One Man Less: A Minor Dutch Controversy – UPDATED

Feb 22

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Posted by Michael van der Galien | 5 comments

UPDATED BELOW WITH LINKS TO IMPORTANT ARTICLES… seemingly

Most regular readers of Poligazette will know by now that I’m a Muslim, specially drawn to Sufi Islam (which doesn’t make me very popular among fundamentalists, to put it mildly). Fortunately, any time I’ve mentioned this fact on this site, I’ve received (virtually) no negative feedback. Most consider this a private matter, and therefore of little or no concern politically. As I found out last week, however, not everybody necessarily agrees.

Professor Hans Jansen and I were contributors to a new Dutch blog called Dagelijkse Standaard. He was the resident Arabic, Middle East and Islam specialist, I the American politics expert. I focused, and continue to focus, mainly on America (with the odd excursion into Turkish politics, another field of interest of mine). During one of my conversations with Jansen – I helped him publish his posts, insert links, etc. I even phoned him a couple of times to help him out with technical problems - I mentioned the fact that I am a Muslim. He responded by insulting me (he wondered, among other things how an intelligent young man like myself could “join the side that wants to destroy the West” – a pretty blatant example of prejudice, nay discrimination). As I understand it, he then emailed the owner of the site Joshua Livestro that he had to think about whether or not it was possible for him to continue defending freedom of speech on one website with a Muslim, seemingly no matter how liberal that Muslim may be.

Regular readers will probably strike this as rather odd. After all, I defend freedom in all its forms constantly and my focus is on politics, not on theological issues. In the end, after having communicated with Livestro a couple of times, Jansen said he would indeed stop writing for Dagelijkse Standaard altogether. Jansen himself says the reason for his sudden resignation was nor is my personal faith, but Livestro’s attitude towards Jansen after the first received the latter’s “have to think about” e-mail.

Whatever the case, Jansen is quite a well known character in The Netherlands. He’s an emeritus professor who advises Geert Wilders and other politicians on Islamic affairs and who is a regular guest commentator on TV on all issues related to Islam. This makes it virtually inevitable that his departure will receive some (perhaps but hopefully not a lot of) media attention here in Holland. What will be, will be. I just want to make it absolutely clear to any visitors from The Netherlands who were drawn to this site as a result of this affair that this blog nor my public appearances are about my personal faith. I’m a secularist. I look at politics from a secular, more politically conservative perspective. This post will therefore be my first and only public comment on the subject. I am an expert on American politics, not a theologian. Nor am I a spokesman for this group or another. No, I don’t understand the problem one could possibly have a problem with me being a liberal, anti-fundamentalist, open-minded Muslim who actively defends Western values like freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and equality of men and women, either. Perhaps it has something to do with the view expressed by people like Wilders that Islam is “a fascist ideology”: it’s only a small step from this to “all Muslims are fascists,” as a commenter at DS proves in reaction to Livestro’s announcement of Jansen’s departure. (For American readers, the reader writes: “A logical decision. If you use words to fight against national-socialism you don’t join forces with a national-socialist either. Someone can then claim that this national-socialist is “a good person” and doesn’t accept the most radical aspects of national-socialism, but such a defense isn’t exactly convincing.”) It’s disheartening to read, but I don’t feel the need to respond to such comments.

This is all I have to say about this subject. From now on, I want the focus again to be on (American) politics. I don’t find it – Islam, me being Muslim and / or the exact reason for Jansen’s resignation – a particularly interesting debate. This is purely a ‘yes I know this happened’ post and nothing more.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, lets talk politics again as we’re used to do.

UPDATE

It seems that some Dutch readers (via email) don’t seem to know where I stand on a variety of subjects. Therefore this update. As said, I will not add any posts to this debate. It’s not of interest to me, nor do I wish to be the subject of debate. Ideas not people matter.

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