Muslims and multiculturalism in the Netherlands – A Case of Cultural Masochism?

A fascinating article of John Vinocur in the New York times about the ‘failing integration of its increasinly large and alienated Muslim communities’. According to the writer Europe is in denial about its problems with Muslims. Only when something happens people wake up. He refers to the Netherlands as an exemplary case:
With Muslims, Europe Sees No Problem, and That’s the Problem – NYTimes.com

Then something happens. A conflict comes into focus that, beyond its particulars, raises the question of the ultimate compatibility of Islamic communities in Western environments. An issue that, most comfortably, is kept vague, suddenly demands that Europe — in this case, the Netherlands — draw the line. But where is the line?

What has taken place here is that Frits Bolkestein, the former leader of the Liberal Party, which now heads the Dutch government, has advised “recognizable Jews, orthodox Jews” that their children should emigrate from the Netherlands to Israel or the United States. He said, “I see no future for them here because of anti-Semitism, above all among the Moroccan Dutch, whose numbers continue to grow.”

The remark last month twice shocked the Netherlands.

There was the statement itself, resounding in the context of a national history in which almost the entire pre-World War II Jewish community of 150,000 was wiped out by the Nazis.

More, there was Mr. Bolkestein’s view that the Dutch state was unlikely to deal successfully with the problem and his uncertainty that the Dutch people would demand its resolution. These were matters, he told me later, that reflect his profound and overarching concern about the long-term influence of Muslim populations on all of European society.

This dark vision has particular impact here because of Mr. Bolkestein’s reputation among many of the Dutch as kind of seer concerning Muslim immigration. When he suggested in a speech in 1991 that integration had to mean compromises from newcomers concerning their old identities, he was denounced as a bigot. In the intervening 20 years, large parts of the Dutch political spectrum, and much of Europe’s, have evolved toward a position (closer to his) that regards respect of national law and tradition as more necessary than any further European accommodation to a growing Muslim community.

Concerning the harassment of orthodox Jews in public places, Mr. Bolkestein, who is not Jewish, says that it is an “outrage” and “a tragedy” and that he sees similar circumstances existing in France and Sweden.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a Liberal, has responded to Mr. Bolkestein by acknowledging that the problem is one of “great symbolic impact.”

He said of the Netherlands’ anti-Semites, “We stand shoulder to shoulder and stand against these asses.” And, “We want to win society back from the bastards.”

That sounds very much like an admission at the top that Dutch society has been moved or has retreated to someplace it doesn’t want to be.

But Mr. Bolkestein’s pessimism runs deeper. Over the years, he has instead pointed to trends in the country’s population that he believes drive the Dutch/Muslim interface.

Currently, based on official 2006 census figures, the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute estimates Muslims, essentially Moroccans and Turks, represent about 6 percent of the population (with criminality rates among Moroccan youth running about five times that of their Dutch peers). The institute projects the Muslim share of the population will represent 7.6 percent in 2050 — or, with an increased birthrate, 11 percent.

Population growth that is faster than the native population’s, extremists’ murderous plots, sharp-edged disaffection for their adopted countries among third-generation Muslim males, and societies where large segments of the ethnic majority insist they feel increasingly less at home — what should the Netherlands, and by extrapolation Europe, do?

Referring to Germany and France then he states that the ‘School of Acquiescence and Denial’ has some important intellectual followers such as Jurgen Habermas and André Glucksmann. In the Netherlands, according to the author, the leader of the Labor Party is such a proponent he dares to point to the direct of Muslim suffering and exclusion.Because of this denial by these intellectuals and politicians the way has been paved for the far right to take up the ‘Muslim issue’. The article does not offer a solution is to be read more or less as a complaint against multiculturalism but in fact does not really explain what that is. He makes some reference to the fact that the deniers think that there are ‘imaginary conflicts’ and that they think migrants are not supposed to adapt to the majority culture and adopt its customs. An idea former Dutch conservative liberal leader Bolkestein labelled as ‘cultural masochism’.

There is lot to be said about this crappy article. From minor things (Dear author, ‘imaginary conflicts’ does not mean that there are no conflicts, but refers to conflicts with, in this case Muslims, whether we know them or not and/or whether we experienced it ourselves or not) to major things. The author does not take the transformation of the Dutch liberal approach to its non-Dutch citizens and migrants post-9/11, and particularly in the aftermath of the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. There was a shift already in the 1990s in public attitude along with the focus in the media and in politics on the notion of ‘integration,’ and, after 9/11, the emergence of a rude and harsh discourse on multiculturalism, Islam and migrants.

Some researchers and policy-makers viewed the Dutch approach to migrants as a revised form of pillarization: the multicultural model. In particular, the principle of retention of cultural identity is seen as an important feature of minority policy in the 1980s based upon the idea of religious freedom and autonomy. In theory this means that the state should not interfere with the identity expressions of these groups. This idea of Dutch multiculturalism based upon pillarization is not that strange. The pillarized model enabled the state to closely monitor and regulate what religious groups were doing. This model sets the parameters for the continuing participation of religious groups in public life. Nevertheless, perceiving the Dutch integration model as a form of pillarization can be questioned. Others, like Vink make a strong case however argueing that there is no such thing as a pillarized Dutch integration policy, or a multicultural model. Dutch integration policy recognized the importance of cultural identity, but the emphasis always was on integration. Dutch policy reports on integration explicitly denied an unequivocal right for migrants to express their identity and outright rejected a relativist notion of identity. Stimulating activities contributing to the retention of cultural identity were seen as a matter for the organizations themselves and not part of government policy. Another factor is the degree of institutionalization of Islam in the Netherlands which might not be comparable to that of the pillarized system.

The collapse of the pillarization system on the one hand meant an important disadvantage for Muslims in building up an Islamic infrastructure; they could not receive the same funding as churches had in the past. On the other hand, it meant that the Dutch state had to reorganize and redefine its relationship with the churches concerning religious pastoral services to the army, Christian schools, ringing of church bells in public, and so on. Muslims as well as Humanists, Hindus and Jews were recognized as participants and stakeholders in the debates about these matters. Because of their position as outsiders to the Dutch moral community, the presence of Muslims merged Dutch secularism with minority policies to promote the integration of migrants. It has been in particular Dutch minority policies (set up after the violent actions of young Moluccans in the 1970s) and, later on, integration policies that have served to recognize Islam and provide for its institutionalization in Dutch society. The aim was to ‘alter’ the development of a Muslim community towards a ‘more liberal ‘Dutch’ direction, that is, against orthodoxism. As Rath et al. (1999: 61) stated, ‘Officials and politicians wanted Muslims organized in the fashion that was viewed as acceptable and efficient in the Netherlands, i.e., with representative organizations or in coordinating bodies with approachable spokesmen, as if the Muslims in the Netherlands constitute a coherent community’ (my italics). The key issue is, of course, the notion of ‘acceptable and efficient’according to the standards of the Dutch state. The state funded several ‘minority organizations’ and established consultative bodies through which the government would discuss policy issues with representatives of minority groups. Although the formation of a single representative body of Muslims proved problematic over the years, the state managed to co-opt ethnic elites in policy-making structure. Religious freedom and autonomy for religious groups were turned into the principles of integration, with ‘retention of cultural identity’ according to the logic of the integration. Minority groups had the same rights as other ‘identity groups’ as far as public subsidies for broadcasting, education and welfare activities were concerned.

Muslims perfectly adjusted to this system. Statham et al. (2005) show that most claims and demands made by Muslims were acculturative rather than dissociative and controversial. Muslims established Islamic schools, two Islamic broadcasting companies, legal arrangements for halal slaughtering of animals, and special Islamic cemeteries, usually based upon the same principle that guided the pillar system. If Jews and Christians had the right to set up schools, make arrangements for slaughtering, and so on, Muslims had the same rights, too. Denying such rights, it was believed, could possibly lead to politicization and was seen as reprehensible. Foreign influence (through funding)was hindered, although, for example, the Turkish Diyanet met sympathy because, as Rath et al. make clear, it was assumed that their Islam was a ‘liberal’ one compared to others. Much of the institutionalization of Islam in the Netherlands took place in the 1990s. For example, constructing and building new mosques was often supported in a variety of ways. However, these perhaps somewhat idealistic ideas, taken for granted in the 1990s, became discarded after 2001. From 9/11 onwards the newly built mosques were increasingly seen as symbols of Muslim nostalgia and as examples of Dutch culture giving way to Islamization.

In sum, whether the Dutch model of integration policies was multiculturalist or not (I agree with Vink mentioned above for the national policies, but have some doubt with regard to local policies) the situation is certainly more complicated than the author of the New York Times article suggests. In a chapter in a recent book of Haideh Moghissi and Halleh Ghorashi (on which this post is partly based) I explain this in more detail, also referring to the establishment of counter-radicalization policies). The Dutch have tried to incorporate migrants and given Dutch history it was easy for migrants to organize themselves on the bases of religion (instead of on the bases of race or ethnicity such as in the UK). The Dutch government supported that so that they could establish national representatives in a way that fits Dutch model of compromises and negotiations. The Dutch have always tried within that model to monitor and regulate migrant religion into a ‘liberal’ fashion; an approach that has become more compelling with the rise of populist and anti-Islam politicians and an increasing emphasis on cultural integration as a pre-condition for migrants to acquire formal and informal citizenship.