Despite having turned Amsterdam’s red light district into some kind of adult entertainment Disneyland, and despite having instituted one of the world’s most relaxed drug policy regimes, the Netherlands were not always home to deep rooted respect of alternative lifestyles.
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Category Archives: Minorities and integration
Suspicion and divided loyalties
Perhaps the most damaging effect of 9/11 and all that has followed will be its role in making divided loyalties one of the most dangerous things a person can have. From the beginning, while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning, any effort to hold non-trivial positions about terrorism and Islam were attacked. People opposed to the war in Iraq were branded as terrorist supporters, people unimpressed by a programme of reform in the Middle East imposed at the end of a gun were castigated, people who asked questions about whether there was more to things than “they hate us for our freedom” were branded as traitors.
Tariq Ramadan wrote a piece in Wednesday’s New York Times which must be read in this light. The key paragraph – the statement of where he stands – appears at the end:
I believe Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. To do this, we must become full, independent Western citizens, working with others to address social, economic and political problems. However, we can succeed only if Westerners do not cast doubt on our loyalty every time we criticize Western governments. Not only do our independent voices enrich Western societies, they are the only way for Western Muslims to be credible in Arab and Islamic countries so that we can help bring about freedom and democracy. That is the message I advocate. I do not understand how it can be judged as a threat to America.
But it is not that hard to see the threat in it. To encourage western Muslims to at once see themselves as having a place in the West and a role in the Islamic world is tantamount to asking them to divide their loyalties. To all too many people right now, divided loyalties are a synonym for treason. The charge of divided loyalties is an old one, and a very damaging one. It was once the most mainstream charge that people made against Jews. To see it revived today – against Muslims in Europe, against Mexicans in the US by the likes of Samuel Huntington, and yes, against Jews in many countries – is very, very troubling.
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Daniel Pipes on Tariq Ramadan: Why French literacy still matters
Readers of my previous comment on Tariq Ramadan will no doubt have come away with the impression that I don’t much like Daniel Pipes. This is not an entirely accurate assessment of my opinon of him. I think Pipes is an unreconstructed bigot and xenophobic fanatic whose academic work fails to meet even the lowest standards of scholarship, whose career has been built on politically driven attacks, and who has set up with his “Campus Watch” as a terrorist front designed to intimidate academics and ensure that there is as little debate, discussion or rational thought on Israel, US foreign policy or Islam as possible. His reseach and scholarship are not intended to better inform action but to support specific agendas, usually revolving around hating some foreign force or people. Instead of fostering debate, his work is intended to intimidate. Pipes advocates religiously targetted surveillance, he supports making federal university funding conditional on ideology, and he has helped to terrorise professors who are named on his website. In short, I think Pipes is swine.
He is a second generation right-wing tool, the son of one of the men most responsible for America’s “Team B”, which grossly overblew the Soviet menace in the 70s and 80s – causing massive US defense spending and resulting deficits – and complained that anyone with a better sense of reality was soft on communism. Normally, Pipes’ parentage would constitute poor grounds for condeming him as having a pathological relationship to facts. But keep this in mind, since it constitutes one of his arguments against Ramadan.
All you need is Google to find out why I think these things about Daniel Pipes. It’s not a lot of work. His own website provides ample examples.
But, today, I will be targeting something a little more specific. Pipes has put up on his website his comment on Tariq Ramadan’s visa denial, originally published in the New York Post on Friday. In it, he makes specific points against Tariq Ramadan, linking, in some cases, to articles on the web in support. These articles are primarily in French. As a service to our non-francophone readers, we will be translating the relevant sections, since they lead one to the conclusion that Pipes assumes his readers will just take his word on their contents.
We report, you decide.
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Redefining “ostenibles” – the headscarf in Réunion
Despite the recent hostage taking of French journalists in Iraq and the demand that the ban on the hijab be lifted as the price of their return, the French government is unsurprisingly still planning on implementing the law when school reopens this week. Killing French journalists in order to attack a French law – even a bad one – only makes it harder to repeal. By attacking it in this fashion, this silly law will become even more entrenched.
This story is currently the lead article in all the major French dailies. The government is trying to negociate the release of these two journalists – Christian Chesnot of Radio France International and Georges Malbrunot of the daily Le Figaro. It is presumably also considering more direct action to free them. The French Foreign Minister has personally gone to Baghdad today. He is – I presume – talking to American and Iraqi authorities.
I should note that this hostage-taking has been roundly condemned, not only by Islamic authorities in France but by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, an organisation that has clearly taken a stand against banning the hijab, by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, by the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Paris and by Tariq Ramadan.
La rentrée – the beginning of the French school year – starts a little earlier in some parts of France than it does in the Metropole. It started two weeks ago in Réunion – an area with a disproportionately larger and better entrenched Muslim population than France. National Assembly deputies from Réunion demanded – but did not get – a special provision in the law recognising their unusual circumstances. And, how has the new code forbidding conspicuous religous symbols fared there? There were no serious incidents reported. Of course, school authorities in Réunion redefined the kind of headscarf most commonly worn in Réunion to be something other than “conspicuous.”
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Swiss Muslim scholar unwelcome in US
According to Abu Aardvark, Tariq Ramadan – a francophone Swiss Muslim who is usually cited as a particularly modernist and moderate European Muslim scholar – has been denied a visa to enter the US to take up a teaching posiiton at Notre Dame University. As I understand it, the visa had earlier been issued, but has now been revoked under the portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that were modified by the PATRIOT Act two years ago.
Further Associated Press coverage at the Boston Globe – and probably other newspapers – as well as at Swissinfo.
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Micha?l Tronchon, alias Phineas
I’m not sure how much the international press is covering the recent racist violence in Lyon. A Google News search shows only the New York Times offering coverage in English.
The salient facts: Late Saturday night, a 24 year old man surrendered to police in Paris, claiming responsability for the cemetery desacration in Lyon and the murder of an north African Arab man a few days earlier. His name is Micha?l Tronchon. Police consider his confession legitimate and believe that the perpetrator is now in custody.
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Phineas and French racial violence
Yesterday’s Le Monde has a distrubing piece on the profanation of a Jewish cemetery in Lyon, blogged here a few days ago. According to the Lyon police, evidence at the scene links this crime to the murder of a young North African man last week.
Le lien entre la profanation du cimeti?re juif de Lyon et une agression raciste ?tabli
La justice a ?tabli vendredi 13 ao?t avec certitude la corr?lation entre la profanation, le 9 ao?t, du cimeti?re juif de Lyon et l’agression ? la hachette, quatre jours plus t?t, d’un homme d’origine maghr?bine, permettant aux enqu?teurs de resserrer l’?tau sur l’auteur de la profanation.
Le procureur de la R?publique de Lyon, Xavier Richaud, a indiqu? qu’”on a retrouv? l’ADN de la victime de l’agression de Villeurbanne sur la hachette laiss?e lundi soir sur une des tombes profan?es”. [...]
Le 5 ao?t au matin, un homme d’origine maghr?bine ?tait agress? ? la hachette dans une rue de Villeurbanne. Cette agression avait ?t? revendiqu?e par t?l?phone ? la police par un individu se pr?sentant comme “Phineas”.
L’inscription “Phineas” avait ?t? retrouv?e quatre jours plus tard, le 9 ao?t, trac?e ? la peinture noire sur plusieurs des quelque 60 tombes profan?es dans le cimeti?re juif de la Mouche, ? Lyon. [...]
L’outil avait ?t? laiss?, accroch? sur une tombe, pos? en ?vidence pour qu’on le voie.
Link established between the profanation of the Lyon Jewish cemetery and a racist attack
On Friday, 13 August, Investigators established with certainty the connection between the profanation of the Lyon Jewish cemetery and the attack with an axe against a man of Maghrebi origin four days earlier, allowing detectives to tighten the vice on the perpetrators.
The Lyon Procurer of the Republic [more or less the District Attorney or Crown Prosecutor, for Anglophone readers], Xavier Richaud, said that “we have found the DNA of the victim of the Villeurbanne attack on the axe left on one of the vandalised graves Monday night.” [...]
On 5 August, a man of Maghrebi origin was attacked with an axe on a street in Villeurbanne. An individual calling himself “Phineas” telephoned police to claim responsibility.
The name “Phineas” was also found several days later, on 9 August, written in black paint on several of the 60 vandalised graves in the Mouche Jewish cemetary at Lyon. [...]
The instrument was left hung up on a gravestone, placed so that someone would see it.
The name “Phineas” has a special meaning in Christianity, and particularly to right-wing racist Protestant churches like the Christian Identity movement in the US. The article goes on to point out that a number of attacks in recent years in the US have been labelled as “Phineas Acts.” France has its own traditions of racism and racist mythologies. It seems a little strange to see them borrowing American ones.
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Scooping the Times
I note that today’s New York Times has an article on the recent upsurge in Neonazi attacks in France, focusing on Alsace-Lorraine and the simultaneously anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant character of these movements. This was covered a couple days ago here on AFOE.
Does someone at the Times read us? Probably not. I suspect they got it from Libé. But I do take back my disgust at seeing the last attack on a Jewish cemetery in France linked exclusively to Muslim immigrants in the anglophone press. Cudos to the Times for being something other than the New Pravda for once.
Never again
Yesterday’s profanation of a Jewish cemetery in Lyon has, once again, put French race relations into the news in bad light. There’s a good reason for that. French race relations aren’t much to brag about. I notice, however, that for all the bloggers – not to mention Ariel Sharon – who think France is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, there hasn’t been much comment over recent profanations of Muslim cemeteries and mosques.
Le Monde, conveniently enough, offers a page for each. Les principales profanations de tombes juives en France and Chronologie des actes contre des cimeti?res et des lieux de culte musulmans.
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Arab minorities in Israel and Europe
I note somewhat belatedly, via The Head Heeb, a series of articles in Ha’aretz on the condition of Israeli Arabs. As Jonathan Edelstein notes, there’s good news and bad news and while I disagree with the concept of national minorities and ethnic states in general, I agree entirely with Jonathan, the editors of Ha’aretz, and apparently the not-so-good folks at Shin Bet that the current situation of Israeli Arabs is untenable and continuing neglect is a bad idea. The series is fascinating, but it is long enough that you will have to commit more than a brief glance to reading it.
I have never been to Israel, and the relatively small number of Israeli Arabs I have met over the years are probably not representative. So, I am hard pressed to make any grand statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, I want to focus on a theme that appears in several articles in the series, something that ought to be a bit surprising and that has considerably more significance for Europe: the degree to which Israeli Arabs have become quite western in outlook and behaviour. This shines through in the article on an Arab language radio talk show abouty sexuality and relationships, in the article on the political attitudes of young Arabs, and in the marketing trivia of the Arab-Israeli consumer. Israeli Arabs remain, by European standards, quite conservative. However, I know of fully mainstream American communities that are a good deal more traditionalist than what is described here. I should think this sort of society would be fairly compatible with European and American social standards.
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