SIGN OF THE TIMES: Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a radical Islamist in 2004. |
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — Civil libertarians from Los Angeles to Estonia gathered here last week to survey the status of free speech and liberal democracy in Europe, as it is being redefined by Islamic immigrants. Turns out that Dutch society and politics — once all things liberal chic — aren’t quite what they used to be. That’s not to say that the new myths are any more accurate than the old ones. For years, the Dutch capital conjured images of tolerance and cohesion, of potheads and prostitutes arrayed against a backdrop of placid canals and gently spinning windmills. These days the city that ordained the world’s first gay marriage — beating the Bay State by three years — is increasingly portrayed as virulently intolerant toward Muslim immigrants and citizens.
Yet many Muslims appear to be folding into Dutch commercial and secular culture quite seamlessly. Unaccompanied by male escorts, droves of young Muslim women donning headscarves laugh into their cell phones in Amsterdam’s biggest mall. And Amsterdam is home to the only openly gay Arab bar in the world.
Nonetheless, since the November 2004 murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a fractious debate about the limits of tolerance has torn Dutch society apart. Van Gogh’s murder — at the hands of 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, a radical Islamist and second-generation Dutch and Moroccan citizen — shook the Netherlands to its core. But while the British are considering hate-speech codes that would criminalize impugning religion, Dutch politicians and pundits have taken a different, more nationalist, tack: openly and unflinchingly questioning the value of tolerating those who preach and practice intolerance of all things deemed traditionally Dutch.
Over the past two years, the values with which the Dutch have strongly identified themselves since World War II — commitment to pluralism and tolerance of wildly disparate cultures, often with the assistance of state promotion — have been sharply reappraised. The solutions proffered so far, however, such as requiring immigrants to watch a video of nude sunbathers, raise serious doubts about the efficacy of forcing “integration” into a coherent, if elusive, “Dutch” model.
At the center of the most recent Dutch controversy is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a vociferous former Muslim who sought asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 and who, after gaining citizenship, worked menial jobs before being elected to the Dutch Parliament and teaming up with van Gogh on a provocative film on women’s roles in Islam, titled Submission. Unstintingly critical of Islam and its adherents, Hirsi Ali became the target not only of many Muslims, who sent her death threats that led to 24-hour surveillance, but also of Rita Verdonk, the Netherlands’s chief immigration officer.
For several months, “Iron Rita” attempted — ultimately unsuccessfully — to rescind Hirsi Ali’s Dutch citizenship because the Somali-born immigrant lied about her real name when originally seeking asylum in the Netherlands. Hirsi Ali, meanwhile, has decided to decamp to the relative security of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, DC, think tank that will reportedly fund part two of Submission.
This November, the Dutch will mark the two-year anniversary of van Gogh’s murder. They will also return to the ballot box for the third time in less than five years — an unprecedented rate. Americans would do well to monitor what happens. We might be able to glean something from the world’s most tolerant society about retaining liberal-democratic institutions without sacrificing security — or values.
Indeed, if those endeavoring to reconcile liberty and security can make it in Amsterdam, they can make it anywhere.
Dustin A. Lewis edited the fourth edition of Let’s Go Amsterdam (2005).
