In the aftermath of the dissemination of the film Fitna by maverick Dutch politician Geert Wilders, La Libre Belgique, a Belgian newspaper, published an article containing certain reflections from teaching staff on the difficulties they claim they encounter on a daily basis with children from Muslim backgrounds in Belgian schools. This article claims that Muslim children reject certain “values” which are supposedly “core” to European society, and then goes on to make an amalgam between eating pork and celebrating Easter, and rejection of the principle of liberal education itself. It’s not a very enlightening piece, but it set me thinking.
Apparently “Islam is invoked as a value above the law”. And what is the Western canon of natural law based on? What did Thomas of Aquinas say? Are we sure we are in a world of positive law and value-free jurisprudence? Do we want to be?
I think it is fine and a good idea to defend some values. But certainly not by confusing what is important with what is necessarily culturally colored and doubtless – if it was spelt out – would include a lot of “values” that I categorically reject myself.
One contributor to this article is surprised that there is a “lack of demand for assimilation”. I wonder where in the world there is any such demand. Don’t we all want to be recognized for what makes us unique? Isn’t a minimum level of respect a precondition for dialogue and social life?
Finally, one Maroccan lady is cited as believing that society is giving up on the very values that motivated her to emigrate to Europe in the first place. This is banal apocalypticism, but hers is the only voice that evokes a certain sympathy.
This article is marked by a profound hatred of which its authors are certainly entirely unconscious and probably insufficiently self-critical to understand. It is not characterized by any of the values I suppose to underlie a liberal society. And this, precisely, is the problem – the problem the article identifies is in the minds of the ruling class, the established bourgeoisie, not in the minds of the rebels, who respond mechanically. There is, indeed, nothing to emulate or to respect in this type of attitude, and thus it is not surprising that it be rejected. I reject it myself; the only difference may be in what I would like to see in its place.
My position on this is as follows: trying to counteract the so-called (with vast exaggeration) “islamization” of society is not possible by opposing to it the weak compromises that humanism has historically made with religion in Europe and the New World and now is unable any longer to perceive. These compromises have led to a system of practical values which is far from universal in nature and, thus, unless we are prepared to revisit them, a certain level of conflict is inevitable. However, I am not against compromise between humanism and religion. To achieve this compromise we need to know what religion is. When we know what it is, we can respect it, and when we respect it, we can pass beyond it.
In this regard, we have to admire the French. The unrelenting doctrine of laicism in public life seems like a mantra at times, but when you realize that to get a decent education in Belgium you need to put up with crucifixes on the wall – a potent symbol of the one force in society that has systematically placed itself above science and debate and done a lot to hinder both – you start to appreciate what is at stake.
I would like to state that I am rather certain that Islam is, on balance, a positive rather than negative force in the life of Muslims by defending values that are worth defending and that we only fail to perceive because we take them in our society for granted. This blindness is devoid of historical perspective. Islam in the life of the state seems to be another matter entirely, as does Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and (perhaps even) Buddhism in the life of the states that have given these religions a privileged position.
There are very good reasons why religion performs better in private piety than in institutions with coercive power. Religion plays a role as a repository of spiritual values, the values which are truly universal, like wonderment, respect, love. As a repository, it is opposable to the individual. This provides a corrective to other forces which may pull him or her in the direction of brutality. But it presupposes power, authority, bureaucracy; and thus at a certain point, for a certain individual, it hinders rather than assists spiritual growth and access to the source of the values from which religion itself springs. This trade-off occurs at different points for different religions in different places at different points. But it remains a trade-off. If we have no respect for what is true in the world’s religions, we have absolutely no position of moral authority from which to construct a social framework to support greater individual liberty and a more truly moral society.
If we want to achieve a better society in Europe given the fact of multiculturalism (and its indisputable benefits), there is only one thing to do, which Geert Wilders appears to have no inkling of. We need systematically to criticize, with immense love, feeling and respect, the role of the church and of Christianity itself in the making of our social institutions, both formal and informal, and make this criticism as public as we can.
In other words, we can only criticize our traditions, we cannot criticize others’ on their behalf. Only then are they likely to respect us and to perceive, in the construction of a just society, a common labor and a common goal.