BRUSSELS JOURNAL: While America is focused on its elections, which might bring the first Muslim-born president in the White House, Europe is anxiously awaiting Geert Wilders’ movie on the Koran. The Dutch government fears that the release of the movie might lead to terror attacks on the Netherlands or on Dutch citizens abroad. There are rumours that the government may seek to ban the film. NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a Dutchman, has also expressed concern about the Wilders movie. On Sunday he told Dutch television that he fears retaliations against Dutch NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Last week Wilders complained that the Dutch authorities are putting him under pressure not to release his 10-minute film. Yesterday, a poll showed that the governing Dutch Christian-Democrats of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende are losing popularity because of their attempts to tone Wilders down. Dutch public opinion, however, tends to be very volatile. Two month ago, I wrote here that “if the Wilders movie results in (fatal) attacks on Dutch citizens and Dutch interests abroad, it might lead to an anti-Wilders backlash. The Dutch are not Danes. They have a history of swinging from one extreme to another. Like the Spanish after the Madrid bombings they might paint their hands white and surrender.”
There is little doubt that Muslim radicals are already preparing ‘punishment’ for the Dutch if they deem the Wilders movie to be ‘blasphemous.’ Westerners do not seem to have a clue about what Muslims consider to be blasphemous. The mere depiction of Muhammad enrages Muslims, even if Wilders were to do it ‘in a respectful way.’ On the other hand, however, things that seem outrageous to Westerners will not at all be outrageous to Muslims. Wilders likes to point out that the Koran is “as intolerant and dangerous as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” If his movie shows praying Muslims next to marching Nazis, or if it compares Koran verses to anti-Semitic rants by Hitler, that may seem outrageous to Western eyes. However, a Nazi comparison, which is the worst form of libel in contemporary Holland and destroys a man’s reputation there, will hardly affect Muslim radicals who tend to agree with Hitler and who will in all likelihood take the comparison as a compliment rather than an insult.
Al-Qaeda is not going to blow The Hague to Kingdom Come for comparing Osama bin-Laden to Adolf Hitler, but they will be inclined to take revenge over a cartoon, a picture or a joke. Suppose Wilders’ movie is outrageous by our standards, but not by those of Muslim extremists. Hence, nothing happens after the release of the movie. Then Dutch public opinion will in all likelihood regard Wilders as the extremist, as someone who tries to provoke others with Nazi slurs, and the Muslim radicals as paragons of tolerance.
Obviously, Westerners – and especially elected officials such as Geert Wilders – should never be forced to take the sensitivities of other cultures into account when making public statements (be it in a film or otherwise) in their own countries. The fact that Wilders is under considerable pressure to do just that shows that the Netherlands is no longer his home country and that it has already been penetrated and colonized by another culture. There is no place anymore that Europeans can call their own. The Wilders Controversy: Do Europeans Still Belong in Europe? >>> By Thomas Landen | Tue, 2008-03-04
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
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