Ziauddin Sardar: "Nederland ontzegt zijn moslims tolerantie"

15 december 2005    Lees de reacties   

Lonken nieuwe pogroms?

De Pakistaans-Britse schrijver Ziauddin Sardar, hoogleraar, filmer en cultuurcriticus, organiseert een korte zoektocht door Duitsland, Nederland, België en Frankrijk en rapporteert vervolgens over ‘islamofobie’. Op 5 december 2005, publiceert The Statesman de nieuwe bevindingen van Ziauddin Sardar. Onder de onheilspellende kop The next Holocaust ontvouwt Sardar dat “islamofobie” “extreem” virulent is in heel Europa. Sardar voerde enkele gesprekjes in Eindhoven, die de illustratie vormen bij een vernietigend oordeel over Nederland. Wat schrijft hij en welke bronnen raadpleegde Sardar in Nederland?

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Throughout my journey, from Germany to the Netherlands, onwards to Belgium and finally into France – the object of much recent attention – I meet people all too ready to describe Muslims in the colours of darkness. Islamophobia is not a British disease: it is a common, if diverse, European phenomenon. It is the singular rock against which the tide of European liberalism crashes.

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“She has a Moroccan boyfriend, yet…”

Over de toestand in Nederland haalt Sardar allereerst enkele pittige uitspraken aan van een taxichauffeuse. Deze vrouw met de (onwaarschijnlijke) naam Kim de Peuyssenaece zegt onder meer: “Marokkanen zijn meestal crimineel” en “ze vernielen ons land”.

Across the border into the Netherlands and to Eindhoven, a lively cultural city with a young population, where fear of Muslims is equally evident. There are fewer than 5,000 Muslims in Eindhoven and they are all hidden away in the Woensel district. But try to get a taxi driver to take you there. Kim de Peuyssenaece, our driver, is adamant: “It’s a dangerous area where you could get killed,” she says. She has a Moroccan boyfriend, whose picture she displays on her mobile phone, yet she dismisses Moroccans as “mostly criminals” who are “ruining our country”.

“A tall, aggressive Moroccan”

Sardar’s tweede gesprekspartner is “a tall, aggressive Moroccan”. Nabij de rosse buurt van Eindhoven runt deze de “Safrak Bar and Cafe”. Oude mannen slijten er kaartspelend hun dagen. Anoniem wil deze woordvoerder maar één ding kwijt: “zij” behandelen “ons” met een gebrek aan respect en waardigheid:

She (de taxichauffeur, red.) drops us in front of a Moroccan bar next to the new, clinically structured red-light district, a kind of John Lewis-meets-porn. Inside the Safrak Bar and Cafe, the atmosphere is thick with smoke. Old men sit playing backgammon, chequers and dominoes. “We are not part of the Dutch community,” says the bar owner, a tall, aggressive Moroccan who does not want to give his name. “They don’t treat us with respect and dignity. They think we’re separate. So we are separate.”

“Holland has a brutal colonial history”

Deze “agressieve Marokkaan” vormt voor Sardar de opstap naar veralgemenisering van de positie van moslims in Nederland. Een parallel met het koloniaal verleden van Nederland ontbreekt niet:

That the Dutch see Muslims as a separate community is not all that surprising. Holland has a brutal colonial history just as long as Britain’s, and the jewel in its crown was the most populous Muslim nation on earth: Indonesia. The Islamist insurgency in Aceh is a legacy of the people’s long war with the Dutch, a war the colonisers never won and never ended. Slavery and compulsory labour on Dutch plantations underpinned a strict system of separating the rulers from those they ruled. The Dutch were interested in categorising and neatly arranging the Otherness of those they ruled, the better to maintain their separateness and dependence. Colonial policy now reverberates at home.

“They treat us like colonial subjects”

Een nieuwe Marokkaan. Jamal Tushi, dertiger en IT-er, komt nu aan het woord. Ook hij verwenst de koloniale intolerantie van “they” – de blanke Nederlanders – jegens “us” -álle Marokkanen:

“They treat us like colonial subjects,” he says. “For them, all Muslims are terrorists.” Tushi was born and bred in Eindhoven and speaks perfect Dutch, yet finds it hard to get work. “If you are a young Moroccan, forget the idea of getting a job,” he says. During job interviews, the much-acclaimed Dutch liberalism evaporates. “They want to know what kind of Muslim you are. Do you pray? Do you go to the mosque?”

“Inclusion, then or now, was not the point”

Voor Sardar is dit in ieder geval illustratief voor het volgende inzicht:

Dutch liberalism was meant only for the Dutch. Today it extends to prostitution and drugs, but not to Muslim immigrants. It’s like the “ethical policy” Holland developed for its colonies. The policy was about Dutch superiority; it had little to do with the reality of life for the people they ruled, and made little difference to their condition. The colonies served the metropolis, regardless of how they were spoken of and discussed. The language of ethics was always about the colonising “Us” and not the colonised “Them”, just as all discussion about multiculturalism in Holland is at base about what kind of country “We” are, now that we have let “Them” in. Inclusion, then or now, was not the point. Dutch liberalism is about how good and open “We” are – not an open negotiation about what liberalism means to and for minority communities.

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Lees verder The Statesman, 5 december 2005:The next holocaust