[BRIEF NOTE] On the Netherlands
Nov. 15th, 2004 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldInspired by the recent events in the Netherlands, I made a brief post on GNXP regarding the demographic situation. Rest assured that a Muslim majority in the Netherlands is even further from realization than in France.
If anything, it will be rather more difficult. Quite apart from the highly public assassination of Van Gogh, the recent discovery of plans by the terrorist network to murder Dutch parliamentarians and even attempt to assassinate the Portuguese prime minister during the Euro 2004 soccer tournament, to say nothing of the discovery of a Muslim mole in the Dutch secret service appears to have precipitated a very nasty and indiscriminate backlash against the Dutch Muslim community. It's all the more worrying since it's not associated with the far right, as Doug Saunders observed in The Globe and Mail:
To be sure, this conservatism and intolerance is an issue. It's profoundly insulting to a community, or to a subset of a community, to assume that misogyny and homopohobia and racism are natural and inevitable components of its culture. When these secondary attributes, associated with of an unknown proportion of an aggregate of one million people are falsely and illogically identified with the whole of that community and its membership, though, that (after Metternich) is not only a crime but a mistake.
I doubt that this will effect Turkey's entry into the European Union, if only because this entry is conditioned on Turkey's ability to live up to the acquis communautaire in all of its forms. Regression to an Islamist state would, I think, by recognized by everyone involved as sufficient grounds to disqualify the country for membership. The only way that it could, I suspect, would be if the existence of Muslim immigration became a major political issue in the Netherlands and wider Europe and remained a major political issue. This, I'm half-afraid, could be an issue, particularly given the growth of a militarized frontier for Fortress Europe. It's not altogether impossible that you could see the European Union retreat to the immigration policies of the United States in the 1920s; or, perhaps worse yet, that it could have regionally selective immigration policies, welcoming Latin Americans and Asians while excluding Muslims. Certainly, innovative policy ideas like Moroccan entry into the EU seem more distant from realization than ever before.
Towards the end of his excellent world history Millennium, Fernandez-Armesto suggested that in a globalized world, dar al-Islam could find itself marginalized, an isolated "sea of green" in a cosmopolitan world. He also suggested that this very isolation could give it a particular cohesion.
Here's to avoiding Huntington's predictions. What I said on GNXP: We can only have an apocalypse if we really want one.
If anything, it will be rather more difficult. Quite apart from the highly public assassination of Van Gogh, the recent discovery of plans by the terrorist network to murder Dutch parliamentarians and even attempt to assassinate the Portuguese prime minister during the Euro 2004 soccer tournament, to say nothing of the discovery of a Muslim mole in the Dutch secret service appears to have precipitated a very nasty and indiscriminate backlash against the Dutch Muslim community. It's all the more worrying since it's not associated with the far right, as Doug Saunders observed in The Globe and Mail:
[T]he protesters who filled the streets of Dutch cities yesterday did not generally come from the country's extreme right.
Most of them described themselves as leftists, liberals or social democrats, who have turned against Muslims because of their conservative values.
"Keep in mind that there is some real tension here: The Netherlands are a highly secularized, perhaps even anti-religious and progressive society, and the large majority of the immigrants are religious and conservative," said Boris Slijper, a specialist in cultural conflict at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies in Amsterdam.
He said that most of the protesters are left-leaning advocates of immigration who are angered by the conservatism and intolerance of some Muslims.
To be sure, this conservatism and intolerance is an issue. It's profoundly insulting to a community, or to a subset of a community, to assume that misogyny and homopohobia and racism are natural and inevitable components of its culture. When these secondary attributes, associated with of an unknown proportion of an aggregate of one million people are falsely and illogically identified with the whole of that community and its membership, though, that (after Metternich) is not only a crime but a mistake.
I doubt that this will effect Turkey's entry into the European Union, if only because this entry is conditioned on Turkey's ability to live up to the acquis communautaire in all of its forms. Regression to an Islamist state would, I think, by recognized by everyone involved as sufficient grounds to disqualify the country for membership. The only way that it could, I suspect, would be if the existence of Muslim immigration became a major political issue in the Netherlands and wider Europe and remained a major political issue. This, I'm half-afraid, could be an issue, particularly given the growth of a militarized frontier for Fortress Europe. It's not altogether impossible that you could see the European Union retreat to the immigration policies of the United States in the 1920s; or, perhaps worse yet, that it could have regionally selective immigration policies, welcoming Latin Americans and Asians while excluding Muslims. Certainly, innovative policy ideas like Moroccan entry into the EU seem more distant from realization than ever before.
Towards the end of his excellent world history Millennium, Fernandez-Armesto suggested that in a globalized world, dar al-Islam could find itself marginalized, an isolated "sea of green" in a cosmopolitan world. He also suggested that this very isolation could give it a particular cohesion.
Here's to avoiding Huntington's predictions. What I said on GNXP: We can only have an apocalypse if we really want one.
