[Mb-civic] Testing Dutch tolerance - H.D.S. Greenway - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Testing Dutch tolerance

By H.D.S. Greenway  |  February 21, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

BERLIN

WHEN IT comes to welcoming immigrants, the Dutch have long been among 
the nicest guys in Europe. When the Jews were kicked out of Spain in 
1492, the Dutch opened their doors to them when others didn't. When the 
Pilgrims were in trouble in England, the Dutch took them in before they 
sailed for America. In modern times, the ever-tolerant Dutch took in 
guest workers and asylum seekers, many of them from Muslim countries, 
and left them to their own devices. But now, as in other European 
countries with large Muslim populations, the Dutch are having second 
thoughts.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, were especially shocking because so many 
of the hijackers had lived in Europe. Could the Muslim minorities in 
Europe be a Trojan horse? Madrid and London had their terrorist 
bombings, but the trauma for Holland came with the 2004 murder of 
filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a young Dutch Moroccan who objected to a film 
van Gogh had made about Muslim mistreatment of women. How could this 
have happened in Holland, and by a thoroughly integrated young man who 
spoke fluent Dutch?

After 9/11, and especially after the van Gogh murder, some Dutchmen 
began to say harsh things about their Muslim neighbors. Some mosques 
were vandalized. One of the first to defend the Muslims of Holland was 
Awraham Soetendorp, 63-year-old rabbi and founder of Holland's Jewish 
Institute for Human Values, who has done as much to reach out to Muslims 
as any cleric in Europe.

I met Soetendorp at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month, 
and he told me that ''when a mosque is attacked, all places of worship 
are attacked. When I hear slurs against Muslims I get the same 
nauseating feeling in the stomach as when I hear anti-Semitic remarks. I 
can feel a whole people and a religion of 1 billion people being 
stigmatized," he said. ''We cannot commit that crime."

Today, Soetendorp works tirelessly trying to bring Muslims, Christians, 
Jews -- and Buddhists and Hindus, too -- into interfaith dialogues, 
dialogues that used to be considered marginal, but ''are now moving into 
the center," he says. Some say that such dialogues may be among the best 
defenses against the virus of extremism that has infected a tiny but 
dangerous sliver of Muslim youth in Europe.

Some Muslims I have talked to believe they have something to learn from 
Jews, who for the most part are better organized in their dealings with 
governments, national and local, and have been more successful in 
gaining official recognition and space for their religion than Muslims.

Apart from organizational skills, the Jews of Europe have something else 
to inspire Muslim immigrants. For 2,000 years, Jews have stubbornly 
maintained their faith and their community under tremendous pressure to 
assimilate into the broader Christian world. For that they paid a 
terrible price. Over the centuries, frightful persecutions and pogroms 
have afflicted the Jews of Europe, culminating in the unparalleled 
horrors of the 20th century. Yet they have hung onto their faith and 
their traditions.

There is still anti-Semitism in Europe, some of it coming from Muslims 
agitated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But organized state 
anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, and Muslims in Europe wish to 
emulate the status that Jews have achieved.

As Soetendorp says: ''The Jewish community has been established in the 
Netherlands since the 17th century, and, although it has not always been 
easy, the Jews have shown, on the whole, that they can keep their 
identity but remain good and loyal citizens of our country. The stronger 
you are in your own identity, the more open you are to others."

This has resonance for European Muslims who want to keep their faith and 
traditions, and yet be loyal citizens, in the secular countries they now 
call home. For you can sense the pressure throughout Europe these days. 
Why don't these people assimilate? If they don't want to be like us, why 
do they come here?

For Soetendorp, this kind of talk has dangerous echoes. Yes, Holland has 
been a tolerant country, he says, but in the early '40s when the Dutch 
were under occupation, all of a sudden too many Dutchmen became 
intolerant of the Jews among them. ''God forbid" that there should be a 
major act of terrorism in Europe on the magnitude of 9/11, says 
Soetendorp. For if there is, he fears, innocent Muslims would become 
scapegoats and be ostracized as once were the Jews.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/21/testing_dutch_tolerance/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060221/4786180e/attachment-0001.htm