Coldfire: I think the key words in that constitutional provision are highlighted below.
Speaking about someone is not “treating” them unequally, any more than saying bad things about the beliefs of a member of an opposition political party is unequal treatment. Nor is “discrimination” seem susceptible of an entirely speech-based definition. Otherwise, you’ve turned every instance of disliking somebody, for whatever reason, into an illegal thought crime. Orwell would be proud.
Speech can cross over the line to harassment, of course, which is the specter of discrimination that goboy raised above. But it is most definitely not harassment to hear of some butthead homophobe’s comments against gay marriage once or twice on television, at least not in my book. Yes, goboy, you do have the right not to be harassed by butthead fundamentalists. This does not qualify under any legal definition of “harassment” I’ve ever seen. Nobody has the right not to be offended. Good thing too–otherwise, all the fundies from the LBMB would still be over here.
As an aside, the text of that constitutional provision is, if nothing is lost in the translation, silly. According to that Article, it would be illegal to give a teaching job to a highly educated applicant rather than a high school dropout, because that is “discrimination . . . on any other grounds whatsoever,” in this case, education. I assume the Dutch government has been smart enough to limit its reach to illegitimate reasons for discrimination, immutable characteristics or something similar.
“…“homosexuality is a disease that is damaging to society and should be fought.” He added that “these times, more elderly people come into society and he fears that now that gay marriage is a possibility in Holland, the older generations won’t be active in procreation and won’t be bearing children.”…”
As another respondent pointed out, your society is noted for its intelligent, educated, tolerant populace. They will recognize the above statement for what it really is, an expression of prejudice and ignorance. In fact, you should actually be pleased that the individual in question exposed himself in such a negative light. It will undoubtedly work in your benefit in regards to awakening and mobilizing people to take a stance against such stupid prattling.
For example, I would like to challenge this man to explain, exactly, how homosexuality is “damaging” to society. I would like concrete examples and proof of that assertion. He will be able to produce neither.
In regards to his ludicrous assertion that gay marriage will reduce the amount of children spawned through heterosexual activity, I can only say two things.
First, ANY reduction in reproduction would be a good thing considering the fact that the world is “bursting at the seams” with humans. In fact, I am quite willing to pay tax money in order to fly transports over many of our third world countries and parachute down large boxes of condoms and birth control pills to those people who seem to consider reproduction as their life’s work :)!
Secondly, and on a more serious note, the statement itself makes absolutely no sense. Gay relationships can, obviously, NEVER result in reproduction. Whether the partners in question are married or simply enjoying a one night’s stand is totally irrelevant. Approximately ten percent of the human population is gay. Laws, petitions, policies, ignorance, and prejudice will do nothing to change that.
The man is not only prejudiced and misguided, he is an idiot.
It doesn’t change your point, but it reinforces mine. I’m not arguing that what he is saying is right or justified, I’m arguing that it is no worse coming from a Muslim immigrant than from a native Protestant.
Statements such as the following (all from Aghris) can only be interpreted as suggesting that the man has no right to air his views because he is not a Dutch native:
And statements such as the following (all from goboy) can only be interpreted as saying that the man has no right to live in Holland if he is publicly opposed to gay marriage:
In other words, immigrants should adopt Dutch attitudes and mores, or get out of the country. I cannot be alone in finding this view disturbing.
I used a translation from a website, but I can assure you that the best qualified teacher would get the job.
Sure, talking isn’t the same as treating. But this guy is inciting young kids to fight and stop homosexuality. How do you think these kids will interpret that? Walking the streets with banners that say “Allah doesn’t like homos”? I don’t think so. Since the Muslim religion (when taken to the extreme) isn’t exactly adverse of “solving differences” by means of the hand, this can only lead to very, very bad things.
Bear in mind that a lot of Muslims in the Netherlands are from Turkey and Morocco. The ones that make it over here are not from the more prosperous parts of those countries. Typically, they’re from small country communities with little education and perspective. They come here to provide a future for their kids they can’t build back home (in other words: they’d do the same work as back home, but they’ll earn more here). These people have never been anywhere outside their very religious East-Turkey village. Their Imam is their master in all respects. They follow his advise.
Once they arrive here, they do not always adapt very well. They often hit their kids, keep their daughters inside, teach their sons to be a “real man”. In short, they’re doing nothing to help their kids integrate into Dutch society. This Imam isn’t helping much either, is he?
Note: I realise that the paragraph above may seem like a sweeping generalisation. I am fully aware that not all immigrants act like this, and I also respect anyone’s right of decision how to raise his kids. But when it starts affecting society as a whole (which it DOES in the poorer quarters of Amsterdam, for example) I do believe I’m entitled to an opinion. I’m not a fascist, I don’t want anyone to leave my country. I believe we can learn a great deal from each other if we try. But integration will take the biggest effort from the visitor, not the host. We are not an Islamic state, and we never will be. Everyone that comes here has to realise that, and act accordingly. That does NOT mean they have to give up their faith. But it DOES mean they have to find ways to reconcile their faith with the new surroundings they live in.
The Imam does the complete contrary. And the fact that he does influence young kids in the process is very, very worrying to me.
Sounds like political action to me. Did it result in the diminuition of liberties for gay Dutch folk? No, but the time to resist bigotry is before liberty is lost, not after.
No, I’m not Dutch, but I am a homosexual who has been the target of religious hatred, living in an area with a huge number of Muslims, so this has more than academic interest for me. In my experience, it is a very short distance indeed between “Gays don’t deserve equal citizenship” to “There’s a fag, get him!”
Tom H wrote:
Did you not read my post where I said, “You see, I defend the imam’s right to practise his religion in peace. He can obey the Five Pillars of Islam, abstain from alcohol and pork, and get prayer breaks from his employer. I’m all for that.”?
I oppose the Imam advocating discrimination against homsexuals, which is illegal in the Netherlands, just as I oppose anyone advocating discrimination against Muslims. He’s free to preach in his mosque; he’s not free to rouse an audience of young Muslims to action against gays.
The question of the Imam’s national origin is relevant because he moved to a non-Muslim country, and then is upset because it doesn’t obey Muslim views of homosexuality. That makes no sense. Apart from that incongruity, I see no difference between the Imam and some Baptist minister.
Minty Green wrote:
You are, of course, 100 percent correct. If it’s just an isolated comment, it can be ignored, but not if it has the potential to translate into direct action, as seems likely here.
I have seen religious fundamentalists stand by the entrance to a gay bar in Louisville, KY, telling the patrons that they are diseased and going to Hell. Church-sponsored repeals of gay rights legislation have been effected in several states And we have all seen the Rev. Fred Phelps in action. Why should the Dutch folk have the Muslim variety of that hatred imported into their country?
TomH: they shouldn’t “adopt Dutch attituded and mores” at all. I don’t even know if there IS such a thing, given the diversity of the country. All they’d have to do is this: respect everyone else.
That’s all. A simple rule. And yes, it applies to the religious right as well. But like I said: they would, and in fact have been, proscecuted too for such remarks.
Just change “Dutch” to “American” in my previous posts, and my statements still stand. This is my home, and if Ahmed wants to live here, he is going to have to deal with gay folk. I’m not going into the closet to not ruffle the feathers of religious bigots, domestic or imported.
TomH, if there is no obligation to blend in with the locals, then why does Pentagon policy dictate that US servicewomen stationed in Saudi must cover up and not drive whrn they go out on the economy? (I have this on firsthand account) If we have to obey their mores when we are in their country visiting, then good sense dictates they must do the same when they come here to live, and that includes accepting gay folks. In the US, Muslims can exercise their religion freely, but their freedom of religion doesn’t extend to anti-gay discrimination.
The only charitable construction I can put on your views is that, as an American, you are not aware of the sensitivities surounding immigration in Europe. All I can say is that expressions such as “if Ahmed wants to live here” (in reference to a Muslim immigrant), “allowing a wave of first-generation immigrants to change your laws to take away your civil rights” (in reference to a few intemperate remarks from a single bigoted clergyman), if they were uttered by a European, would send a pretty clear message about that person’s views on race and immigration.
What happened to the old proverb “When in Rome, do as Romans do”? If you agree with the proverb, then the women visitors from Iran and Arab countries should remove their veils in the streets of the west, and both their men and women should respect gay rights when visiting Netherlands (just as a western female visitor to Iran agrees to wear a chador in the streets of Tehran).
To Tom H:
You say “Why not force them to go to church and have alcohol and pork while you are at it”.
Answer::
So far, Iran and the Arab countries’ rules force women visitors to wear veil and chador. But if they start forcing the western visitors to go to mosques or fast during Ramadan, then maybe we should show them that the boat goes both ways by requiring them to abide by certain western values before granting Iranians or Arabs a visa to visit or immigrate to the Netherlands.
Oooh, snide condescension, I like that. OK, so if I understand your views correctly, immigrant Muslims hating gays is OK; native-born folks telling immigrant Muslims that they have to tolerate gays is racist.
Again, Tom H, please clear up my confusion. How is your position not using a double standard?
I’m not TomH, but that’s never stopped me from butting into other people’s discussions before. I think that TomH’s point is obvious. Hating other people is not OK, but it shouldn’t be illegal either.
We shouldn’t throw people in jail just because they hate someone, but we should speak out against them and point out how stupid their ideas are.
That’s what freedom of speech is all about.
We obey their mores because their religion demands it, and we’re trying to be friendly. The US Army is a representative of the US Government, and they’re not in the business of trying to encourage our values in the Middle East.
If you travel to a nation that is extremely intolerant, you had best follow their rules, or you might get stoned to death. However, here in the Western world, we pride ourselves on being tolerant of others – even those who are not tolerant of us.
As to the issue in the OP, if there is a real possibility that a few thousand intolerant assholes are going to convince the other 16 million people in Holland that bigotry is a good idea, then I would suggest that Holland has far more serious problems than this Imam. However, I don’t think that’s the case, I think that Dutch men and women are perfectly capable of seeing this guy for who he is, and if I’m right, then there’s really nothing to worry about.
I’ll give it a go. The main difference is the reason why many muslims live in, e.g., the Netherlands. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, when the Dutch economy was sky-high, everyone had a job, and all was good, we were too lazy to pick up the trash in the streets. Or rather, since everyone had a decent job (basically a result from the reconstruction period after WWII), no one was willing to do lowly qualified work such as garbageman, street sweeper, et cetera.
So what did we do? We recruited workers in other countries. A lot of them were happy to oblige, and arrived in great numbers. Mostly, in my country’s case, from Turkey and Morocco. After a few years, our new countrymen asked if they could bring their families to Holland as well. Since the government didn’t want to deprive them of a family life (and rightly so), this was agreed upon.
So there we go, the start of a significant muslim population in the Netherlands. Of course, in the 80’s unemployment resurfaced again. Lots of debate ensued. Should these people get the same welfare? Should we just send them back?
You can guess the answers. Of course we couldn’t send them back. Not after working in our country for 15 years, having children here, building a life.
Try and use the above scenario as a basis. It is very different from the situation in the US. The US has (to my knowledge) never actively invited people in. Therefore, the Dutch POV towards immigrants is somewhat different. These are the same people that helped us out 25 years ago, and we can’t just kick them out because we don’t “need” them anymore. They’re fellow countrymen. The problems we have with them need to be resolved by dialogue, not by kicking them back from whence they came.
I think that’s what TomH meant, and I don’t think he was that condescending at all.
Snide condescension indeed, goboy. I have yet to see Tom make any statement in this thread even remotely suggesting that it is racist for a native-born citizen to say that immigrants should tolerate gays. The point I have seen Tom make, repeatedly, is that it is racist to prevent an immigrant from speaking his mind on a subject when it is perfectly legal for a native citizen to say the exact same thing. And I absolutely stand behind Tom in that belief.
The cure for bad speech is good speech, not repression.
And Coldfire, if the Imam were actually exhorting his followers to attack gays, that speech would certainly be beyond the boundaries of free speech. I have not, however, seen any evidence in this thread that such is the case. Instead, all I have seen are the statements that homosexuality is a “disease” and that gays don’t reproduce. That’s quite a ways away from saying “Allah smiles on those who smear the queer” or some such nonsense.
I’m also with Tom in believing that it doesn’t matter why a legal immigrant comes to a new country. The fact is that the Netherlands, through its democratically-chosen immigration policies, invited the Imam to come and live in Holland. Having done so, it seems quite xenophobic to deny him the same human rights that are available to Dutch citizens. Here’s the essential test: if the Imam can’t say it but a native-born Dutchman could, then you’ve got the kind of discrimination that Article 1 was apparently designed to eliminate.
First, Coldfire explained clearly that the Muslims were invited as guest workers and the Dutch have a responsibility to blend them into the larger society. I was wrong, therefore, to say the Dutch have no obligation to let the Muslims be citizens. The Dutch situation is indeed different from that in the US. He also showed that assimilation is antithetical to the Dutch commitment to diversity, so I was wrong there, too.
In that case, why did he write:
"Theparanoid notion that a single immigrant cleric expressing a reactionary opinion amounts to a foreign invasion which strikes at the very heart of the Dutch way of life is, I am afraid, a common complaint of ** anti-immigration racists.** and “This attitude is racist in that it denies the legitimacy of cultural and religious views.”
And so do I, as I have repeatedly said. I never said that the Imam should be treated any differently than a home-grown homophobe. I did say that I found it puzzling that he would move to a country that doesn’t have Muslim values. I also said that if you move to a country, you ought to tolerate the prevailing mores; not from compulsion (which I absolutely oppose), but from the desire to get along with your new countrymen. If that’s bigotry, make the most of it. Note: I never said the Imam should be muzzled or censored, so long as he did not incite anti-gay violence.
And, yes, I read Tom H’s comments as condescending, and I have the right to resent it. It wasn’t the content, but the “stupid American” tone that I found grating. Reason and evidence are a lot more persuasive than insinuations of racism and name-calling.
Wow! Go away for a weekend and find that this thread has boomed. I read it all and found a lot of statements to reply upon.
I’ve read this argument countless times now in this thread: “1100 people is not a significant number, so don’t worry”. I do worry. Not because this is only so small a number, but because it is the start of something troublesome.
It being such a small number of people is no reason for not getting riled up about it. Should I wait until its 10,000 people? A hundred thousand? When is it an acceptable number to get worked up about it?
I’m not an anti-immigrant racist. I want to stress this point very strongly. I welcome everyone who wants to come to the Netherlands, whatever the reason they come for. Whether it being persectution in the homeland, better healthcare here, economic reasons, I don’t care at all. I welcome them so much even that it would probably get me the ridicule of the average Dutchman.
I do expect from these people a certain conformation when they come here though. One example is learning the language. Another is that they should find work (unemployment under immigrants is rather a big problem here, partly because of cultural differences I suspect, but also because of resistance from less liberal Dutchmen). A third example is a certain respect for established standards and values. Tolerance towards homosexuals is one of those values that I want to see respected. Not only by immigrants, but by everyone living in Holland, the Dutch included.
I do not expect that these people get assimilated into our culture though. They can wear, eat, worship, etc. whatever they want. Hell, they don’t even have to like the Dutchman they come into contact with on a daily basis. But I do demand the same respect I extend to them (again this holds also true for every Dutch person I meet).
The views of the Imam were not a sign of respect. Even worse, they incited a group of easily influenced people to agree with him. This, to me, is wrong.
I don’t want these people out. They can stay if they please, but please have some respect to the people who welcomed you.
Nope, I don’t think this should be necessary at all. If these women want to wear their veil, let them. Clearly this is an important facet of their religion, they don’t harm anyone with it, so by all means, do wear the veil. However, when such a person doesn’t get hired at a court of law, because the veil does not fit within the rigid dresscode in these situations, this person should adhere to the standards that have been set and take off the veil.
This however, is a different discussion entirely and I will not go into further detail.
Thank you for joining in Coldfire I was wondering where you were. And thanks for pointing this out, this is exactly my crux with the situation.
Stating his opinions on national television and teaching his values to the Muslim population, resulting in a petition to the government from young Muslims supporting his views certainly is an act of taking away our rights. Whether or not they resulted in anything is irrelevant. The simple fact that these views were aired out in the open was an act of discrimination and should be punished. In stead, nothing is done and this Imam is allowed to further his vile opinions to the influentual younger generation.
Ofcourse this Imam did not do such a thing. If he did there wouldn’t have been a debate here, since everyone clearly knows that this person went too far. However, what happened now is borderline and therefore worthy of debate, which I think you all agree since this thread has reached a second page (I don’t think that ever happend before to a thread of mine).
I’ve read a lot of opinions in this thread, but they all fall in two categories. Those who think this Imam should be allowed to voice these opinions, however harmful they might be, and those who agree with me and think this person should be persecuted for having these discriminating views. I’m pretty sure everyone agrees that if this Imam was airing previous quoted text, he should have been persecuted. I am wondering what people like minty green and TomH think is the difference of what happens now and what is quoted above. Apart from the fact that the above is a bit more extreme, the situation is definately similar, don’t you agree?
I want to go on record that I do not agree that the Imam should be persecuted (or even prosecuted, which I think is what Aghris means). I was thinking more of frosty looks and the cut direct, not getting invited to parties, and so on.
ACLU Boy, Coldfire and minty green have already done an excellent job of clarifying and defending my remarks so far. But for the record:
You don’t understand my views correctly. Hating gays is not OK, but I do not believe it should be banned. Telling immigrant Muslims that they should tolerate gays is OK and I believe it should be encouraged.
Telling them that they must not express negative views about gay marriage or homosexuality in general (or on any other subject) because they are immigrants is simple racism.
I wasn’t accusing you of being a stupid American, I was accusing you of being an ignorant American. Coldfire has already explained the background to some of the issues relating to immigration in Holland, which is pretty much the same as in most EU countries. There is no particular reason why an American should be familiar with the sensitivities surrounding race and immigration in Europe, just as there is no particular reason why a European should be familiar with the sensitivities surrounding racial issues in the USA. And this bit rather justifies my comments:
Aghris,
It is certainly not an act of taking away your rights if your rights are not taken away. It is extremely insidious to argue that expressing a public opinion can be tantamount to a punishable act of discrimination.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at but no, I don’t agree that he should be prosecuted for expressing an opinion, however reprehensible.
