December 10, 2002
Preaching and practicing

Keeping track of what the sheikhs and imams in the Arab world are preaching, Little Green Footballs is performing a valuable service in informing us of what the Religion of Peace is saying to its subjects. Here in the Netherlands, Saudi-funded schools promulgating similar messages. The problem also extends to Dutch mosques, where imams have preaching the same litany of hate. The current affairs program NOVA secretly recorded some of the sermons last June. The imams in mosques in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Tilburg were filmed calling for the destruction of the enemies of Islam while glorifying martyrdom. One of them called for Allah to destroy Islam's enemies, naming President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon. After an investigation, the public prosecutor has decided not to press charges against these imams, as they deemed the chances for a successful conclusion to a trial to be small. After all, the reasoning goes, the imams called on Allah, and not their congregation to destroy the enemies of Islam.

At what point do you cross the line that separates freedom of expression and incitement to violence? The structural poisoning of the mind in which these imams engage is a big danger for the long-term survival of a liberal civil society in Europe. The traditional antidote to hateful speech is not banning it, but confronting it and defeating it by argument. This is difficult to achieve, since many of the muslims who go to the mosques live in their own cultural cocoon. With the satellite dishes, they only watch Moroccan or Arabic TV. Too many of them still don't speak or understand Dutch, and their entire social lives are wrapped in an inward-looking closed-off circle with nary a Dutch influence on it. So how to get through to them?

It is clear to me that if we don't defang the poisonous imams, the situation will sooner or later descend into civil unrest and ethnic strife. Europe's history is an indication of how ugly these things can become. The best way of dealing with the problem is to cut off the flow of money, which is still coming from places like Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Dutch economy requires a much-needed overhaul, and the prime place to start is the hypertrophic welfare state, which has been sucking the lifeblood out of private enterprise. It has provided perverse incentives for both native Dutchmen as well as immigrants of all kinds to prefer doing nothing over actually finding a productive job. Time is starting to run out though, on both counts.

Posted by qsi at December 10, 2002 09:37 PM | TrackBack (0)
Read More on Islamism , The Netherlands
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