interesting analogy as he comes out in favor of a ban:

Extremist Islam regards women more or less as the old Klan regarded black Americans: as natural slaves and as perpetual threats to a social order based upon their slavery. Like the Klan, extremist Islam conducts a low-intensity guerilla war against women who dare to assert their freedom: casting acid in the faces of unveiled, beatings and rape in the home, honor killings. In the American South, it was the slave-masters who wore the masks as they waged their war against their former slaves. In extremist Islam, the masks are forced upon the slaves themselves.

As for the Dutch situation I reiterate my earlier point that a blanket ban is counterproductive. A more intelligent debate, free of electoral pressures, needs to be waged about how Muslim women can be empowered and how fundamentalist incursion into public life can be neutralized. We have only just started on that journey.

NOTE: Michael van der Galien at TMV notes that some Muslim countries ban veils too.

ALSO: In the Sunday Times, 'Liberal Holland hits the cultural panic button'

The threat of terror:

MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, the security service's head has said.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned the threat was "serious" and "growing".

She said future attacks could be chemical or nuclear and that many of the plots were linked to al-Qaeda.

It is remarkable that the once so secretive MI5 has now become a very visible public agent. But then the threat has altered in nature too. Nuclear and chemical devices are no longer the domain of powerful foreign entities, they may well be assembled in a kitchen in a Manchester suburb. Or one in Amsterdam. Or one in Los Angeles. The threat is still there.

UPDATE: Manningham-Buller's comments to the press are unusual indeed:

Agencies and academics in Canada were taken aback by the tone and the candour of the spymaster's comments.

“The director-general rarely, capital R-A-R-E-L-Y, speaks publicly,” said Martin Rudner, a counterterrorism expert at Carleton University in Ottawa. “The fact that she spoke and spoke to empirical data, is to be taken very, very seriously. This is not chit-chat.”

Not at all.

Posted by Pieter Dorsman at 09:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Another first:

The Netherlands may become the first European country to ban Muslim face veils after its government pledged yesterday to outlaw the wearing in public spaces of the niqab, or veil, and the burka, or full-length cloak covering the head.

The right-leaning coalition said last night that it would look for a way to outlaw the wearing of all Muslim face veils.

The right-leaning coalition is, with some ten days to go to the election, in its last throes and it will be hard to put this measure in place on such a short notice. In addition, this is a blanket ban and would no doubt run into some serious parliamentary resistance. Not only would it conflict with the principle of religious freedom, it would be seen as a serious invasion of personal freedom. The latter would not just alarm the left; it would surely create some discord on the right as well.

We have seen many attempts all over Europe to do something about these veils, but it seems that limited bans - for public employees, or in public spaces - are far more effective. And, they serve a clearly defined goal, such as security or the impartiality of government workers. Again, immigration-related issues are proving to be quite attractive in the final stretch of the campaign, but don't count on any of the proposals that are floating around now to become law anytime soon.

Of course, I should have paid some attention to her last week, which was free speech week here. Irshad Manji, whose website 'Muslim Refusenik' can be found here, has launched a new initiative by building an archive of articles by reform-minded Muslims who seek to restore "reason and humanity to Islam". I have always liked Manji and her approach and I encourage you to check out her initiative as she builds it out over time.

Dan Gardner from the Ottawa Citizen traveled to Europe to see whether all the alarmist rhetoric about Europe had a basis in reality. He visited Denmark for a lengthy assessment of the roots of the cartoon crisis and to Holland where he came away with a relatively positive feeling.

Gardner is right in pointing out that things aren’t as bad as they are sometimes made out to be, something which I have pointed out before. Yet, there are too many variables at play to settle on either a positive or negative outcome. Blindly banking on the repeat of historic accomplishments - like the 19th century integration of Jews into Dutch society – is probably not the best approach to guarantee future success in a situation that is materially different. It requires clearly defined policies and action from visionary politicians, something that is in short supply at the moment.

Gardner gives us a time estimate for integration success:

The usual theory on immigration holds that three generations are necessary for full integration into the larger society. There aren't many third-generation immigrants in countries like the Netherlands and they are mainly to be found in playgrounds and primary schools. It's simply too early to declare Europe's experience with immigration a failure.

And that's if the generations are measured from the arrival of the first guest workers. Arguably, it should not be. The better baseline is the moment when both newcomers and governments realized and accepted that immigration is a reality. And that wasn't until the 1990s.

So, that is somewhere between three or four generations depending on when you start counting. A projection not that different from Ahmed Marcouch, a Moroccan who did manage to integrate successfully and who as a politician has first hand experience in managing the process in some of Amsterdam's most notorious neighborhoods.

UPDATE: This Dutch media personality argues that negative attitudes of the native Dutch about themselves, have contibuted to the current malaise in the lowlands. He's written a book about it, Long Live the Netherlands:

Coming back after 10 years in America, I discovered that there's a terrible lot amount of grumbling and moaning in the Netherlands. We even talk a lot about our 'growling' culture, and this leads to a negative self-image. At the same time, I noticed that there are so terribly many Dutch people who are trying things a different way and are saying, "Enough of that moaning, enough of the grumbling. Let's deal with the problems'."

Long Live the Netherlands contains a number of elements which might best be described as 'right wing'. For example, the author describes the Netherlands' regulations on sacking employees for having a 'stifling effect' on enterprise; he says that some people who live below the poverty line only have themselves to blame, and he believes more Dutch women should be working a full week instead of part time.

This is the sort of language that is hardly new to longtime Peaktalk readers and Groenhuijsen's instincts are generally correct. The fact that he has kept his primary residence in Washington, DC however is not exactly a vote of confidence for a new Dutch miracle.

I have been a longtime fan of Camille Paglia, in particular because she is a non-conventional thinker and able to destruct both the left and the right with her razor sharp wit. The interview with her yesterday in Salon - in which she covers a variety of current topics - is a must-read.

While clearly identifying Iraq as a mess and Bush as "out of his depth" this onetime Democrat has no qualms about reducing her party to absolute rubble. More importantly, she understands the challenges of our future better than most of her contemporaries, note the following:

But my generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates.

As for looking to the future here are Paglia's key indicators of impending doom:

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, clichéd view about everything that's wrong with the United States?

And my favorite:

The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.

Paglia is not calling for a religious revival, but for a measure of historical and religious awareness. Looking around me I am astounded to note how incredibly shallow historical knowledge is these days, especially among the 'well-educated' middle classes, the group supposedly forming the backbone of our society. It is one of the key reasons why western societies are so divided over rogue nations going nuclear and Muslim zealots blowing themselves up on commuter trains: most of us simply can’t recognize the phenomenon, much less conceive of any action to protect ourselves against it.

Even as a secular person, I would still strongly advocate to regain some of the moral bearings that religion has given us and at the same time try and raise a new generation with some basic historical awareness. The fact that I grew up in a house stacked with historical works and a father who had seen – and taken me – to war cemetery after war cemetery in Europe did at least leave me in a position where I could write the stuff that I write here on this site.

And Paglia is therefore on the mark in arguing that the absence of any clear leadership from either the right or the left in these challenging times is so troubling. So far we’ve been lucky in escaping any real disaster but we better start investing in a new generation that is bound to face situations where luck is no longer a sufficient enough tool to ward of our destruction.

Have a good weekend. Next week it will be Theo Van Gogh week over here.

The Mark Steyn interview on Hot Air continues today. Note how Steyn describes the recent emergence of sharia in the Muslim world and how absent it was in many regions only decades ago. Here is a good example of that:

Mr Musdaruddin is the overseer of something that for the time being remains unique in Indonesia. Aceh - where more than 160,000 people died as a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - has in the past 18 months become the only one of Indonesia's 33 provinces to enforce Koranic law, or Sharia. Some people fear that makes it the potential vanguard in a movement to bring Taliban-style law to the world's largest, and still overwhelmingly moderate, Muslim nation.

It is believed that the Indonesian government has allowed the implementation of sharia as part of its settlement with rebel forces from Aceh, an area which has through the ages always been quite restive. So, the question now is if with this form of domestic appeasement the Indonesian government has created a beachhead for an ideology that runs counter to the moderate way in which the nation has historically been practicing Islam. There are enough regional differences within Indonesia to thwart any rapid spread of this phenomenon, but the vigor with which sharia is now being enforced in Aceh is reason for deep concern.

This one is quite rich:

The nation's most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals.

It may open up an opportunity for the moderates to start speaking out, and apparently they are doing so. One Iktimal Hage-Ali, an Australian female Muslim advisor responds here in an audio interview and there is lots more over at Tim Blair's, of course.

Fascinating piece in Der Spiegel about sex in the Islamic world. Since fundamentalism is a very effective way to neutralize ambivalent feelings about sex, it goes a very long way to explaining why so many young male Muslims in Europe turn to it. And radical and pure beliefs are no longer just a vehicle for immigrants, many westerners too convert to Islam in order to reject the perceived loose morality that surrounds them. Therein lies one of the keys to understanding the global attraction of Muslim fundamentalism which, as a result, is not attracting the most stable characters. And that in turn explains why seemingly regular guys that appear to have integrated quite well in their new environment all of a sudden blow themselves up on a commuter bus.

... for those interested to learn that a possible burqa ban will be (a) general, ie. not restricted to public employees only and (b) continues to be studied by a committee of wise men who will advise the government in early November.

Prediction: excpect a pragmatic Dutch compromise, not to be mistaken for 'tolerance'.

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club makes an excellent observation about the French riots:

Some may deride Chirac or de Villepin as appeasers. However the probable truth is that no one has yet figured out how to stop a vigorous ideology in its tracks. The West's own experience with Nazism and Communism shows that both accommodation and confrontation can fuel, rather than retard their growth. There is no magic formula; and perhaps there is no formula.

And that explains why politicians from both sides of the aisle struggle to find the right message, especially when it is election time. The intractability of violence fueled by cultural disconnects and social breakdown – a void nicely filled by religion – calls for a pragmatic diversion to ‘easier’ topics. And that is not just a European phenomenon:

With his party facing a difficult midterm election, President Bush is focusing on the positive this week: a growing economy he is using to try to persuade voters to keep Republicans in power in Congress.

White House advisers say Bush is not trying to change the subject from a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and that he will continue to talk about Iraq and the war on terrorism as the Nov. 7 election nears. But Bush advisers said they think the president should get more credit for recent positive economic news.

It all depends on how you look at it. But I see some eerie parallels in the ways in which both American and European politicians steer away from the hard issues and try to lull the electorate back into a sense of oblivious complacency. In the meantime we have a fully fledged civil war in Iraq and a nascent one in the streets of Paris.

Meet Sweden's new immigration minister: Nyamko Sabuni. It appears she is off to an interesting start:

" ... has caused a storm as Sweden’s new integration and equality minister by arguing that all girls should be checked for evidence of female circumcision; arranged marriages should be criminalised; religious schools should receive no state funding; and immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job.

Supporters of the centre-right government that came to power last month believe that her bold rejection of cultural diversity may make her a force for change across Europe. Her critics are calling her a hardliner and even an Islamophobe.

“I am neither,” she said in an interview. “My aim is to integrate immigrants. One is to ensure they grow up just as any other child in Sweden would.”

Again it is very often immigrants from outside Europe (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Afshin Ellian) who are able to identify much better than native Europeans what is wrong and that drastic measures are needed to benefit both immigrants and their host nations. And somehow I am also beginning to sense that women are far better in delivering these blunt messages (witness Dutch immigration czar Rita Verdonk) than men. Let's see how Nyamko fares, it would be good if she succeeds and is not prematurely shipped off to a US-based think tank, fearful of her life knowing that there is a limited market for her ideas in Europe.

The Sunday Times investigates how the debate over the separation between church and state on the European side of the ocean is back in full force. Expect that discussion to grow more intense with time, so do take note of this useful primer.

Twelve months have passed since the now infamous French riots erupted. As some of you may recall there was a bit of debate at the time about qualifying the violence as an ‘intifada', but it is a term now routinely used by French police unions, some even going as far as describing the deteriorating situation in the banlieues as 'war'. And various mainstream media have now picked up on a story the gravity of which was signaled on this and many other blogs well over a year ago. Here is the Globe and Mail which has a longer piece on the phenomenon and its political implications:

Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.

“Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of ‘Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned,” he said in an interview.

Larger, more mainstream police unions sharply disagree that the suburban unrest has any religious basis. However, they do say that some youth gangs no longer seem content to throw stones or torch cars and instead appear determined to hurt police officers — or worse.

“First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us,” said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. “These are acts of war.”

The fact that police unions are the key voices on this deeply worrying trend tells us that the situation has reached a stage where policemen would in actual fact prefer to withdraw from these areas. And no one can reasonably blame them for this position. The safety and well-being of French police forces can no longer be guaranteed for the very simple fact that its mandate never included carrying out paramilitary operations in these dreaded suburbs. That most likely, requires a different skill and tool set.

The Globe and Mail points out that this will no doubt influence next year’s presidential election, but that remains to be seen. The current Dutch election campaign tells us that parties from both sides of the political spectrum have opted to emphasize the positive and ignore potentially explosive and controversial situations. Not only are these problems too complicated to solve, hard talk on immigration and law and order can only be applied in limited amounts in order keep an electorate prone to tilt leftwards on side. And, equally important, the escalating violence is confined to areas where the average Frenchman never ventures. So, it can be ignored for now, but whoever gets into the Elysée next year will be have the ultimate responsibility to ensure that the lawlessness will not spill into France proper. Given the current dynamics we can be assured however that it will.

A remarkable speech by Hosni Mubarak earlier today:

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak questioned on Thursday whether Muslims had done enough to change the West's "wrong perceptions" about Islam, which he said was under "ferocious attack".

He also said Islam needed a fresh religious discourse to promote tolerance and uproot extremist views.

"The Muslim world is facing a ferocious attack, describing Islam wrongly and offending Muslims' sacred (symbols and figures) and beliefs," Mubarak said in a speech marking Lailat al-Qadr, the night Muslims believe God started the revelation of the Koran to Prophet Mohammed more than 1400 years ago.

"Don't we Muslims share part of the responsibility for the wrong perceptions about Islam? Have we done our duty in correcting the image of Islam and Muslims?" he said.

The proof is in the pudding of course: how will Mubarak's well-meant words go down in a Muslim world where he has not exactly been all that well-liked. In fact, the Egyptian president remains a throwback to the old days of brutal pro-western rule with a secular flavour that has steadily gone out of fashion in most of the Arab world. But if that is the best that is available on the moderate Muslim market today, we'll have to take it. Let's see if there are any followers.

Andrew Sullivan addresses the exact point that I have been trying to define earlier:

Some of you have argued that my opposition to public school teachers wearing the full, face-covering veil is contrary to my generally laisser-faire approach to cultural and social issues. But the distinction in the case of a public school teacher is obvious: in representing the state, and doing a job paid for by the government, you are obliged to follow the rules.

But the debate has already moved well beyond public employees. For example doctor’s assistants (who are quasi public I guess) in countries such as The Netherlands have been told to remove a headscarf or lose their job. And in a number of European jurisdictions it has been made illegal to wear a burqa in public places, regardless of whether someone is publicly employed or not. The latter has often been justified as a security measure.

The intensity of this debate is matched by the fluidity of the rules and procedures. Despite the fact that the Dutch have now embraced a tough stance on veils and other cultural expressions the following happened in Rotterdam earlier this month:

The Committee for Equal Treatment (CGB), a watchdog that monitors equal treatment of men and women, has issued a remarkable ruling. The city of Rotterdam which refused to hire client manager because he was unwilling to shake hands with clients, has been reprimanded. The city has not exercised the necessary care in balancing a non-discriminatory environment and the right of a (potential) employee to express his religious beliefs. And the rejection based on wearing religious clothing was equally rejected by the CGB.

No doubt institutions like the CGB continue to be following procedures and interpretations of the law that lag current developments in society, but that may change. Also, note that men and women shaking hands has become as explosive an issue as the veil. To be continued, no doubt.

Tony Blair, the sometimes lone moralist, stakes out a clear position in the debate of Muslim women wearing veils, backing up his cabinet colleague Jack Straw who ran into hot water over this issue earlier this month. And in Italy the left also seems to have realized the necessity of starting to proactively manage integration, witness the comments from Romano Prodi backing up Blair.

More importantly, campaigns to get rid of the veil are not just the purview of the (formerly) Judeo-Christian west, no, some Muslim nations weigh an equal struggle:

The Tunisian authorities have launched a campaign against the Islamic veil worn by some women to cover their hair.

Police are applying with renewed vigour a decree dating back to 1981 which prohibits women from wearing Islamic headscarves in public places. In recent days, senior officials have hit out at what they describe as sectarian dress worn by people who use religion to hide political aims.

The debate has gone mainstream, but the resistance to it remains potent and it is not just the Muslim world that is alarmed; the term ‘polarization’ has once more been dusted off by critics of the Blair/Straw position. And, interestingly there is a feminist notion which says that taking the veil away restricts a women’s right to free movement. The latter even goes as far to argue that Muslim women’s choice to wear a veil or headscarf is a positive one as it rejects the hypersexualization of western societies. Well, the issue is of course that wearing the veil is never a choice in the first place and there is a lot of middle ground between Britney and the Burqa. Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued a far different feminist position in which she compared Muslim female support for veils as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where the subjugation of women has been so effective that women themselves would rush to its inprobable defence.

Here at Peaktalk we have never been great friends of government mandated dress codes while at the same time qualifying any form of religious suppression as reprehensible. However if we opt for integration the hard way as opposed to the failed soft hands approach, then it is indeed time to start removing veils. And a polarized debate will get us a lot further than no debate at all.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips makes a few very important points about this debate and in particular takes on the flawed underpinnings of the 'polarization' argument.

"They forgot the first rule of free expression: that the answer to offensive speech is more speech, not less"

CNN-columnist Ruben Navarette Jr. on the Minutemen incident at Columbia University. He's right and it is a simple truth that applies to all expressions of free speech, offensive or not.

The NYT has an interesting piece today by Dan Bilefsky and Ian Fisher, arguing that the debate about European values and Islam has gone mainstream. There is not much new in it for regular Peaktalk readers – it is a summary of what has happened over the past few years, really – but one quote stands out, I believe:

Whatever the motivations, “the reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme,” said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. “It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.” Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates are baiting Muslims, the very people they say should integrate into Europe.

Pedersen got his argument wrong here. It is because of the open and now increasingly fashionable - rather than politically correct - attacks on Islam that a debate by moderates on both sides can now be waged in a productive manner. Silence used to be the norm, and the issue needed some revolutionary voices to get the discussion going.

There is no better example than The Netherlands which has been a frontrunner in all of this. The period of harsh and direct criticism is more or less over and now a new phase of trying to figure out how integration can be made to work is settling in. It is worthwhile to note that that is exactly what separates the two emerging parties on the right. Geert Wilders' new party is still in reactionary mode, whereas Marco Pastors is putting the Fortuyn-legacy to work in a more pragmatic and solution driven way, focusing on integration. It is a shame that the larger parties have decided to pass on either option and prefer to avoid the debate altogether, for now.

It will by the way be very interesting to see how other upcoming electoral battles will deal with this issue, notably the upcoming contest for the French presidency next year.

According to Doonesbury's Gary Trudeau who is advocating a pretty narrow social responsiblity test. Rogier van Bakel explains.

Lots of interesting stuff over at Bruce Bawer's blog, particularly a closer look at Norwegian MSM's selective reporting in the wake of a triple honor killing. Now Bruce, get your permalinks working!

Diane Carrière and Myrtus alerted me to the 'Desire No Shackles' exhibition which runs in the d'Last Studio & Gallery in Chicago from October 7 to November 4. Here is a refresher:

Last year, outrage from Muslim students led Harper College, located just outside Chicago, to remove an exhibition of works by Amir Normandi depicting the oppression women suffer in many Islamic countries. Partly in response, Normandi, an Iranian-born Muslim, has curated a new exhibition of works by local and international artists entitled, 'Desire No Shackles/ Imagine No Borders', to examine oppression, and the notion of borders in Islam and other contexts.

And this time Amir is joined by artists Maryam Hashemi and Marcia Middleton-Kaplan.

If you're in the Chicago-area, take a look. Otherwise, spread the word.

Ahmed Marcouch is a former Dutch policeman of Moroccan descent and a noted expert on immigrant issues. Earlier this year he was elected to head up one of Amsterdam’s district councils, Slotervaart, the neighborhood that spawned such infamous characters as Mohammed Bouyeri and Samir Azzouz. In last month’s Volkskrant – a Dutch newspaper that has traditionally been on the left, but whose reporting and editorials I find increasingly balanced - an interesting piece appeared about his struggle to make things work in his challenging new job. I have translated the most salient parts, but you should read the whole thing in order to understand the despair that even a committed, moderate and hardworking Muslim man experiences in his unrelenting attempts to make things work in his own community:

“I really want to impress upon you that it is five to twelve in this neighborhood. You have to realize that as an Amsterdam public official you can’t accept that we have a neighborhood in our city that is a homefront for radical youths and where there is no end to the number of broken families.

It is simply not true that hate ends where people know one another. These boys know their brothers and sisters, their neighbors and teachers. And they hate even them as unbelievers. You can’t approach them. I desperately need specific expertise to deal with this“

The Moroccan youths are well beyond reach of their families and the local imam, who apparently receives anonymous notes that he’s not sufficiently fundamental in his teachings. So religion it is, but there is an ethnic component to it too according to Marcouch:

Turkish, Surinam, Moluccan and Somali communities do not produce as many radical and hateful youngsters compared to the Morrocans. Why that is? I have noticed that in many Moroccan families boys are treated harshly, without any love. They are being raised to survive. They need to grow up quickly, if necessary harshly. They see how their mother is abused. If their father walks into the door, they walk out. That is a feeding ground for aggression.

This supports the theory that radicalization among Muslim youngsters takes place far easier and quicker in the west, notably Europe, in homes that are disoriented and challenged in their new environment. Well, the city of Amsterdam, realizing the toxic potential of religion and aggression has now made an ‘anti-radicalization expert’ available to assist Marcouch in his daunting task.

The deeper you delve into the interview, the more you begin to feel for the man who is regularly taunted as ‘a traitor’ by kids in the neighborhood that he seeks to stabilize. So, his projection for the future should not be that surprising:

He thinks it will last at least four generations before the sort of civil society that he envisions will have come to Amsterdam’s Slotervaart district.

It’s tempting to put an even more pessimistic view on the table. Marcouch’s scenario assumes that the civil society that still exists outside Slotervaart is able to contain the violence and radicalization brewing in his district. It may boil over well before civil society has come up with a workable solution.

Timothy Garton Ash in the LA Times explains:

What is to be done? First, we need to wake up to the seriousness of the danger. We need a debate about what the law should and should not allow to be said or written. Even John Stuart Mill did not suggest that everyone should be allowed to say anything any time and anywhere. We also need a debate about what it is prudent and wise to say in a globalized world where people of different cultures live so close together, like roommates separated only by thin curtains.

I believe, for example, that Redeker's article in Le Figaro was an intemperate and unwise one, with its claim that Islam (not just Islamism or jihadism) is today's equivalent of Soviet-style world communism, and his denunciation of Muhammad as a "pitiless warlord, pillager, massacrer of Jews and polygamist." But once the fanatiques sans frontieres respond by proposing to kill him, we must stand in total solidarity with the threatened writer — in the spirit of Voltaire.

I think he's right and I also believe that, without explicitly mentioning it, Garton Ash refers to that hard to define and time-sensitive social responsibility test. My favorite quote from the article however is this little gem:

But if you think we are not engaged in a struggle against manifold enemies of freedom as potentially deadly as those we faced in the 1930s, you are living in a fool's paradise.

Yes, and it is worth repeating it.

There was quite a bit of feedback and comment on my PJM Politics Central column. Michael van der Galien at The Moderate Voice expanded on the post with his point of a view as a resident Dutchman. Also, Stacy McMahon observed the following:

I have little doubt that when muslims achieve a majority in a western country, they will be strongly inclined to vote away the freedom that created the opportunities that drew them there--and then be shocked speechless when it instantly turns into what they thought they were leaving behind in the "old country".

The reason I highlighted her comment is that there is a term for this phenomenon, coined by my friend Richard Landes: demopathy.

Paul Vallely in the Independent takes on those that have been so keen on defending free speech in the wake of the long line of incidents where Muslim sensibilities were offended. He argues:

But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

Vallely is not mistaken in arguing for social responsibility, but he fails to have noticed that our definition of it has changed over the centuries. The church these days for instance is no longer entitled to prosecute and torture blasphemers, it has now settled for being on the receiving end of endless taunts.

Furthermore, it may be worth pointing out that many commentators – especially those in the blogosphere – have been arguing for unrestrained freedom of expression precisely because so many democracies found ways to either curb or ‘streamline’ this very basic right, well before the recent incidents. The Danish cartoon and Berlin opera affairs actually served as a wake-up call to those that hadn’t quite realized how far some societies had traveled down the road of mild but forceful oppression. Just consider how hate speech laws have come to be interpreted by some courts or how the offended have used them to silence and even penalize others. No, the debate over free speech goes back way further than Vallely likes to suggest.

However, free speech does indeed carry a certain level of responsibility to the extent that we all should balance our expressions against what others might possibly feel. Theo van Gogh is a much admired person here on this site, yet I personally would never have used the term “goatfuckers” to describe a certain group of, well, immigrants. Yet, he was allowed to do so and he initially got away with it because most Dutch had accepted him in his role of the unruly critic. His use of language was for some a reason to love him, for some a reason to dismiss him as an irrelevant village idiot. Yet, his sense of humor, and style, was in sync with the way Dutch popular culture had developed over time into a very coarse and direct one. In van Gogh’s mind, he not only had the right to say what he said, he probably had met his own or the new Dutch “social responsibility” test. Of course he was aware of provoking some sort of counter reaction, that was one of his key objectives. Yet, he never should have faced the threat of being taken to court for this, or undergo the eventual and brutal death sentence that befell him. Our free and supposedly enlightened democracy should have insulated him from these ghastly downsides of free speech.

So while some may judge that you are “crossing the line from humour to abuse” there simply can not be a situation where a pre-defined judicial or social test neutralizes the individual’s ability to exercise or use that time sensitive test of social responsibility. Nor should those who feel offended be protected by a ‘social blanket’ - and many have come to expect this level of protection - which in the end can only stifle an open and healthy debate. Such openness is never easy, it may be awkward for some, but it is what free speech is today.

UPDATE: Gideon Rachman today on the FT's blog:

But perhaps the most disturbing element is not this or that incident – but the accumulation of pressure, the self-censorship it undoubtedly provokes and the way in which the gradual restriction of free speech is becoming less commented-upon, as it simply becomes part of normal life in Europe.

And of course Ayaan Hirsi Ali in an older interview with Der Spiegel, published today on AEI: "We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking"

French writer and high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker is the latest in the list of Europeans whose life is no longer safe as a result of exercising their right to free speech. The list is getting longer and is almost exclusively European. And as this Time piece reveals, those on it can not automatically assume that their rights are wholeheartedly supported by the authorities who often want to hedge their own ambivalent position.

Here is an instructive interview with German-Syrian political scientist Bassam Tibi who has actively studied and campaigned for better methods of Muslim integration in Europe. Read the whole interview, but the most salient bit is this when Tibi was asked if an Islam conference organized by Germany’s Interior minister had yielded any results:

No, because the biggest taboo is that there even is a conflict at all. Everyone denies that. Instead people talk about misunderstandings and how these should be resolved. But a conflict of values is not a misunderstanding. Islamic orthodoxy and the German constitution are not compatible. And that is why the Islam conference failed.

And being in Germany, Tibi was able to delve into the historic vaults and demonstrate how you can de-program some totalitarian minds:

I am thinking in particular about the re-education programs which were carried out in Germany after the Third Reich. Social studies teachers and political science faculties were given the task of turning young people into democrats. That worked then. Why shouldn't we have a similar model for Muslims? In youth clubs, or during Islamic instruction in schools. Of course it takes a long time, 50 years say, but we have to start.

A pretty robust approach if you asked me, and one with a proven track record. Now brace yourself for the comprehensive debate over such a curriculum’s content and, even worse, its mandatory implementation. In that respect Europe has changed from the late forties and early fifties, and, not for the better.

Shortly before she died, Oriana Fallaci met with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and passed on some important advice to her. It is not what you might expect, but it probably surpasses most other things that you would have expected these two women to have talked about. Of course, it was major news in the Dutch media.

Myrtus updates us on the plans for an Islamic hospital in the city of Rotterdam. The president of one of the existing hospitals in the city reacted by making it clear that his facility has everything in place to cater to Muslim requirements and that there is no need for a separate facility. And crucially:

"we have everything [that this new hospital plans to implement], except we don't allow patients to have a say in whether they'd receive treatment by a male or female. If we were to do that we would have to hire a male and female for every area of specialty". He thinks that something like that wouldn't be feasible even for the planned Islamic hospital. He says: "we select our specialist based on quality"

Not sure if that settles the matter, but it sounds compellingly convincing.

"Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Because the subtext of what you have done in this particular situation is that you have chosen fear over art, silence over expression, cowardice over originality.

And I'm terribly sorry, Europe, but I choose Mozart" - Victoria Barrett

In the city of Rotterdam a Dutch developer has launched a plan to build an Islamic hospital:

The hospital will adhere to Islamic traditions and customs. Food will be halal, there will be separate wards for men and women ands female patients will only be treated by female doctors and male patients by male doctors.

Now it should be noted that the system of Dutch pillarization – explained here – in theory allows for this sort of institution to be established, were it not for the fact that modernization and secularization have essentially ‘depillarized’ the nation. While there used to be numerous Catholic, Protestant and Jewish care facilities, few if any of them are still around. It is not an overstatement to argue that only one socio-religious pillar is still standing; in fact it is relatively new and rapidly growing. The contemplated hospital in Rotterdam is a very clear example of that trend.

The vocal reaction from opponents - one Rotterdam city councilor warns against a return to the Middle Ages - are therefore understandable. At a point in time when real effort is being made from left to right to get Muslims to modernize and to integrate into western society, self-imposed separation in an impenetrable pillar that comprises schools, clubs and now hospitals can only be the portent of an increasingly and deeply divided society. As it happens, the word for that dreadful phenomenon was coined in Dutch.

UPDATE: The nurses' uniforms have already been ordered ...

One of the reasons that the phenomenon of self-censorship is spreading so rapidly is that Western leaders have chosen to remain quiet on the subject. Yet, there are signs that this is changing, the Danish prime minister remained steadfast in his support of those that exercised their right to publish the cartoons depicting Mohammed, now German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly questioned the cancellation of Mozart’s "Idomeneo":

Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Wednesday not to bow to fears of Islamic violence after a Berlin opera house cancelled a Mozart work over concerns some scenes could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk.

"I think the cancellation was a mistake. I think self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practise violence in the name of Islam," she told reporters. "It makes no sense to retreat."

Artists, theaters, publishers and writers have the primary responsibility to see to it that their works of art are made public, unhindered. If certain media outlets, in this case the theater in Berlin, obstructs this very basic right to free speech political leaders need to speak out and come to their defense. Merkel has met a crucial test, one that her predecessor probably would have failed.

UPDATE: The Danes weigh in with a timely "I told you so":

"Here we go again. It's like deja vu...This is exactly the kind of self-censorship I and my newspaper have been warning against," said Flemming Rose, culture editor of Denmark's Jyllands-Posten paper, which met a storm of Muslim protest after publishing satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad last year.

He said bowing to fears of a violent Muslim reaction would only worsen the problem: "You play into the hands of the radicals. You are telling them: your tactics are working. This is a victory for the radicals. It's weakening the moderate Muslims who are our allies in this battle of ideas."

Not sure if this falls into the category of 'better late than never', but it does indicate a willingness to take a clear stance and relegate cultural relativism to the sidelines:

The president of the European Commission expressed disappointment that European leaders failed to defend Pope Benedict XVI over his recent remarks about Islam, in comments published Sunday.

Jose Manuel Barroso said that while Europe must take the threat of Islamic extremists "very seriously," it must not confuse tolerance with "a form of political correctness" that puts others' values above its own.

"I was disappointed that there weren't more European leaders who said, 'Of course the pope has the right to express his point of view,'" Barroso told Germany's Welt am Sonntag weekly. "We must defend our values."

Barroso also urged Europeans to encourage moderate Islamic leaders to take a stronger stance against the extremists.

"The problem is not the comments of the pope, but the reaction of the extremists," Barroso said.

Encouraging.

Here is more good news from Muslims who are willing to abandon the intolerant radicalism and embrace freedom and western values, and, empower women. Take a look at Al Qasemi College, which is the first institute of Islamic higher education in Israel:

Speaking at campuses, mosques, and the homes of Muslims, the Al Qasemi faculty said that it is time for Muslims to quit blaming others and examine their own responsibility for the troubles of Islamic civilization; time for Arab Israelis to call themselves Israelis, not Palestinians; and, above all, time for women to have full equality with men in the Muslim world.

So it is possible after all. (via Myrtus)

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI fits into that long line of polemicists who have in- or unintentionally run afoul of the Muslim world as Der Spiegel argues here. Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and of course Theo van Gogh come to mind. But if we use that analogy than almost immediately it becomes evident that the Pope’s comments have most likely not been that inadvertent after all. At least I believe that this pontiff is far too clever and experienced to have miscalculated the impact of his comments, he was after all the ideological force behind his media savvy predecessor, John Paul II.

The question now of course is if the free wrold needs to rally behind what Christopher Hitchens calls a “moribund church” or the force of secular reason in dealing with radical Islam. The Pope has put his option the table, but I fear that there will not be that many takers. On the other hand we know that reason and secularism are, despite their compelling nature, not exactly providing the morally strong cohesion that we need going forward. And therein we find the hard problem: the West remains far more divided than its current opponents who despite their own internal divisions have embraced something that we seemed to have lost a long time ago. Like him or not, our German pontiff is probably one of the few to have articulated that particular weakness.

Our good friend Myrtus alerts us to the fact that in Amsterdam Jews and Moroccans are planning joint celebrations as this year’s Ramadan coincides with Rosh Hashanah. It’s only a plan, sure, but there are snippets of positive news coming from Europe and this certainly is one. What’s more, I believe that it is our duty to report on these developments amid the endless and depression inducing claims that a ‘clash of civilizations’ is imminent. We’re in a tough patch, but there are signs of hope and it is at our peril if we ignore them.

Another key example is that immigrant Muslim women in western societies are beginning to make progress. And like the last time I visited The Netherlands, another emancipated Muslim woman graces the cover of one the major Dutch weekly newsmagazines this week:

Under the headline “Hooray for the Muslimas” the weekly Elsevier explores how Muslim women in The Netherlands have increasingly been able to set themselves on a track of progress and nascent liberation. On the cover of the magazine we find kickbox champion Soumia Albahaya who as it happens hails from my hometown of Vlaardingen. She explains:

"It is difficult sometimes as a Muslima. You have to prove yourself twice as much. Most of the time I get positive reactions from the Moroccan community about my career in sports. One time a Moroccan man shouted that I didn’t belong in the ring, but in the kitchen. Whatever. Above all, you have to believe in yourself and fight for yourself. That is the only way to accomplish things. But I am not sure if all Muslim women have figured that out"

The first thing that occurs to me when I read something like this is that Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s call for liberation actually refers to a tentative process that is now well underway. The enablers of this phenomenon however are not the government, nor the left which continues to be very absent when it comes to arguing the rights of women from immigrant nations, according to the article.

No, real life needs such as getting income in the door are increasingly pre-empting tradition and honor: some Muslim men gladly trade a headscarf for a paycheck it seems. Of course it is not without its internal challenges and the clashes between Muslim men and women over this issue underline how much the struggle with Islam is actually taking place among Muslims themselves. Free markets are excellent conduits for such social progress. Soumia’ story is testament to that, let’s see if she reaches as far as that other great Dutch female kickboxer.

At AEI. Here is one of her first essays, which outlines the crucial role women have to play in reforming Muslim communities. Key excerpt:

European policy-makers have not yet understood the huge potential of liberating Muslim women. They are squandering the single best opportunity they have to make Muslim integration a success within one generation. Morally, governments need to eradicate violence against women in Europe. This would make clear to fundamentalists that Europeans take their constitutions seriously. Now, most abusers simply think that Western rhetoric about the equality of men and women is cowardly and hypocritical, since Western governments tolerate the abuse of millions of Muslim women when they're told it's in the name of freedom of religion.

I think she hits an important point and, more importantly, a pragmatic solution that can help integrate Muslim communities into European societies. And yes, Hirsi Ali herself is a living example that liberated Muslim women can actually make a difference in moving the often difficult lives of unintegrated and isolated Muslims forward. The shame of course is that her own liberation was cut short and that the platform she had been given as a member of Dutch parliament was essentially taken away from her. She was driven out of Europe and that bitterness is echoed in the conclusion of her argument:

What a waste that Europe is blind to this golden opportunity that lies at its feet.

Thankfully, one noted American think tank kept its eyes open.

NOTE
More on Hirsi Ali here.

While everyone is pre-occupied today with the forced conversion of the two released Fox journalists, it may be worthwhile to point to the increasing rate of voluntary conversions. From Time Magazine there is this absolutely must-read piece about westerners converting to Islam. It’s a topic I have touched on before and the phenomenon may not be as mind-boggling as it initially sounds. Affluent western societies have created a class of people looking for answers that somehow can not be found in freedom and individuality and, as it happens, there is a creed that does provide some of these answers:

But one common refrain is that in an increasingly secular world in which society's rules get looser by the day, Islam provides a detailed moral map covering everything from friendships to protecting the environment. And for Western youths, taking up Islam can also serve as an outlet for rebellion. A majority of converts, especially in Western Europe, are in their late teens or 20s. "Islam is a kind of refuge for those who are downtrodden and disenfranchised because it has become the religion of the oppressed," says Farhad Khosrokhavar, a Paris professor and the author of several books on Muslim extremism. "Previously--say, 20 years ago--they may have chosen communism or gone to leftist ideologies. Now Islam is the religion of those who fight against imperialism, who are treated unjustly by the arrogant Western societies and so on."

While I am open to jokes about this, the “moral map” argument is one that can not be dismissed that easily, especially in Europe which is far more secular and disoriented than the US and Canada. The outcome of a conflict between two competing ideological strains is often determined by the strength and coherence of each and I suspect that a religion that has submerged the individual in favor of a powerful group dogma will stand a good chance of having the upper hand when confronted with loosely organized self-serving individuals.

Sorry to resume blogging on such a pessimistic note. Communism could be defeated by demonstrating the benefits of wealth and freedom, but the grassroots of our new enemy isn’t particularly interested in either.

Ever since the Van Gogh murder I have been hammering on the fact that the conflict with radical Islam is one of religion, where religion is the cohesive and ideological gel that fuels and sustains jihad. Any attempt to give the conflict a political or economic flavor is - while understandable in our very secular and wealth driven world – a totally inadequate explanation. Even the territorial arguments over Palestine are almost irrelevant to the core objectives as defined by the radical strains that have now hijacked Islam.

And so it has been with Hezbollah which prompted Andrew Sullivan yesterday to remark quite convincingly:

This is what happens when religion takes over politics. Rational negotiation becomes impossible; victory becomes a theological mandate; no end becomes feasible except conflict; and in this case, some of the actors actually want that conflict to be apocalyptic. We have to understand the fundamentalist mindset we are grappling with. It is not rational in worldly terms. It is other-worldly - and rational only under those theological constructs. For those reasons, it is the biggest threat to Western freedom since the totalitarianisms of the last century; and easily the most mortal threat to Israel since its founding. It cannot be disarmed or reasoned with; it can only be defeated.

It is therefore that a ceasefire is nothing more than a weak and temporary fix that will neither give Israel the security it needs, nor give Lebanon the peace that it craves. It is another variety of the soft doctors make stinky wounds routine which may reduce the immediate number of casualties, but potentially sets the stage for far larger numbers down the road. The religious-fundamentalist take also makes it abundantly clear why claims that Hezbollah is a participant in Lebanon’s democratic process and a representative of a large part of the Lebanese population are rather problematic. The veil of respectability that Sheik Nasrallah has claimed over the past decade combined with the status accorded to him by his fearful Lebanese counterparts and overseas governments can not exonerate Hezbollah from its true and utterly destructive nature. The subsidiarity of any worldly principles combined with an arms cache that puts the average European nation to shame is aimed at not only the destruction of Israel, it is potent enough to subvert the rather laughable but still viable attempt at fostering democracy in Lebanon.

The other suggestion bandied around was that if we do not negotiate with Hezbollah (and this equally applies to Hamas) and find common ground now, then real chaos and potentially further radicalization will be our and Israel’s due. To that I ask: how much further can things radicalize from here? Is there really any ideology that can trump the religious fanaticism that we are witnessing today?

Most likely it is not the already present ideology, but technology that is the missing part that will complete the journey from Arab nationalism to Baathism to al-Fatah style terror to al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. If the world fails to confront the stateless religious fanaticism that is now enveloping the Middle East (and Europe) we may find ourselves in a far needier spot down the road. And no, I am not advocating an attack on Syria or Iran, but the least we can do now is to ensure the total failure of the grand designs of Hezbollah. Given the group’s ideological potency and unwarranted respectability that will be a hard enough assignment for the free world.

The Dutch will go to the polls for a general election later this year – November to be precise - and one party in particular is projected to do well, namely the Socialist Party, a more radical and doctrinaire Labour Party offshoot. Its leader, Jan Marijnissen, made headlines last week by comparing jihadist terrorism to the Dutch resistance during World War II:

" Terrorism is a recurring thing throughout history and often has the intention to make life for an occupying power as difficult as possible. The Dutch have, during the Second World War here blown up city halls in order to disrupt Nazi Germany’s machine of destruction – most city halls kept registries with names of Jewish citizens. In the Middle East, things are not that different. Islamic fundamentalism, including its terrorist subsidiary, is a reaction to the occupation of Palestine by Israel, the American presence in the Middle East and the support of undemocratic regimes in the Middle East by the west "

Not only a false and to some highly insulting analogy, Marijnissen also fails to note that radical Islam is driven by religion and not by politics, a point that is not often understood in Europe's secular circles. As we have seen over the past few weeks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely a useful conduit to expand the radical Islamic franchise as is so eloquently explained by Amir Taheri in the Times today:

The problem is that since the Iranian regime is Shi’ite it would not be easy to sell it to most Arabs, who are Sunni. To overcome that hurdle, it is necessary to persuade the Arabs that only Iran is sincere in its desire and capacity to wipe Israel off the map. Once that claim is sold to the Arabs, so Ahmadinejad hopes, they would rally behind his vision of the Middle East instead of the “American vision”.

The jury is out on whether the Palestinians would really enjoy life under Ahmadinejad’s Shi’ite umbrella, but that’s a topic for a very different discussion.

In the meantime Marijnissen has hurried to tone down his original comment on his own weblog as Dutch pollsters predict that he will pick up some 10% of the vote if an election were held today. If he does indeed manage that in November, the Socialist Party may become a player in parliament, possibly holding the balance of power. I will leave it to your imagination as to how that would affect the Dutch, and to some extent the European, debate over waging war on terror.

In his TCS-column Lee Harris finds an answer to a question which has bothered me for quite a while and that is Why Isn't Socialism Dead? Key excerpt:

Thus, in the coming century, those who are advocates of capitalism may well find themselves confronted with "a myth gap." Those who, like Chavez, Morales, and Castro, are preaching the old time religion of socialism may well be able to tap into something deeper and more primordial than mere reason and argument, while those who advocate the more rational path of capitalism may find that they have few listeners among those they most need to reach -- namely, the People. Worse, in a populist democracy, the People have historically demonstrated a knack of picking as their leaders those know the best and most efficient way to by-pass their reason -- demagogues who can reach deep down to their primordial and, alas, often utterly irrational instincts. This, after all, has been the genius of every great populist leader of the past, as it is proving to be the genius of those populist leaders who are now springing up around the world, from Bolivia to Iran.

From socialism to jihadism - perish the thought that they join forces - the hard battle is again the one of reason against the one of irrational myths. Sorry for wrecking your Sunday, but it seems to me that this century may be as bloody as the last one.

Listen to it here. Topics include fundamentalism, Islam, women and Islam, Danish cartoons, appeasement, multiculturalism and her own security. Listen to the whole thing.

An English summary of the controversial recommendations on dealing with Islam by The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy are now available online. The entire report can be found here, an English translation will not be available until July this year.

It seems that the comments to the press that accompanied this report generated most of the storm, although they were directly based on the council's findings. Judging from the summary it appears that the recommendations bank to a very high degree on the progress and success of moderate Muslim groups and parties, both in and outside Europe. That, the report acknowledges, can be a long and difficult process that is easy to disrupt for radical elements. Such a conclusion is hardly new and it would seem that the report's empirical work contributes more to the ongoing debate about Islam than some of its more contentious conclusions.

NOTE: This warning is evidence of how for instance Iran has a vested interest in derailing any attempts of rapprochement between the West and the Muslim world, underlining exactly how difficult it is for the report's ideas to be realized.

Jane Kramer from The New Yorker has for years been writing Letters from Europe and in the April edition her letter, a lengthy one, is about her visit to The Netherlands in The Dutch Model: Multiculturalism and Muslim Immigrants. Given our experiences to date, I am always a bit skeptical of American journalistic forays into my home country, but Kramer has done her homework. An excellent read. (via The Free West).

Following my earlier post on this issue - which generated a lot of interest, I wonder why - there is now an update and here is the latest from Jakarta:

A group of Muslims protesting Playboy's decision to launch an Indonesian edition of the magazine clashed with police Wednesday and stoned the company's editorial offices, witnesses said.

No one was injured in the protest involving around 150 members of the Islamic Defenders' Front, a small group with a history of attacking bars and nightclubs, as well as Western embassies.

Gateway Pundit has more, including photos.

One of the beautiful things about blogging is that once you’ve put forward a certain idea, you will find that in a very short period of time there is an overwhelming amount of fresh evidence online to support it. So, the idea that the debate over Europe, immigration and jihadist terror is entering a new phase where the left-of-center elites are reclaiming some lost ground, is corroborated by a new report from The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. This is an independent think tank for the Dutch government and it advises a sitting administration on a variety of issues. This council is highly regarded as providing some solid scientific underpinnings to public policy, at least that is what I remember of it.

Their latest report on Islam in Europe will be released tomorrow – with an English summary on their website - but one of their key researchers, Jan Schoonenboom, has been kind enough to talk to the press in advance of the report’s release and in doing so has given us a preview of the report's general intellectual direction:

An unjustified fear of and aversion to Islam exists in the Netherlands. Instead of continuing to drag the name of that faith through the mud, there should be far more criticism of friendly countries such as the US, Israel and Russia, the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) concludes.

As I said, the tone is set. In an unusual move Schoonenboom takes on a number of politicians directly, no doubt targeting one particular female member of parliament when addressing the issue of sharia:

According to Schoonenboom "we should not be so spastic about the Sharia." It may be that the system leads to corporal punishment in countries like Saudi Arabia and Sudan, "but under the Sharia in Morocco, family law has been reformed, very much to the advantage of women's rights." The Sharia for Muslims is comparable to the Ten Commandments for Christians, in the researcher's view. "It is God's plan for human nature."

The WRR researcher wipes the floor with Islam critics such as MPs Hirsi Ali, Wilders and Verhagen, law philosopher Afshin Ellian and Rotterdam politician Marco Pastors. "They often play on gut feelings in the debate. On fear of Islam and of Muslims. You also see that in the debate on the accession of Turkey to the EU, this country is made out to be much more Islamic than it is, and Europe much more Christian that it really is."

Without having seen the report it is hard to determine how the council arrives at foreign policy recommendations, but it seems to me that the one that they have now tabled is driven much more by playing politics and emotional reactions, than by offering sound advice. Hold on to your jaws for this one:

Schoonenboom advises "an adventurous foreign policy" for the Dutch government. "We must support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon, instead of secular movements without prospects in Muslim countries. We must talk to the Palestinian regime of Hamas. They are democratically elected. It is a terrorist movement, but so was Arafat's PLO. And the IRA in Ireland."

There is a series of blogposts to be written about this last paragraph alone, but for now let’s suffice by pointing to the Counterterrorism Blog’s recent take on the pre-emptive capabilities of Hezbollah. An adventurous and moderate foreign policy partner indeed.

As I mentioned earlier today, the debate in Europe is becoming more polarized. This report from an independent government-funded think-tank is all the evidence you need to have to support that observation.

UPDATE: Ayaan Hirsi Ali has already responded, noting that the report "is not scientific research, but a politically motivated leaflet. These researchers should join a political party".

The last time I purchased a copy of Playboy was in the late 90s because Fay Resnick was in it, believing it would become a valuable collector's item. If you live in Indonesia you may want to stock up on the country's new local Playboy edition because it may not be on the shelves for very long:

A toned-down edition of Playboy magazine went on sale Friday in Indonesia, defying threats of protests by Islamic hardliners who called the publication a form of moral terrorism in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

[ ... ]

One hardline group, the Islamic Defenders Front, pledged to forcefully remove the magazines from shops.

"The first edition might be tame, but it will get more vulgar," said group spokesman Tubagus Muhamad Sidik. "Even if it had no pictures of women in it, we would still protest it because of the name."

Of course. But the pre-emptive de-nudification of the magazine has probably prevented some Jakarta-based American assets going up in flames this weekend.

The notion of a Hefner publication in Indonesia somehow brought back some memories of Jakara's seedier history and I googled the name of the place that deservedly owned the sobriquet "sleaziest spot in the world". Unbeknownst to me, it turned out that Islamists had a hand in the demise of the infamous Tanamur too:

Secondly, there was the security issue which came to the fore when Tanamur's adjacent sister club JJ's was raided by the FPI (Indonesian Islamic Front) a few years back. Also, rather incongruously, one of the biggest mosques in Jakarta has been built just opposite the club.

Remember: we all believed that with democracy Indonesia would become freer and more westernized. It seems the reverse is true.

The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing earlier this week - chaired by Senator George Allen - with a focus on Islamist Extremism in Europe. If you have time, you may want to read through the six testimonials in detail, but let me give you a few interesting excerpts. First, Daniel Benjamin, a CSIS Fellow and former NSC member under Clinton:

A Europe distracted by intercommunal tensions and violence will make a poor partner for America in many areas, not least dealing with the global threat of radical Islam. As we all know, pressing broad reform agenda in the Muslim world will, over the long term, be a vital part of a strategy for rolling back the jihadist threat. Yet if European countries become absorbed by strife within their borders, their willingness to work with the United States on a more global approach could well decline.

Secondly, Mary Habeck, Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University in particular paints a very bleak future and confidently projects more attacks on the scale of the London and Madrid bombings. What was instructive in her statement was her explanation about how moderate Mulsims in Europe are initimidated by their more fundamentalist brethren:

Jihadis in Europe—as around the world—have not been backward about declaring other Muslims non-believers, an act known as “takfir.” Takfir is not just a theoretical or religious declaration, as excommunication has now become within Christianity. It has specific legal stipulations, which include the declaring of the blood of the apostate “halal” (i.e. it can be shed by anyone without fear of punishment), his divorce from his spouse, the loss of rights to any property, which can be looted by anyone who wishes, and his loss of the right to inherit or pass on goods by inheritance. To declare “takfir” on a fellow Muslim means, in fact, that anyone can kill that Muslim and take all his goods without penalty or sin. Some jihadis in Europe have declared most of the world’s Muslims unbelievers, which explains why they never condemn the deaths of innocent Muslims during jihadist attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia or the United States.

Another CSIS expert, Robin Niblett, concludes:

The level of frustration and alienation among many members of Europe’s Muslim communities has not abated. At the same time, the risk of another terrorist attack perpetrated by Islamic extremists in Europe remains high. All European governments are potential targets, not only those explicitly supportive of the United States in its foreign policies in the Middle East. If there is another attack, the popular backlash against Muslims in Europe will be severe. Even without another attack, the integration of Muslim communities in Europe will be a difficult and protracted process. The many internal obstacles to integration will continue to be exacerbated by external forces over which national European governments have little if no control. Europeans are awake to these dangers and are doing their best to respond, but we are at the beginning of the process.

Let's be careful about using the 'awake' qualification here, Bruce Bawer's book While Europe Slept got its title not without reason and while many in Europe may have woken up, quite a few have conveniently decided to go back to sleep again. The notion that an anti-Western jihad can solely be attributed to American foreign policy is still alive and well.

Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs noted how current approaches in Europe are not working:

Many European governments hesitate to take action against extremist preaching in the name of defending religious tolerance and free speech. They often fear that crackdowns will only drive radical elements underground. Extremists take advantage of European freedoms to proselytize and recruit from radical mosques and they have taken over several major mosques.

[ ... ]

The European debate can fall into a trap of seeking a defensive solution, such as formulas to define and ban hate speech. These kinds of legal bans may well be a dead end. A better solution is to develop norms that challenge and expose extremist thought as with other forms of anti-democratic ideology.

Henry Crumpton, the State Department's Counterterrorism expert noted that there is another issue that may prevent an effective European response to terror:

But despite this shared perception of the threat, there is disagreement over the most effective means to counter the threat. Some Europeans continue to argue that terrorism is merely – or mainly – a criminal problem. In the last year, there has been a raging controversy in Europe about specific counterterrorism practices allegedly used by the United States. This is a serious issue deserving serious consideration lest it undermine the trust that is essential to our effort. To succeed in applying our vast power against the enemy, we must calibrate and focus that power, so that our actions are legitimate and, importantly, perceived as legitimate.

A dire picture for sure but the various testimonials also point to ways to improve things through closer co-operation and by forging a bond between American and European muslims. The latter was exemplified by Tom Korologos, the US Ambassador to Belgium who reported on a project designed to accomplish such cross-atlantic Muslim understanding.

Again, these are some random excerpts but they once more echo the core themes that have often been discussed here and by many other blogs and media outlets. What they also do is underline the complexity of the matter and the potential inability of European governments to come up with effective solutions, and if they do, they make well take a generation or more to implement and yield any tangible results.

In case you missed it, here.

She has been somewhat under the radar because here enemies are not Muslim, but Hindu. Still, Deepa Mehta is a highly controversial moviemaker in India and her experiences are another instructive tale of how artists have to tread carefully these days. Even when "the script had been approved by the Government".

If you haven't done so already, I would really encourage you to buy Bruce Bawer's excellent While Europe Slept.

Bawer, an American who lived in Amsterdam and who currently resides in Oslo, Norway, has written extensively about Europe's troubles which is of course one of the core Peaktalk themes. I've always argued that outsiders with direct exposure to the continent - and having left the place sixteen years ago I consider myself to be one too - to be best positioned to write about Europe. Deep enough knowledge and a sufficient amount of distance to enable a measure of objectivity.

Bruce's essays and other work can be found on his rich in content website which also has a useful geographical link page.

The debate over women and Islam continues. Today, Cinnamon Stillwell contrasts the new generation of feminists with the old 1960s-style women's lib movement in a comprehensive and link-filled article.

One of the things that probably get lost in all the demographic projections for Europe – which by the way are subject to some credible criticisms - is the fact that they most likely do not take account of native Europeans becoming Muslim. The Washington Post yesterday had a revealing piece on one Rabi'a Frank, a Dutch woman who used to go through life as Rebecca Frank, and who following her marriage to a Moroccan immigrant became a devout Muslim. Here are some quotes from Frank which gives you a general idea of the unique transformation she went through:

"I'm a Muslim, a woman and also Dutch," she continued. "What upsets people is that I'm a Muslim first."

"I am a Muslim," she said with finality. "That's my identity."

During her pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia with her husband and mother-in-law, she covered her face in public for the first time. Far from feeling oppressed, she said, she felt liberated.

We can talk all we want about integration, but if the hallmark of being Muslim is Europe is being “Muslim first” it may be an uphill struggle although Frank could be an anomaly. More alarming is the statement that “she feels liberated” which interestingly coincides with a newspaper interview with Dutch Minister for Transportation Karla Peijs on this very issue:

Minister Peijs sees the Islamic headscarf no longer as a sign of repression. The scarf “gives women freedom” says the minister in an interview with the Telegraaf. She changed her mind after a visit to a conference of Women as world leaders in Abu Dhabi, where 1200 women from 87 countries got together.

[ … ]

“Wearing a headscarf is of course culturally determined. And that’s the way these women experience that, because that’s how they experience their religion. In addition, the headscarf offers opportunities for women is some Islamic countries, because without one they won’t be able to leave home” says the minister.

Up to that point Minister Peijs' comments could be considered to be some sort of analysis of the situation outside Europe, but she goes terribly off track when she comes with the following suggestion:

Peijs would consider a minister with a headscarf in the next cabinet a good idea. “It would enhance the recognizability of the cabinet. It should be someone however picked for her qualities”.

Now as you know there is a national election coming up in The Netherlands next year and Peijs is no doubt courting the Muslim vote, but if you scrutinize her suggestions more carefully she may actually lose a huge chunk of the female vote. And it was Hirsi Ali who made that point by arguing that wearing a headscarf might have certain benefits in Islamic nations in order to get out of the door and work, but that in Western Europe that would hardly be a requirement, on the contrary.

Peijs is not an anomaly. She represents the wave of placating and appeasing that may well precipitate a change of European values and attitudes long before the demographics have done their work.

NOTE: Val MacQueen today in TCS highlights some Muslim women who are liberated too, by western values that is.

UPDATE: And of course, there is Dr Wafa Sultan.

UPDATE II: Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail points to the outer boundaries of her tolerance levels:

I'm all for multiculturalism -- up to a point. Head scarves, turbans and kirpans don't bother me at all. But my open-minded tolerance deserts me when I see women completely covered up. In every culture where this is the norm, women are oppressed. Do I need to learn to be more tolerant? Or am I right to think that women in chadors (and, more to the point, the men who walk four steps in front of them) should adapt to us?

Yes, the 'moderate muslim' label has been under some pressure as few know exactly what it means and even fewer believe that the so-called moderates actually have a strong enough ablity to act as a voice of reason, to drown out the radical noise. Still, there is value in the concept and as Max Boot explains, much more so when we talk about nation states:

Ostensibly unified by religious belief, the Muslim world is in fact deeply divided by culture, ethnicity, sect and geography. Most Qataris and Malaysians have no interest in joining an anti-Western jihad; they are too busy getting rich trading with the West.

Boot is right, and the same applies to Indonesia too. But I would add that this conclusion shouldn't give way to unfettered optimism about our moderate friends. They have to balance phenomenal domestic and religious pressures, often having to turn a blind eye to less than moderate players. That particular knowledge has fueled the ports controversy which it seems has now been resolved with a palatable compromise.

Interesting developments on the immigration front in Canada:

The federal government should require new immigrants to take an oath of loyalty to Canada and its values -- and deport them if they breach it, a former diplomat says in a study of counter-terrorism policies released yesterday.

The Fraser Institute report, authored by former senior Foreign Affairs official Martin Collacott, also says the government must give special attention to working with the Muslim community since radical Islamic terrorists are currently the greatest danger to Canada's security.

This falls into line with what we've been discussing this week and that is a more American-style integration process where the adoption of the core cultural values of the host nation takes center stage. It will be interesting to see if European nations will follow suit, but my sense is that "an oath of loyalty" will be laughed away as "too American". Note that this a recommendation only and that the actual report highlights why in the past such common-sense recommendations were never followed up with sound policies:

A further reason for the reluctance of the government to take firm measures against terrorists and their supporters is concern over the possible loss of political support. A notable example of this is Ottawa’s failure to designate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a terrorist group. Related to this is the fact that little action has been taken to stop terrorist fundraising in Canada even though this is now estimated at $180 million a year.

At the very least an argument can be made that there now is a conservative government in Ottawa which is open to taking on terror and the excesses of fundamentalism.

In related news, the Dutch are going to the polls for local elections next week and it will be interesting to see how the issue of immigration will play out there. Especially since the last municipal elections swept the Fortuynists to victory in Rotterdam - the city with the largest percentage of immigrants - where the campaign in is full swing.

UPDATE: As I said, there is definitely a fresh wind blowing in Ottawa.

Irshad Manji explains today in the LA Times that there once was a tradition of free and critical thinking within is Islam, called ijtihad:

This concept of creative reasoning, pronounced ij-tee-had, has a track record. In the early decades of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought flourished. In Muslim Spain, scholars would teach their students to abandon "expert" opinions about the Koran if their own conversations with the ambiguous book produced more compelling evidence for their peaceful ideas. And Cordoba, among the most sophisticated cities in Islamic Spain, had 70 libraries. That is one for every virgin that today's Muslim martyrs believe Allah pledges them. Books then, women now: an unlikely indicator of how far Muslims have plunged intellectually.

Resurrecting that tradition may not be an easy undertaking but Manji points to some encouraging evidence that Muslim women can play an important role in that process. Read it all.

LGF links to a poll in the Telegraph which reveals that 40% of British Muslims favor the introduction of Sharia in Britain. It reminded me of this post a little while back which looked at the situation in The Netherlands where that number would be around 25% according to this translated excerpt from an interview with a Rotterdam alderman:

Fifty percent of Muslims here has indicated they would vote for a Muslim Party if there was one, and another fifty percent of that group has indicated it would approve if that party would implement Sharia. That’s quite something I think. That’s something to really worry about.

He went on to say that the numbers by themselves were not that alarming, but that in combination with some sort of catalyst, the results could potentially be very unpleasant:

But I am not afraid that something like that will actually happen, in our country there are about one million Muslims out of a total of sixteen million inhabitants, that’s about nine seats in parliament – not really shocking. In Rotterdam one out of every six voters is Muslim and that gives them sevens seats here, still not dramatic. But in some neighborhoods of the city more than half is Muslim. Imagine that in a district election a Muslim party will get close to a majority, and if some idiots from Green Left join the action by being politically correct, then the outcome may be quite troubling.

Muslim radicals continue to represent a very small portion of the overall population in Europe and even the 40% highlighted by the Telegraph is in real terms a small fraction of the overall British population. And since it is a poll, I take the 40% number with a huge grain of salt, especially given the much lower number recorded among Dutch Muslims when asked a similar question.

But - as we have seen during the cartoon controversy - the radical elements do not have to count on their own natural constituency to further their cause. It is quite feasible that appeasement and accommodation from some of Europe's own political parties could enable religious slogans and sentiments to re-emerge as the foundation of public policy on Europe's streets. Call it the cartoon catalyst.

UPDATE: Stephen Pollard has some interesting observations on how this process is unfolding in Britain.

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