Holland Is Everywhere

The murder of Theo van Gogh was bestial. Shot, stabbed, skewered. Two weeks after the drama in Amsterdam, the public is still in shock. And one could get the impression that a Dutchman from Morocco has brought a new dimension of politically motivated violence to the heart of Europe.

In Holland this view of the events may be legitimate. But in Germany the infinite dismay seems strange.

Because, remember: Between 1989 and 1993, German citizens displayed alarming serenity when 100 Angolans, Turks, Romanians, leftists and homeless people were burned alive, maimed, and beat into a pulp of flesh and bones by this country's own young Nazis. Or they tried to grill alive dozens of Vietnamese. The citizens of Rostock found the latter particularly amusing, which could be witnessed in their applause captured on film.

There is no way to justify what happened in Amsterdam. And everything is being done to punish the perpetrator and to combat the ideological environment from which he came.

There is no proof that multicultural society has failed

But despite the general uproar, we must be aware that this incident does not mark a new dimension of violence. It does not provide proof of a failed multicultural society or for the aggressivity of Islam in Europe.

It is an ideologically motivated crime just like hundreds of others in the past twenty years in Sweden, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. Crimes by racists and neo-Nazis whose world views and constructions of the enemy resemble those of the Islamofascists.

And while the former base their ideology of inequality on notions of race and the latter on religion, they are nonetheless united in their hatred of women, their anti-Semitism, their demonstrative stylization of masculinity, and a rejection of democracy, liberalism, and autonomous sexuality, to name just a few communalities.

Parallels among neofascists and radical Islamists

Given the parallels in the ways of thinking and feeling among neofascists and radical Islamists, it is surprising that these communalities are rarely articulated. The experiences and strategies developed in the past to combat neo-Nazi and right radical groups could be helpful in confronting radical Islamists.

But instead of doing something that makes sense, the public has engaged in debates that lend the impression that Europe is being conquered by Islam as it once was by the Huns.

Anyone who has been following the debates and the many voices heard in these debates in recent weeks must be in a state of anxiety and fear. But their fear is not a result of the challenge posed by Islamists, which Europeans have long ignored in their childish naivete and their blue-eyed trust in God.

The debates in recent weeks are ultimately about the enlightened and democratic existence of Europe.

The image of the bad Muslim

A dangerous brew has been concocted: Islam, Islamism, Turkey's entry into the EU, Muslims, parallel societies, the oppression of women, the Middle East conflict, the death of Arafat, the end of multicultural society, Islamist anti-Semitism—all these have been thrown into a single pot and cooked up into an image of the bad Muslim, Turk, Arab, i.e. our neighbor, as a security risk.

Germany is changing. Unlike the period following September 11, 2001 when civil society here resisted open hostility toward Islam, the volume is now being turned up.

This society is increasingly moving toward an atmosphere of Islamaphobia and blatent anti-Turkish and anti-Arabic racism.

The role of the media

The media are a driving force in this development. Judging from the relevant debates in quality newspapers, it seems a consensus has been reached that not only the Arabic-Muslim world but also Arabs in and of themselves are barbaric, incapable of reform, and simply incompatible with modernity.

As a result, Arabic intellectuals are only considered participants in these debates when they confirm the degradation of their society. Dignity is at stake in this game.

The challenge of Islamic anti-Semitism

Another example: When the problem of Islamic anti-Semitism was finally addressed in Germany a few months ago, this dialog was long overdue. But anyone who might have expected the problem to be examined in a serious and scholarly way and analyzed in its qualitative and quantitative dimensions will be disappointed.

Party-related and civil foundations as well as academic organizations have shown no interest in taking up this challenge. It is quite apparent that assertions and hypotheses are better suited for politics than the quoting of sound facts.

The anti-Muslim crusade

"Experts" such as the Orientalist Hans-Peter Raddatz—whose arguments and word choice cannot be distinguished from that of right extremist publications—have been able to increase their market value.

For a biased newspaper such as Die Welt, which subscribes to the anti-Muslim crusade, no thesis is too abstruse to print. But even the Hamburg weeklies such as Die Zeit have contributed to a dangerous polarization in domestic politics with pseudo-provocative leading articles by their editors that are steeped in the assumption that "we ought to be able to tell it like it is to the Turks and Arabs."

If we take seriously the many descriptions that have been published recently, we would come up with the following image of Germany: The country is inhabited by flipped out Turks and Arabs who refuse to learn to read and write, who force their daughters into marriages against their will, and who don't hesitate to murder in their fight for the establishment of a religious state in their parallel worlds.

Get rid of Muslims before civil war breaks out

Politically, so it seems from the media coverage, the only thing to do is to figure out how to quickly get a handle on the situation, or, alternatively, how to get rid of the Muslims before civil war breaks out.

As a journalist who has been covering the conflicts in this intercultural society for decades, who has sought hand-to-hand combat in public debate with neo-Nazis and Islamists, and who is an inhabitant of a section of Kreuzberg where more than sixty percent of my neighbors are Muslims, I allow myself the following observation: What we have seen in recent days in public television and in the quality newspapers regarding multicultural society is the most nonsense I have heard in a long time.

The atmosphere reminds me of the early 1980s when the political and journalistic elite in Germany cultivated an anti-Turkish discourse. Just to remind you: The consequences of this were racist murder, the mobilization of people on the street, and a domestic political climate that was poisoned for years to come.

Eberhard Seidel

© TAZ 2004

This article was previously published in the Germany daily TAZ, die Tageszeitung, 16 November 2004