Marked for Death – The Comfort of Wilders' War Against Islam

Introduction

Muslims Debate asks Geert Wilders why he become anti Islam and what is his message to the Muslims | Muslims Debate

Without individual freedom, it is not surprising that the notion of man as a responsible agent is not much developed in Islam. Muslims tend to be very fatalistic. Perhaps – let us certainly hope so – only a few radicals take the Koranic admonition to wage jihad on the unbelievers seriously. Nevertheless, most Muslims never raise their voice against the radicals. This is the “fearful fatalistic apathy” Churchill referred to.
The author Aldous Huxley, who lived in North Africa in the 1920s, made the following observation:

“About the immediate causes of things – precisely how they happen – they seem to feel not the slightest interest. Indeed, it is not even admitted that there are such things as immediate causes: God is directly responsible for everything. ‘Do you think it will rain?’ you ask pointing to menacing clouds overhead. ‘If God wills,’ is the answer. You pass the native hospital. ‘Are the doctors good?’ ‘In our country,’ the Arab gravely replies, in the tone of Solomon, ‘we say that doctors are of no avail. If Allah wills that a man die, he will die. If not, he will recover.’ All of which is profoundly true, so true, indeed, that is not worth saying. To the Arab, however, it seems the last word in human wisdom. … They have relapsed – all except those who are educated according to Western methods – into pre-scientific fatalism, with its attendant incuriosity and apathy.”

Islam deprives Muslims of their freedom. That is a shame, because free people are capable of great things, as history has shown. The Arab, Turkish, Iranian, Indian, Indonesian peoples have tremendous potential. It they were not captives of Islam, if they could liberate themselves from the yoke of Islam, if they would cease to take Muhammad as a role model and if they got rid of the evil Koran, they would be able to achieve great things which would benefit not only them but the entire world.

As a Dutch, a European and a Western politician, my responsibility is primarily to the Dutch people, to the Europeans and the West. However, since the liberation of the Muslims from Islam, will benefit all of us, I wholeheartedly support Muslims who love freedom. My message to them is clear: “Fatalism is no option; ‘Inch’ Allah’ is a curse; Submission is a disgrace.

The above quote is taken from an op-ed Dutch radical nativist and anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders wrote a while ago for Muslimsdebate.com. It also sums up the way Wilders treats the relation between Islam as a set of doctrines and duties and Islam as local practice in his recently published book Geert Wilders, Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me. (Foreword by Mark Steyn. Washington 2012, xviii + 286 pages, US$ 27.95.)

Wilders’ War

In this book he presents himself as someone who did his homework; his take on Islam is based upon his own personal experiences and research. He read books, consulted experts and so on. And all the ‘true’ experts (politicians, writers, intellectuals such Churchill and, mentioned here above, Aldous Huxley) draw the same conclusion: Islam is a backward, barbaric, violent religion and its book is written, not by God, but by an evil man: Muhammad (see also his speech). It shows Wilders as someone who is not afraid to call things by their name and who, subsequently, is the target of maltreatment by Dutch authorities and death threats. With this book Wilders attempts to insert himself in a line of ‘islamcritics’ such as Hirsi Ali who explain Islam to the audience based upon their own experiences with Muslims drawing upon and reproducing a singular narrative account of Islam whereby Islam is the monolithic system that explains the behaviour of all Muslims (albeit that Wilders is not an (ex-)Muslim). As he explains himself:

Leading a life like that got me thinking about some big questions. Western societies guarantee their citizens something that no other civilizations grant them: privacy. It’s one of those things you tend to take for granted unless you lose it. The importance of privacy is unique to Western society with its notion of the sovereign individual. In stark contrast to Western norms, Islam robs people of their privacy. Islamic societies—including Islamic enclaves in the West—exert tight social control that is indicative of the totalitarian character of Islam.

In his book Wilders calls himself one of the most pro-American Dutch politicians and in order to prove the threat of Islam he refers to the American war of independence. Like the Americans who liberated themselves from their British oppressors,the West now has to liberate itself from Islamization; the Islamic project of colonizing the West. He sees himself and his party as the enablers of a sea of change after years of ‘multicultural rotting’ and ‘parallel Islamic societies’. He criticizes American president Obama for being ‘naïve’ and in particular attacks his Cairo speech on June 4, 2009 where, according to Wilders, he showed moral weakness and appeasement and was as such furthering Islam’s political agenda and forsaking brave Muslims who stand up against the intolerant Islam.

Wilders’ message throughout the book can be easily summarized. Islam is waging a war against the West and ‘our’ individual liberties are at stake. It is a conflict between two civilizations: Europe and America on one side and Islam on the other side. At the moment Islam is trying to (re-)colonize the West with collaborating leftist multiculturalists in Europe and America who are limiting free speech in order to silence all criticism of Islam and destroying ‘our’ traditions and cultural identity’ with their cultural relativism. We are now at a final stage with Europe severely weakened and Islam as the last fortress of Western civilization being led by a weak president who has already submitted to Islam. And this threat of Islam is imminent as Mark Steyn argues in the foreword of the book:

Geert Wilders is not ready to surrender without exercising his right to know, to utter, and to argue freely—in print, on screen, and at the ballot box. We should cherish that spirit, while we can.

The widespread logic of Islamophobia

Now Wilders’ neo-fascist and islamophobic rhetoric would not deserve much attention here (and besides that, the book is rather boring and also shallow about his own personal predicaments) if it was not for three reasons. First of all he is a major politician in the Netherlands and still has a large constituency although he has suffered some setbacks recently. Secondly, although Wilders is very clear about his rejection of violence, his ideology does feed some extremists such as the Breivik case taught us. Furthermore his comparison of Islam with communism, but in particular nazism and fascism can work as an indirect call to violence; nazism and fascism were not beaten by drinking tea with nazis and fascists but by bombing the hell out of them. Thirdly, Wilders may be a radical nativist, but his islamophobic logic is widespread among a large part of the Dutch population and also among mainstream political parties. Allow me to clarify this latter point a little more.

I regard Islamophobia as a structural phenomenon producing and expressing a categorization and hierchisation of groups of people that are subsequently denied access or granted conditional access to the Dutch moral community. This Islamophobia is based upon cultural differentialism, an anxiety over the future of the Dutch moral community with its ideal of secular and sexual liberties and securitization. All three dimensions have emerged throughout the 1990s; years before Wilders launched his islamophobic campaigns and exactly when in the Netherlands a so called purple coalition was in power: conservative liberals, progressive liberals and social democrats.

1. Cultural differentialism: This is based upon and the result of ‘culture talk’, explained by Mahmood Mamdani as the idea that culture came into being
   

   […] only at the beginning of creation, as some extraordinary, prophetic act. After that, it seems Muslims just conformed to culture. According to some, our culture seems to have no history, no politics, and no debates, so that all Muslims are just plain bad. According to others, there is a history, a politics, even debates, and there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. In both versions, history seems to have petrified into a lifeless custom of an antique people who inhabit antique lands. Or could it be that culture here stands for habit, for some kind of instinctive activity with rules that are inscribed in early founding texts, usually religious, and mummified in early artifacts?

   Wilders follows this culture logic to its extreme by stating that Islam is the enemy of Western civilization in general and Dutch culture and identity in particular. This notion of a singular Islam that must be exposed and subsequently defeated is a recurring theme in his thought and that of most islamophobes. Most politicians and political parties however have a more disguised version wherein Islam is divided within itself between radicals and moderates (liberals). Nevertheless also the more subtle version sees the world as divided into monolithic culture blocs that are at odds with each other and that determine the behaviour of people who are the ‘bearers’ of that culture. It is the logic of irreducible difference that permeates almost all accounts about Islam; in that sense Islamophobia is racialized culture discourse.

2. Secondly, what is meant with Western civilization and Dutch culture? In principal, every citizen in the Netherlands is treated equally but the idea of cultural differentialism creates a citizen trap which becomes clear when we take the idea of moral community into account. As in every nation-state the Dutch political elite had its own strategies and programs attempting to homogenize the Dutch population by linking nation, religion and virtue. The secular regimes promoted the idea of virtuous citizens realizing their moral selves by conforming to prevailing ideas of what constituted a good life and doing good acts on behalf of the welfare of the nation-state. For a long time belonging to the moral community was based upon religion and worldview, or more in particular belonging to a religious or socialist pillar in society. This changed from the 1960s onwards when, as popular belief calls it, the Dutch freed themselves from the burden of religion. Belonging to the Dutch community became increasingly based upon accepting secular and sexual freedoms. In the 1980s and 1990s Muslims were already seen as not willing to integrate, not treating women equally, being influenced by foreign powers, having a loyalty towards their country of birth instead of the Netherlands and a preference for non-democratic political rule, and not recognizing and respecting the separation of church and state; a categorization imposed upon them that became more compelling when cultural differentialism became dominant in the 1990s and more focused on Islam after 9/11. It is now in particular Muslims who are feared because of their alleged opposition to these freedoms and their religiosity, which remind native Dutch people of the (religious) constraints of the past with regard to these freedoms and creates a situation in which Muslim are Dutch citizens but not part of the Dutch moral community; they will always remain foreign to a certain degree. The idea of a Dutch moral community that is hegemonic these days celebrates an ideal of a community of citizens who adhere to secular and sexual liberties with Muslims as the ultimate other.
3. Thirdly, because Muslims are insiders and outsiders at the same time, their is distrust and anxiety because people fear they will take over society from within, allowed by the leftist elite that is too lax because of a mistaken preference for multiculturalism. This fear is exacerbated because of terrorist attacks, problems with migrant youth and so on, in particular after 9/11 and the murder on Van Gogh in 2004. The result is that Islam has become identified as a security issue and not only because of the threat of terrorism but also of radicalization of Muslims that threatens social cohesion and Dutch values. As my colleague Beatrice de Graaf points out, not only islam has become a security issue, security is also culturalized and counter-radicalization measures do not only aim at protecting people from terrorist attacks but also to protect the idea of the Dutch moral community.

Notwithstanding the differences among the political parties, but most parties to a large extent subscribe to this specific logic of Islamophobia. The main difference is that most mainstream parties choose a strategy of pacification of Muslims in order not to endanger social cohesion. In order to do this they make a distinction between a ‘good Islam’ and a ‘bad Islam’ to use Mamdani’s words. As Yahya Birt explained, based upon Mamdani, ‘Good Islam’ can be relegated to specific areas in the public sphere, but when Islam is experienced as entering into the public sphere in an assertive or even aggressive way, it can be typified as ‘bad Islam.’ ‘Radical’ Islam divides the Muslim community and separates its members from their identity as integrated, tolerant and liberal citizens (cf. Birt 2006: 294). Wilders and his Freedom Party make no such distinction and for them Islam in its essence is evil. Wilders criticizes the pacification strategy of the mainstream party (in his book he extends this argument to the US, and for example criticizes US president Obama for being ‘naive’) and opts for a strong confrontational style and defends this by referring to freedom of speech (something Islam doesn’t understand anyway). He likes to portray himself as the lone brave voice who stands up for the native Dutch and is surrounded by collaborators, useful idiots and cunning leftists who only see Muslims as victims of Islamophobia. Like in his movie Fitna Wilders does not feel the need to support his claims by facts. What he does, like in Fitna, is selectively pick and choose violent and threatening events from all over the world and more in particular threats and violence against him (even when in the book there is no proof in all cases it were Muslims and/or migrants). In his rhetoric Wilders usually makes two points: first, whatever bad Muslims do it comes from Islam and Muslims do bad things because of Islam, and second, he is out there, alone, to fight his heroic battle to rescue freedom.

Now his rhetoric is easy to dismiss and to be exposed for the nonsense it actually is. We could point to the double standards applied by the West with regard to the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Promoting democracy in public but also supporting the regimes and their practices against their own citizens. We could also for example point to the revolutionairies in the Middle East who stood up for freedom, hope and fair chances. Not only do they challenge Wilders’ framework but one would expect, if Wilders is that freedom loving, he would have supported them.  But no, during a meeting in the European Parliament his party refused to pay respect to those innocent civilians who died during the uprisings. This exposes maybe the most disturbing element of his rhetoric, he is not really concerned with the plight of Muslims; a dead Muslim is only a service to his politics of fear, distrust and hate.

The preferred perspective is made visible and alternatives invisible. Wilders’ verbal and visual messages are carefully constructed and interact with social and cultural environments in ways which maximize their acceptance. The images of the Quran, terrorist attacks, headlines, a woman with Quranic verses are distortions and reductions of a multidimensional Islamic tradition symbolizing the more abstract idea of the ‘threat of Islam’. The power of this rhetoric and the bias it produces is, among other things, that it makes the message almost incontestable because reality is reduced in such a way as to be seen as inherent in the way things are. This rhetoric, because it refers back to actual incidents in which Muslims played a role and is informed by the widespread logic of Islamophobia, is predictable at the same time that it provides authority to the central message that Islam is a religion that incites to violence and hatred. This way the rhetoric of Wilders creates, expresses, and validates an opposition between the enlightened, tolerant Dutch and a dangerous, irrational, foreign and violent Muslim.

The comfort of the left
It may be relaxing and rewarding for leftist intellectuals and others to debunk Wilders , for his unfounded and outrageous distortions and to see him as a sign of a rise of right wing extremism in Europe but as said the triple paradigm shift is something that no political party in the Netherlands has managed to escape, notwithstanding some important differences among them. This is why conservative liberals and christian-democrats managed to work with Wilders in the, collapsed, government. This is why immigration policy was set up and implemented by social-democrats. Why the GreenLeft party also feels the need to join the debate on headscarves. This government did not collapse over the attempts to ban face-veils, or the (failed) attempt to ban ritual slaughter or over the new integration policy that in fact lifted cultural differentialism to government policy. No it ‘only’ collapsed because of disagreement over severe budget cuts. And it is not only the former government that expresses the need for a liberal islam but also the left wing political parties. The main difference between them and Wilders’ PVV is the latter having a much more confrontational style towards Muslims while the former employ strategies of pacification in order to maintain social cohesion. A recent report by Amnesty International shows how widespread the Islamophobic logic is and, even more important, how it is part of mainstream thought and normalized (I do wish however AI was a little more critical about the polls the refer to). According to AI “Governments should not introduce general bans on religious and cultural symbols and dress, and should end the practice of restricting the right of Muslims to establish places of worship.” and in particular the Netherlands should make its anti-discrimination laws congruent with European guidelines that also forbid discrimination on political and religious grounds.

The distinction most mainstream political parties and opinion leaders make between ‘good Islam’ and ‘bad Islam’ is certainly more nuanced than the position of Wilders, but is still based upon the three paradigms that constitute the logic of Islamophobia: cultural differentialism, the idea of a secular moral community and the securitization of islam and culturalization of security. What Wilders never needed to do was to make migrants, and Muslim migrants in particular, second class citizens. They do have citizenship rights but are not regarded as part of the moral community. Could it be that the ‘polite Islamophobia‘ of the mainstream parties is more damaging in the long run than Wilders’ rhetoric?