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Questions of Tolerance and Intolerance

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Questions of Tolerance and Intolerance Jewish World Questions of tolerance and intolerance Holland’s Jews watch hesitantly as the country goes to the polls amid rising nationalism and an anti-Muslim backlash By Tibor Krausz, Amsterdam WOLFGANG RATTAY / REUTERS / RATTAY WOLFGANG 26 THE JERUSALEM REPORT MARCH 20, 2017 IN THEIR hometown of Amsterdam, Ba- “Not all [Moroccans] are scum,” he elu- ruch Spinoza and Anne Frank have long cidated in an off-the-cuff interview with a been upheld as the famously liberal city’s television reporter in February. “But there twin beacons of moral guidance. is a lot of Moroccan scum in Holland who The rationalist philosopher, whose bronze make the streets unsafe, mostly young peo- statue in front of City Hall is a popular tour- ple. And that should change.” ist attraction, has been celebrated for his That change should start with putting an vocal advocacy of religious tolerance. The end to all immigration from Muslim coun- vivacious teenage diarist, whose wartime tries, Wilders has insisted repeatedly over hiding place in a cramped little attic now the years. He implored Dutch voters to serves as part of the Anne Frank House in “please make the Netherlands ours again” central Amsterdam, has, in turn, come to by voting his party into office so he could personify, as a high-profile victim of it, the make good on that policy pledge. “We enduring evil of intolerance. should be tolerant to people who are toler- As locals cast their ballots in general elec- ant to us,” he explained. “We should be in- tions on March 15, questions of tolerance tolerant to people who are intolerant to us.” and intolerance are again on many people’s One wonders what Baruch and Anne, one minds across the Netherlands. The anti-im- the son of Portuguese Jewish refugees, the migrant Freedom Party is riding high in the other a German-born immigrant to Amster- polls thanks to the unabashedly populist dam, would make of the blustering Dutch stance of its maverick leader, Geert Wilders. nationalist, who is himself partly of Indo- nesian immigrant heritage. Perhaps they You can encounter would see Wilders, like his legions of crit- ics at home and abroad, as a jumped-up manifestations of fascist, a “far-right extremist,” a “vulgar rabble-rouser,” and an out-and-out “Islam- muscular Islamism ophobe.” even during leisurely Or, perhaps, they could see why his anti-immigrant message has come to reso- strolls around town in nate with a large segment of Dutch society, which seems to have reached the end of Amsterdam its much-vaunted tolerance when it comes to some questionable forms of “cultural enrichment” that mass immigration has A vociferous critic of Islam, Wilders, 53, brought to the Netherlands. has likened the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and insisted that Islamist ideolo- THE DUTCH Jewish writer Leon de Winter gy is more dangerous than Nazism. He has has called Wilders “a necessity in today’s vowed to ban the Koran and close down political landscape” because the politician all the mosques in the Netherlands if he’s dares to challenge the prevailing political elected prime minister – although he hasn’t narrative that deems it a moral obligation explained how he would go about doing all by European nations to facilitate the mass that. Wilders has also pledged to follow the immigration of Muslim migrants while example of the United Kingdom and take simultaneously portraying their growing the Netherlands out of the European Union presence as an unquestionable benefit to so that the country could better defend its their host nations. “These feelings of dis- borders against illegal entrants. comfort, of desperation, about very lax With his impish features and bouffant migration that are felt [among] the general Riding a wave of anti-Muslim populist hairdo dyed platinum blond, Wilders resem- public here in Holland [are], I think, a bit sentiment, Geert Wilders has promised bles less a firebrand than an eccentric sci- more intense among the Dutch Jews,” de to ban the Koran and close down the ence teacher. Yet, circumspect he isn’t. The Winter explains. Netherland’s mosques should he become politician recently dismissed young Moroc- You can encounter manifestations of mus- prime minister can immigrants with criminal tendencies as cular Islamism even during leisurely strolls “scum.” around town in Amsterdam. On a recent THE JERUSALEM REPORT MARCH 20, 2017 27 Jewish World wintry afternoon, hundreds of Turkish res- But some of the cultural fault lines be- idents gathered at the city’s historic Dam tween natives and immigrants from pre- Square, right in front of the Royal Palace. dominantly Muslim nations are no laughing The women wearing hijabs and chadors, the matter, for they have been drawn in blood. men bearing Turkish flags and pictures of President Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan, they had EAST OF Dam Square, in the bicycle lane come to listen animatedly to fiery speech- of a nondescript street named after the es in support of the Turkish strongman, an 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Lin- avowed Islamist who has done much to roll naeus, a few wilting flowers placed on the back secularism in Turkey. pavement mark the spot where the film Their indignant tirades amplified by loud- director Theo van Gogh, the great-grand- speakers, bearded men, presumably from nephew of the post-impressionist painter Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Par- Vincent, was murdered in cold blood on ty, berated Western nations for supporting the morning of November 2, 2004. Van Kurdish independence and sang the praises Gogh was bicycling to work, in the style of of Turkish nationalism. Dutch street per- many an Amsterdammer, when he was am- formers in their Yoda and Crypt-Keeper bushed and shot repeatedly by Mohammed costumes, who are among the usual inhabi- Bouyeri, a second-generation Dutch Mus- tants of the square, appeared forlorn and out lim of Moroccan descent, who proceeded to of place beside the heaving crowd of agitat- slash the dying man’s throat before pinning ed Turkish immigrants. a note to his chest with a knife. It’s hard to imagine that stalwarts of The note was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Wilders’ Freedom Party would ever dream Ali, a Somali Muslim immigrant who, as a of staging a Dutch nationalist rally in down- member of the Dutch parliament, had been town Istanbul – or that they would be al- an outspoken critic of regressive Islamic lowed to get away with it. practices. She and van Gogh had just pro- But such is European-style multicultur- duced a short film, “Submission,” which alism: a largely monocultural phenomenon sought to highlight the abuse of women whereby tolerance is routinely a one-way in Islamic cultures and what the two saw REUTERS / KLUITERS TOUSSAINT street. as scripturally sanctified misogyny in Is- lam. In doing so, they instantly earned the Muslims shout slogans in Amsterdam We once colonized murderous enmity of homegrown Islamists during a demonstration in solidarity with such as Bouyeri. the people rising up across the Arab and people, and now Bouyeri’s open letter to Hirsi Ali was a Muslim world, in 2011 rambling screed of Islamist grievance-mon- we’re getting gering in which he accused her of being in colonized in return the service of Islam’s alleged arch enemies, its patron saints of enlightened rationalism the Jews, “who are a product of Talmudic like Spinoza, being Dutch meant being free schools” and dominated Dutch politics, as to criticize all religions – and poke fun at Bring up the subject of Muslim mass evidenced by Amsterdam’s then mayor, Job them if he so wished. immigration, and locals you encounter in Cohen, who was himself Jewish. Before his murder, van Gogh, a portly and Amsterdam over a beer or coffee (or can- “How do you feel about the fact that a aging enfant terrible of sorts with a sullen nabis joint, if you so choose) will instantly mayor is leading Amsterdam who sub- stare and a cigarette habitually protruding shy away from anything beyond paying lip scribes to a religion that allows Jews to lie insouciantly from between his lips, waved service to the virtues of “diversity.” Once to non-Jews?” Bouyeri wanted to know. aside offers of police protection, insisting they feel at ease, though, they may well “How do you feel about the fact that you are he had nothing to fear because “no one kills become more forthcoming, bemoaning part of a government that supports a state the village idiot.” (His suicidal nonchalance what they see as an increasingly fissiparous [Israel] with an ideology that advocates was all the more surprising, given that two society. genocide [against Palestinians]?” years prior a friend of his, the openly gay “We once colonized people, and now Although both van Gogh and Bouyeri politician Pim Fortuyn, had been murdered we’re getting colonized in return,” quipped were Dutch citizens, they had wholly dif- in broad daylight by a left-wing activist for a middle-aged IT professional over brunch ferent views of what that meant. For the his frequent criticisms of Islam.) in a tea house near the city center. “We only irreverent film director, steeped in Amster- For Bouyeri, on the other hand, being have ourselves to blame!” dam’s centuries-old liberal traditions with Dutch was an accident of birth. He saw 28 THE JERUSALEM REPORT MARCH 20, 2017 MICHAEL KOOREN / REUTERS / KOOREN MICHAEL himself primarily as a Muslim who Security at several synagogues and Jew- The Anne Frank House – one of belonged to the global community of true ish community centers around Amsterdam Amsterdam's most popular tourist believers, the Ummah, and whose religion has been beefed up with a visible and per- destinations – now requires heavily armed claimed rightful sovereignty over all manent police presence.
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