A Failure to Communicate

Let me start with a note that I sent to Andrew Sullivan today [Friday, February 10th, 2006]. It sets up some of what I'll go into below. I don't know Andrew and he doesn't know me. I don't have anything against him, and generally agree with much of what he writes on, but I read this post of his and felt the need to respond. Hat tip to Hollandaise on spotting Sullivan's post. I don't think Sullivan is racist and don't think he's trying to provoke anything, and I'm not attempting to provoke him either, but I feel he's gone wrong with some of his definitions and assumptions. I've corrected a couple misspellings in my note and added a number of bracketed items for clarification.

Dear Andrew,

As someone who was [in the Netherlands] covering some of these issues at the time, I just wanted to jump in for a minute on the Pim Fortuyn postings you've done about Volkert Van der Graaf being a sympathizer of Islamic extremists.

First, I think you need to separate "Islamic extremists" from immigrants who happen to be from Muslim countries when referring to the Netherlands because they're two different things, though there are some of the former in the latter, surely, and that is a problem. I don't want to underplay the danger of Islamic extremism in Europe, because it is there and it is a big problem. But lumping them all into the same boat doesn't help matters at all. Of course, many of the more vocal Islamic immigrant groups such as the Arab European League do just this same thing to [caricature] themselves. And yes, there were [at least when I was there] always a lot of far-leftists marching with them at their rallies [AEL]. However, there are many moderate Islamic immigrants in Europe, though they are often not heard due to the sensationalism of the loudest and most controversial voices.

Secondly, I covered the [murder] of Fortuyn and the immediate aftermath for both the Washington Times and the Christian Science Monitor back in 2002 when the shooting took place. From what I knew then and what I think I know now, VVDG was a radical animal rights activist who shot PF over PF's proposed libertarian environmental policies, mainly about fur farming.

Again, from my understanding at the time, during the trial a year after the shootings, VVDG surprised everyone with saying that he'd murdered PF to protect Muslim immigrants. What we don't really know is if this is true. My speculation on this is that it was a ploy by VVDG to play off the political camps that had been forming at the time. Lijst Pim Fortuyn [the party Pim Fortuyn started] had begun to crumble under its leaderless weight and pro-immigrant parties became vocal again [only to later see the center-right lead Holland toward some of the more stringent immigration policies in the EU]. In a sense he may have used Islamic immigrants as "scapegoats" by saying he was protecting them from being "scapegoats" for Lijst Pim Fortuyn's rise to power. At least that was my take on it.

Most of what is known about VVDG's reasoning behind the shooting was his long history as an animal rights activist. He didn't seem to have a history of pro-Islamic extremist activism, or pro-immigrant activism, again, as far as I know.

Cheers,

Michael

Sullivan references this Wikipedia entry on Van der Graaf. This seems pretty accurate from what I can surmise and from my knowledge about how things happened.

There are a number of issues that I wanted to illuminate here by reprinting this letter, not in any gratuitous way, but hopefully to focus on some of the wider miscommunications surrounding the "cartoon crisis." Here are a couple of offerings to throw out to the court of public opinion. They seem pretty obvious to me, but in all the rhetoric flying about these days, it is often easy to forget them:

a.) Islamic extremists are not automatically equal to, nor do they equate with Muslim immigrants from Islamic countries. And,

b.) criticism of Islam, especially of the militant ideologies used by Islamic extremists, does not equal racism. One's religion does not equal one's race.

Can we agree on these? Or no?

With the first point, as is often the case of far-right groups in Europe, there is the lumping of "Islamic extremists" in with immigrants who happen to be from Islamic countries, as Sullivan does here. This is a serious mistake. It plays into the hands of militant Islamic extremists who would like to make alienated Muslim immigrants feel they are under fire from the dominant culture in Europe. This language is also increasingly on par with the far-right anti-immigrant parties in Europe, some who are outright racist, and plays into their notions as well. It polarizes the situation. There is xenophobia in Europe, there is racism, there is Islamaphobia and also a good degree of anti-Semitism. There are also Islamic extremists in Europe who would like to use these fears to their own ends.

On the second point is the framing going on from the Left in the West equating criticism of the Islamic faith (ignoring that what has sparked this has been criticism of its more militant and fundamentalist elements of that faith and that those who have reacted most violently to it are the militant and fundamentalist elements of that faith), as a form of racism or neo-imperialism. Blame multiculturalism, blame Edward Said-style post-colonial blinders, or blame knee-jerk use of the white racism card; blame what you will. Whatever the reason, it is there. The odd part of this framing is that it allows both European far-right groups and Islamic extremists more powder for their kegs, feeding their notions that this "cartoon crisis" is about race. It's not.

Another dilemma is that it portrays leftists who use this line of reasoning as hypocritical. Many secular leftists in Europe and the U.S. are the first to find any insidiousness among power plays by Christian fundamentalists (though there is certainly a lot to find) in America, but forgive and forget very similar aspects of the more fundamentalist strains of Islam. Much of this has to do with anti-Bush feelings, especially toward the Bush administration's spin and half-truths that led to the Iraq War, the "language of the crusade" that was used to gain support for the War on Terror and the War in Iraq, and the fact that a large portion of President Bush's base is hard-line Christian fundamentalist. It's a sticky spot to be. Support Bush and you support all that baggage that goes with him, or soften your stance on Islamic fundamentalism and undermine your own values? There has to be a better option than either of these.

And then there is the question of free expression. There's a big difference between lampooning and satirizing one's beliefs and doing the same to one's race, isn't there? Beliefs are a choice. Race is not. Right? That creed and race are tied together by both the far-Left and the far-Right in their critiques of the "cartoon crisis" just makes the idea that the two are inherently tied together grow into murkier and murkier proportions. Were the Mohammed cartoons racially motivated? Or were they tied to beliefs? I tend to think the latter, but then satirizing beliefs tends to work better coming from one who also holds them or has held them in the past. This isn't the case in the "cartoon crisis" in which the satire comes from the dominant culture toward the minority culture within Denmark. This is where it gets a tinge of authority oppressing minority. Jews making jokes about Jews, Blacks making jokes about Blacks, White red-necks making jokes about White red-necks, etc., etc., etc., are not-uncommon. When the jokes come from outside the group, from the other, things tend to get a little uncomfortable.

Yet this doesn't mean defending free expression is giving in to racism, xenophobia, bigotry, or whatnot. Defending free expression defends the right of anyone to speak out, whether they are right or wrong, whether they hold the most altruistic or the basest of motives. Defending free expression also defends the right to critique whatever is in need of the microscope, whether it be the heterodox or the absolutist. Threat of violence (death? imprisonment? bodily harm?) debases that free expression, equally stifles both the bigoted and the pure of heart.

For further coverage, check in at my blog The Periscope.