What it Means to Be An American - A Commentary on the Mosque at 51 Park Place

What is it that distinguishes Americans from the rest of the world's populations? Answer: All of us come from someplace else, except for native Americans who were chased off their lands by white men looking to conquer the entire continent. Those who arrived on these shores at Jamestown in 1642 were looking to escape religious persecution themselves, as were the millions upon millions who followed them here. Irish, Germans, Russians, Polish, Jews, and of some consequence nowadays, Muslims from every land in the world.

As a Jew, I think back on the times I know about, albeit not personally, that Jews in this country were denied access to universities, housing, jobs, land, everything that everyone else arrived in America to seek: a better life for their families and their descendants. I ought to know. I am one.

The conversation about the mosque/community center in lower Manhattan has turned absolutely black, ugly, bringing back as it does memories of discrimination faced by Jews for many, many years. It is truly bothersome to me and, I hope, to others, that the ugliest of nativistic and xenophobic tendencies all too common in today's world have taken hitherto rational people and turned them into sounding boards for the most ignorant, yet the loudest, among us such as the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and other purveyors of divisiveness and hate. That includes Abe Foxman of the ADL, who has stained that organization with his knee-jerk reaction against the construction of the community center/mosque/Muslim gathering place.

This is a difficult time in America. Our economy is swirling around the global toilet bowl, people's trust in a system that has worked, and worked generally well for over 200 years is bashed and scraped, and confusion about what's next reigns supreme. And then we have a group of (from all I can tell) well-meaning Muslims who just want a part of the American dream and all that goes with it, including freedom from and of religion. The Young Men's Christian Association was a funny place for me to play basketball in when I was a kid (not that I would have played any better in a JCC) but it never bothered me that the organization was there as a place for wayward souls, demarcated Christian.

The fear, and let there be no doubt that the fury that has arisen because of the proposed Muslim Center in Lower Manhattan is precisely because of the fear of the fact that "Muslim" in today's world, connotes "terrorist". So people are afraid that there will be meetings of jihadis within the walls of the building at 45-51 Park Street, in the shadow of what was once the World Trade Center, where good old fashioned American litigation and greed have held up the construction of a simple memorial to the 3000 that died that fateful September day not to mention the reconstruction of the towers that stood there since 1976. Their failures are stoking the controversy on lower Manhattan: that is without doubt. That a Muslim organization could get its act together before the various parties who own "ground zero" is a stain on them and us.

Whose fault is this? In part, it is the fault of well-meaning Muslims who have not been forceful or loud enough in their condemnations of suicide bombers and other forms of terror that some of the more fundamentalist Muslims use as a means of going home to meet Allah. Had this country's imams and other Muslim leaders been louder and forceful in their condemnations of Muslims who tolerate this kind of trash in a free and liberal society, the word Muslim might, might, not be a synonym for the word "terrorist". They never truly tried. They too reap what they sow.

When we were treated to scenes in Muslim lands after 9/11 of people partying in the streets at our carnage and our horror, the only possible outcome for Americans was disgust and hatred of a religion that would tolerate and even celebrate such barbarity. We can talk all we like about the plight of the poor Palestinians and other oppressed minorities, but the bottom line, at least for me, comes in the form of what the writers Bat Ye'Or and the late Oriana Fallaci called "Eurabia".

For the vast majority of Americans who do not have a passport and have never been to Europe, allow me to tell you that the face of Europe has changed, and changed forever, due to very lax immigration and welfare laws, all put in place after WWII so that there could never again rise the sort of social tumult that gave us the Third Reich.

Go to France, where their history is very much alive, and you will see tens of thousands of "pieds noir" - "black feet" - who came to France from its former colonies in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria and with them, their Islam. And they have not assimilated. They have fought it tooth and nail, which has given the right in Europe, France and Britain in particular, a strong base from which to launch anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim measures, not the latest of which was the French ban on the burqa which, to this writer's sensibilities, has no place in a liberal society, nor do Islamic laws that call for the treatment of women as cattle. I have walked to synagogue and gotten very mean looks from idle Arab kids in Cannes who didn't apparently like the fact that I was wearing a outward sign of my Jewishness - a kippah - on Yom Kippur. And I stared right back into their black eyes. If looks could kill, we would both be dead. I am sure of that.

Suffice it to say that I, like so many other liberals, am torn between the American way, the way of toleration, freedom, respect of others and the like. But I am also very aware of what has happened to Europe in the last 30 years with the influx of Muslims there. It is a dangerous situation in Europe that, frankly and honestly, I do not under any circumstances want repeated here.

The jihadi elements, the fundamentalists among the Muslims in this country, would be more than happy to use our own freedoms (as they did in Europe) to change the face of this country, change the face of our politics and none of it will be good. The evidence lies across the Atlantic. I hope and pray that the Muslim community center, mosque included, will be a step forward for the American Muslim world to join the 21st century. This is why, I am convinced, that most Muslims even came to this country - for the same reasons that all our forebears came here - to get away from the centuries old hatreds, prejudices and intolerance that they felt and got in their own lands and to just live their lives in peace.

I am reminded of a small incident in an Arab-owned pizza place right here in San Diego, where the owner for some reason knew that my lunch companion and I were Jewish - I think we asked for pizza without pepperoni. He began conversation about what trash there is running the country from which he and his family fled, Iran, as I recall, how he was able to start his own business here, and was trying to live out, as we all are, the American dream, whatever that is in 2010. One thing is for certain: we can never give up trying to make the American experiment more perfect, and if it takes a little pain in granting a people whom we (and that includes American Jews) do not know at all, then that is the price we must pay for living in the greatest country on earth.

This is not to say that the American-Muslim community should not do more to tell the world, to tell America, that they denounce the violence carried out in the name of Allah. That they denounce the denial of the Holocaust. That they do not wish to establish a country within a country, that the ummah is a dead concept, that there will never be another Caliphate here on these shores. When I start hearing Muslim leaders in the mainstream media say these things, and tell their followers that jihad has no applicability for 2010 America, I will feel a lot safer every time a building permit for a minaret is pulled, no matter where. I will know that they have about as much evil intent as a church or a synagogue, which is to say none. But the leaders have left us to guesswork about their intent, and American Muslim leaders are at fault for not framing themselves in the best light possible, a feat that I don't know can be achieved, at least in the shadow of the World Trade Center, at least not now. We will see what transpires.

Randy Shiner

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR LEON DE WINTER: 'The Europeans Are Chasing Illusions'

Leon de Winter, 54, is a Dutch writer and best- selling author living in Bloemendaal, near Amsterdam, and in Los Angeles. He latest novel, "The Right of Return," is a current best- seller in the Netherlands. A German translation is set for publication in autumn 2009 by Diogenes Verlag.







AP Israelis in Jerusalem following a suicide attack that involved a bulldozer on July 2.

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR LEON DE WINTER

'The Europeans Are Chasing Illusions'

Dutch author Leon de Winter talks with SPIEGEL about his new novel, which is set in 2024, the threats mounting against Israel and the assimilation of Muslims in Europe.


SPIEGEL: Mr. de Winter, your new book -- "The Right of Return" -- is a novel, but it actually describes a political vision. In the book, it is the year 2024, and Israel has shrunk to just a few square kilometers around Tel Aviv, which is surrounded by enemies. Are you simply playing with some ideas here or is this a serious prediction?

Leon de Winter: Both. Israel is menaced by two threats. On the one hand, by the hatred of its enemies, which today is primarily stirred up by Iran, and on the other hand, by the erosion spreading throughout Israeli society. There are three groups that have little in common: the Orthodox Jews, the Israeli Arabs and the secular Jews, who currently make up the majority of the population. But this majority is dwindling. The conflict between these three lifestyles is every bit as much of a threat -- if not even more dangerous -- to the existence of Israel as its outside menaces.

SPIEGEL: Does this mean you're afraid that Israel, as a predominately secular Jewish state, could soon be history?

De Winter: I am not a prophet. When I was young, I really wanted to be a prophet, sometimes even the Messiah. But that is what all Jewish boys at a certain age want to be. They all wake up one morning and are absolutely positive: I am the Messiah! Who else would they be? And then they have to attend school, and reality catches up with them. I don't disseminate messages; I tell stories about individuals. On the other hand, you cannot tell stories about Israel in the year 2024 without writing about politics. That just doesn't work.

SPIEGEL: This is not the first time that you have made skeptical remarks about Israel's future. This story sounds like the proclamation of a catastrophe.

De Winter: And that's what it is. The book is a thriller with a sad, almost desperate undertone. But concern about Israel's future was not my starting point here. I focused on a father whose 4-year-old son has suddenly disappeared without a trace. What happens then? His wife leaves him, he can't work anymore, and he quits his job as a professor at Princeton and starts looking for his son. He feels guilty because, for a brief moment, he failed to watch over him. Later on, he realizes that his son's disappearance has to do with global politics.

SPIEGEL: But he doesn't care about politics; he's only interested in his own misfortune.

De Winter: That's right. My story starts in the past and ends in the future. That was my personal framework for articulating all my fears -- in a fictional context. At the same time, I hate science fiction because the present provides enough excitement. I don't need the future to write myself into a rage.

SPIEGEL: Do you think the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved through negotiations, or will the strongest win out in the end?

De Winter: It will depend on who gives up first -- who won't be able to take it any longer because it costs too much: too much energy, too much time, too much blood. And that will be the secular Jews, who have no ideology, who merely want to live their lives.

SPIEGEL: In your vision, many Jews leave Israel and emigrate to Europe or America, where life is easier. In the real Israel, an increasing number of Jews are acquiring a second passport, but it doesn't look like they really want to leave. It's more a modern form of life insurance, just in case things go wrong.

De Winter: It's more than that. Immigration compensates for emigration because Russian Jews are still coming into the country. Nevertheless, take a look at Los Angeles or New York, where there are now large communities of ex-Israelis. And you even have them here in Holland. I wonder what will happen if it comes to a new conflict with Hezbollah. Very soon, the majority of Israelis will live within range of the rockets launched by Hezbollah and Hamas. Contrary to Islam, Judaism has a very weak tradition of martyrdom. In the end, we are powerless against a people who are prepared to sacrifice everything.

SPIEGEL: That said, the number of suicide attacks has declined sharply.

De Winter: Just because there is a wall that stands in the way of the terrorists doesn't mean that their frustrations have disappeared! Look, the age-old yearning of the Jews to return to their historical homeland has engendered the same desire on the Palestinian side: the return to the homeland. It's already a reality for the Jews, yet it remains a dream for the Palestinians. And, as far as the lower number of attacks is concerned, it's an illusion. It will only be a matter of time before they rise again. While we are sitting here talking, the smuggling of arms continues, from Iran to Lebanon via Syria and from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. Nobody can do anything about it. It's the calm before the storm.


SPIEGEL: The Europeans are trying to mediate in the conflict between Iran and the West. They keep returning to the negotiating table to prevent a possible nuclear threat against Israel…

De Winter: ... but what good does it do? Remember the so-called troika, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK: Joschka Fischer, Dominique de Villepin and Jack Straw. They flew to Tehran and back, drank tea and coffee with Iranian politicians and negotiated over the Iranian nuclear program. Imagine that: three respectable European intellectuals negotiating with guys who grew up in the Tehran bazaar and would sell them their own watches! That's the kind of results that it produced. They told us that they had pursued a constructive dialogue but had not yet attained their objectives, and so they said that negotiations had to continue … And these three educated, sensible, and critical European intellectuals went along with this! And then, in the fall of 2003 -- in other words five years ago -- they held a press conference: We've reached our goal! Actually, nothing has happened, no agreement, absolutely nothing.

SPIEGEL: What do you think the Europeans are doing wrong?

De Winter: They are chasing illusions. At the time, I met Fischer during a reception at the headquarters of Springer Verlag (publishing house) in Berlin, and he came to me and asked: "What do you have against me? Why do you write such negative things about me?" I said: "I have placed so much hope in you, but you have disappointed me." And he was really taken aback. I tried to explain the situation to him. He had to be told that the Iranians weren't taking him seriously; they were making a fool of him. Fischer's response to this was that we had to pursue a dialogue and return to the negotiating table again and again.

SPIEGEL: But Fischer was right. What would have been the alternative?

De Winter: We could have told them: If you don't stop, we'll wipe you out!

SPIEGEL: You can't really mean that.

De Winter: Yes, I really do. I would have told the Iranians that if they don't halt their nuclear program today, we'll put the fear of God into them tomorrow. And they would have stopped because that's a language they understand. You can't go to these people and say: "Listen, if you renounce generating nuclear power, we'll help you produce something else. And if you don't do that, well, we'll be very, very sad." "Okay," is definitely what the guys in Tehran would say "That's a threat that we take seriously, and we'll meet your demands." What a ludicrous idea.

SPIEGEL: That is, with all due respect, the slightly simplified worldview of a novelist who lives in nice, little Holland and doesn't have to make such decisions. A foreign minister has responsibilities and has to be more cautious in his judgments.


'We Know Who We Are Dealing with Here'


De Winter: But we know who we are dealing with here. These people pursue their objectives with all possible means. If we wait to see what happens, then we have already accepted their ground rules. We are placing our fate in the hands of fanatics and fundamentalists. When you deal with diplomats from Iran or politicians from the Middle East, you cannot act as if you were dealing with the state governor of Hesse or Bavaria! It's another world. You cannot negotiate without threatening to use force, especially if you want to prevent the development of nuclear arms by people who are practically longing for the apocalypse.

SPIEGEL: You have misread at least one situation in the past with your hawkish positions. Shortly before the war in Iraq, you published an essay in SPIEGEL, which could have been interpreted as a call to arms. You wrote that we have to cut off the monster's head -- meaning Saddam Hussein's -- and that if that didn't happen, the monster would send our heads rolling. But now we've learned that Saddam's secret military arsenal was a myth.

De Winter: At the time, Saddam Hussein acted as if he had weapons of mass destruction. He threw the United Nations inspectors out of the country; he ordered thousands of Kurds to be killed with chemical weapons.

SPIEGEL: That was long before that.

De Winter: What do you mean by "long"? He did it, and we had to assume that he would do it again at any time. And, besides, getting rid of a tyrant is never a wrong move, even if later on you have to accept the chaos that we are all familiar with for a period of time.

SPIEGEL: In the 1990s, Philip Roth wrote a novel called "Operation Shylock," in which the Jews abandon Israel because it has become too dangerous. Did you have this book in mind when you wrote yours?

De Winter: No. I had the idea for "The Right to Return" when I wrote my last book, "Malibu." I read something about the Mameluks, who were not originally Muslims, but were abducted as children or taken from their parents as "taxes" to be raised as warriors. I was captivated by this story. What happens to children who are basically forced to switch sides? What would a Mameluk story be like today? I've transferred the whole thing to the future, the future of Israel. Roth's "Shylock" is a great novel, but it has no connection with reality. That's not my field. I write realistic thrillers.


(AFP) Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza

SPIEGEL: In "The Right of Return," Jewish children are transformed into Muslim terrorists to spread fear and desperation throughout Israel. That's not especially realistic, either. Actually, it's more like introducing a new level of anxiety…

De Winter: Exactly, the ultimate horror.

SPIEGEL: Do these Jewish suicide bombers serve as a metaphor for those Jews throughout the world who oppose Israel or at least sharply criticize the country?

De Winter: Yes, definitely. On the one hand, I unconditionally support the right to freedom of speech. Everyone should be able to say whatever they want to say -- even if it's absolute nonsense. It wouldn't be fair to say that those Jews who back the anti-Semites are just a bunch of sick or crazy people because there are some intelligent people among them. But there is an absurd or pathological element to it: the fear of being identified as a Jew or, actually, as a bad Jew. They would like to be good Jews and well liked because of it.

SPIEGEL: In your home country, the Netherlands, there is a widespread fear of Islamization. You have written a great deal on this topic yourself, and some of this sounds rather apocalyptic. Does this still reflect your view of the world?

De Winter: Not during the day. Only when I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and can't fall asleep again. That's when I really start to worry about everything -- about my taxes, my children, my dog and my cats. And, of course, about the state of our society and what will happen to it. We are living in exciting times. And you know the Chinese curse: "May you live in exciting times!" Not since the end of World War II have things been as exciting as they are today. We are experiencing a new phenomenon: the mass immigration of Muslims to countries where the "infidels" live.

SPIEGEL: What do you expect the consequences of this will be?

De Winter: There are signs that a modern Islam is emerging. An increasing number of young, liberal Muslims are trying to practice their own form of religion because they have been inspired by the idea of freedom. But, of course, radical Islam remains a problem. It has a very strong appeal for frustrated young men with violent tendencies who at some point in time discover that the world is full of injustice and want to do something about it. It's a bit like an adventure: the dramatic farewell videos, the last message to the world and then -- the explosion. On top of that, there is the promise of sex after death, something many of them can only dream of. I can understand how young men become fanatics. But I also see something entirely different: how it is primarily young Muslim women here in Holland who become integrated into society; how they get an education and move forward because they have their freedom. And they seize this opportunity.

SPIEGEL: So it's only a matter of time before the problem solves itself?

De Winter: We don't know how long it will take and how many victims it will claim. It could take 40 or 50 years before integration has really occurred. Everything is in a state of flux, and nobody can say where the journey will take us.

SPIEGEL: And, in these exciting times, you are now moving to the US with your family?

De Winter: Yes, we're going to Los Angeles for a year, to the most multicultural city in the US. I want to experience first-hand the election campaign and the period immediately following the elections. I feel comfortable in the US, and especially in LA, where there are no real locals and everyone is an immigrant.

SPIEGEL: Does your love for the States have something to do with your Jewish origins?

De Winter: That's certainly possible. But if that were the case, then I would feel most at home in Israel. I travel a lot to Israel, but I wouldn't want to live there.

SPIEGEL: Why not?

De Winter: Because of all the things that we have talked about. If I had lived during the 1920s, I would probably have also emigrated to Palestine. But today? I don't see it as the duty of every Jew to live in Israel. As far as I'm concerned, America is the Promised Land because everyone can live there as they please, no matter where they come from and no matter which god they worship -- as long as they work and respect the laws.

SPIEGEL: A fairly idealistic view of the United States.

De Winter: Please leave me with at least one illusion!

SPIEGEL: Your last novel, "Malibu," was published six years ago. Usually it takes you two to three years to write a new book. Why did it take so long this time?

De Winter: I tried to save the world. That's also a terrible Jewish habit. Above all, I tried to save Europe. I really thought that I could make a difference by writing political commentaries, columns, lead articles, essays for SPIEGEL. It became an obsession. I couldn't do anything else. I spent the whole day on the Internet and got upset about everything. That's not healthy for a writer.

SPIEGEL: Are you feeling better now?

De Winter: You can't imagine how wonderful, how liberating it is to write a novel, even one with such a sad story. It's such a relief to be able to control reality instead of being swallowed up by it. In my novels, I'm God. Everything obeys my command.

SPIEGEL: Thank you for this interview, Mr. de Winter

Interview conducted by Martin Doerry and Henryk M. Broder at de Winter's home in Bloemendaal

Europeanisation, not Islamisation

View from a booth: Mr. Tibi has framed the arguments and the positions correctly and wisely in my view. The problem with Islam in Europe is that instead of Islam becoming "Europeanized", the Orthodox Islamists have attempted to do the reverse: Islamicize Europe. This will not work. And it is the fundamental reason why Muslims who do not attempt to integrate themselves into European society face the problems that they do. This will take more people with minds and attitudes like Mr. Tibi's to bring the larger portion of Europe's Muslims around to the notion of Europeanizing Islam, much as he points out below, Islam was "Africanized" in places like Senegal and Sudan. Meanwhile, I do not want to hear any more about how the Muslims are "Europe's New Jews". Jews never, ever sought to Judaicize Europe, as if they ever could. Indeed, the Jew-hate in Europe was and is more insidious than the hate that Muslims are experiencing: Jews tried to integrate and assimilate, and did so successfully until the usual and customary European Jew-hate surfaced. At least the Muslims are giving the haters in Europe a reason (not a very good one, but a reason) to be wary of and hostile to Muslims who refuse to integrate themselves into the Europe of the Rennaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. Europe has at its center inclusiveness. There are some things worth fighting for and it is hoped that Europe will not buckle under any more to what amount to Islamic segregationists.

Randy Shiner

Features » Politics And SocietyFrench philosopher Pascal Bruckner accused Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash of propagating a form of multiculturalism that amounts to legal apartheid. His fiery polemic unleashed an international debate. By now Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek, Paul Cliteur, Lars Gustafsson, Stuart Sim, Ulrike Ackermann, Adam Krzeminski and Halleh Ghorashi have all entered the ring. Read their contributions as well as Ian Buruma's initial response here.

22/03/2007
Europeanisation, not Islamisation

Bassam Tibi argues for Euro-Islam as a bridge between civilisations.When I was asked to give my opinion on this debate, I was just returning from the USA. They have an expression over there which is a good way to challenge to people who like to talk but have little to say: "What are we talking about?" The topic of "Europe and Islam" is more important than profiling Tariq Ramadan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who are often thrown together in a meaningless comparison. The issue is also more important than the debate between prominent authors such as Timothy Garton Ash or Ian Buruma, who share not only celebrity status, but also the tendency to talk incompetently about Islam. My sense is that this debate, which is of extraordinary importance to the future of Europe, needs to be made less personal and more objective. This is as essential for Europe as it is for Muslims like myself, who found home in this continent.

Despite this call to de-personalisation, I'll allow myself two comments on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan, around whom this debate is revolving, to its detriment. What Hirsi Ali says about Islam is an affront to Muslims and to anyone who knows anything about Islam. When, for instance, she claims that our prophet and our holy book, the Koran, are a fiction, she insults all Muslims and puts a smirk on the faces of all historians of Islam. Of course, Hirsi Ali has every right to turn her back on Islam in the name of religious freedom and this is what she has done. But she should not abuse the religion just to score points cheaply for herself.

As for her opponent in this objectionable debate, Tariq Ramadan, who calls himself an Oxford professor (he is there for a limited term as a fellow – a fellowship is not a professorship – but it is not unusual for him to treat facts in this manner), I would certainly not ascribe to him the "reform of Islam" as many do. What has he reformed in Islam? When he glorifies his grandfather Hassan al-Banna as the main source of the "Renouveau Musulman," (Muslim Renewal) as he does in his book, even in the title, is this reform? In my research, I come to the conclusion that al-Banna is the spiritual and political source of Jihad Islamism, which represents totalitarianism in its latest manifestation. I refer here to my most recent essay, "The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism and its Challenge to Europe and to Islam", which appeared in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion (1/2007 issue with an abstract). This contention is the result of decades of research. And does it qualify as Islamic reform when Ramadan outlines "The Mission of Islam for Europe" at a conference in Sweden or when he tells Muslims in Jakarta that al-Islam Ya'lu, or Islam is superior?

I will not dwell any longer on the Ramadan / Hirsi Ali debate, as I consider it irrelevant to a discussion of Europe and Islam, nor will I address the inflamed polemics on, for instance, "Enlightenment fundamentalism." Suffice it to say that if the people taking part in this debate so deform the Enlightenment as to consider Hirsi Ali its representative, I suggest they read Jürgen Habermas' "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" – this will help them to answer the question of what we are actually talking about.

Now to the problem at hand. I start with a reference to Henri Pirenne's thesis "No Charlemagne without Mohammed" (1937). What this means is that without the challenge of Islam, Charles the Great's Christian Occident would never have come into being. Pirenne shows that both these greats – Europe as Occident and Islam as civilisation – have from the very beginning a shared historical development, and are mutually challenging one another. The most recent shape that this relationship is taking can be seen in the massive migration of Muslims to Europe today (in 1950, there were only 800,000 Muslims in Western Europe, today there are 20 million). This process belongs in this context of mutual challenge, and is the contemporary expression of the classic confrontation between Islam and Europe which Henri Pirenne reconstructs. In my book "Kreuzzug und Djihad" (crusade and jihad), in which I reconstruct this history in eight epochs, I try to take a fresh look at Pirenne's thesis and suggest interpreting the relationship of Islam to Europe as one of a century-long mutual "Threat and Fascination." Each has threatened the other, be it with Jihad conquest, crusades or colonisation, but has equally enriched the other in cultural and civilisational terms – be these medieval Islam's borrowings from Hellenism or the influence of Islamic rationalism on the European Renaissance. One may place the 20 million Muslims living in Europe today as part of this history into the overall context of threat and fascination. The American scholar of Islam John Kelsay speaks of "Islamic enclaves which are in Europe." Is it not possible to find a bridge between the two, as Europe and Islam did earlier? I propose such a bridge as a Reform Muslim, as presented in my concept of Euro-Islam in Paris in 1992.

Is this something that can be discussed freely? My experience as a Muslim living as an immigrant in Europe and doing my research in the USA is that I have greater freedom of speech on this subject in America. It was at Berkeley and Cornell (between 1998 and 2006) that I was able to further develop my concept of Euro-Islam in the understanding of an Europeanisation of Islam as an inter-civilisational bridge. In Germany on the other hand, my Euro-Islam was ostracised – for instance, by an Orientalist at the Süddeutsche Zeitung who called it the "one man sect of Professor Tibi." What's this all about? Before I go any further, I would just like to mention that Tariq Ramadam talks about Euro-Islam without referring to his sources and in my opinion distorts the concept. To address Islamic immigration while at Berkeley I coined the formula "Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam?" This is also the title of a book which outlines the results of a UC Berkeley project on Islam and the changing identity of Europe in which my research on the tension between Islamisation and Europeanisation was included. Euro-Islam, in my definition, demands that this tension be overcome by cultural cross-fertilisation. I shall now explain precisely what this entails and how and why the concept of Euro-Islam came into being, but then was distorted by Ramadan and Olivier Roy.

In November 1992, experts from the Institut du Monde met in Paris to try to find new concepts for dealing with assimilation and integration. The earlier ideas of assimilation as a prerequisite for "citoyennite" were buckling under the huge influx of new immigrants from the Islamic world, who were insisting on holding onto their cultural identity and demanding that this be recognised in Europe. Which is why these experts were suggesting that assimilation be abandoned in favour of the newly drawn up concepts of integration. Integration does not demand cultural surrender of the self through total conformity, but merely the participation in the civil society's system of civic values. Unlike assimilation, integration limits itself to the adoption of a citizen identity within civil society, it focusses on the rights and duties of the "citoyen". And so the question being asked in Paris was "Integration ou insertion communautaire?" This is also the subheading of the book on Islam in Europe with a concept for integration edited by Robert Bistolfi and Francois Zabbal (Paris 1995).

Islam was at the centre of the debate because by now Muslims constitute approximately twelve percent of the French population, making them the single largest group of immigrants. It was in Paris that I first presented my concept of Euro-Islam, which is why it should be located within the context of the French debate. I first coined the term Euro-Islam in my paper "Les Conditions d'une Euro-Islam" included in the cited volume of Bistolfi /Zabbal: "Islams d'Europe: Integration ou Insertion Communautaire". On December 7 1992, the FAZ reported on the convention in Paris in an article entitled "Euro-Islam or Ghetto-Islam? Muslim immigrants and integration in EU countries." Time Magazine also recognised the origins of Euro-Islam in 2000.

The concept of Euro-Islam derives from observations that I had made a decade earlier in West Africa – in the 80s. In Senegal I was able to identify an Africanisation of Islam. Having seen how Islam had been adopted in West Africa despite its Arab origins, how it had become part of the autochthonous culture, I asked whether it would not be possible to attempt to make Islam indigenous to Europe along similar lines. In Europe, the Islam of immigrants remains utterly alien because it is not European. I tell this story in chapter 12 of the new edition of my book "Im Schatten Allahs" (in the shadow of Allah) and then ask, how can we make Islam European in Europe, in the way that it has become African in Senegal and South East Asian in Indonesia?

But first I should make it clear that Euro-Islam is impossible without cultural change involving religious reforms. And this is not something Tariq Ramadan is pursuing. By now there is lot of nonsense going on in the name of Euro-Islam, and at the same time it is becoming an increasingly meaningless buzz-word. Tariq Ramadam is not the only one to make sloppy use of the term, Olivier Roy has also given it a completely new meaning without once referring to its origins. Tariq Ramadan presents Orthodox Islam as Euro-Islam presumably with the intent to deceive. But I say there can be no Europeanising of Islam unless Salafist concepts like Sharia and Jihad are abandoned through cultural-religious reforms, and this goes too for the vision of Islamisation through Da'awa and Hidjra. Only an Islam that is in tune with the fundamentals of cultural modernity (democracy, individual human rights, civil society) and embraces pluralism deserves to be defined as Euro-Islam. And furthermore, the concept of Euro-Islam applies only to Europe, in other words unlike the earlier universal vision of Westernising the world - the world of Islam included – it is not universalism.

The validity of the argument for Europeanising is limited to Muslims who are settled in Europe, as well as to countries (like Turkey for example), which want to become European. We are talking here about a vision of Euro-Islam which has yet to become reality. Of course we should also consider the Islamic countries surrounding Europe which the EU refers to as the "European Neighbourhood." The integration of Muslims in Europe could contribute positively to the democratisation of this European "neighbourhood."

Muslim immigrants are expected to recognise that Europe has a civilising identity and the right to preserve it. This statement is not directed against Muslims, because the idea of Europe is inclusive. It can respect the identity of immigrants, while expecting them to be integrated without surrendering their sense of self. This is the sense in which Islam and Europe fuse into Euro-Islam. It is half-witted of Garton Ash to confuse the demand for a reform of Islam in Europe with the demand for Muslims to give up their faith. No one would make such a demand. All he is doing is kowtowing to Ramadam. Europe doesn't need such Europeans, who do not stand up to European identity challenged by Islamic proselytization.

The European identity, when understood in a democratic, enlightened manner, should therfore be seen as an inclusive identiy which envisions a Europeanisation of Islam in Europe, also within an expanded EU. As a Muslim, I learned to appreciate the idea of Europe as an "island of freedom in an ocean of despotism" from my Jewish teacher Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer was a survivor of the Holocaust, and only too familiar with the other side of Europe. We are dealing here solely with the Europe of freedom and Enlightenment, not with Europe of totalitarianisms.

The Europeanisation of Islam aims at cultural synthesis. With the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, the Islamic intifada in Paris and finally the conflict ignited by the Danish Muhammad cartoons, the debate over Euro-Islam has widened considerably. Yet it should not be distorted through personification or polemic. The Islamists have repeatedly declared war on Europe. And the press silenced the fact that the words "Europe, you're next" appeared in the letter attached to Theo van Gogh's slain body. This was made public by Dutch prime minister Balkenende in Rotterdam in December 2004, at a summit meeting held under the question "Europe. A Beautiful Idea?"

In the wake of the Amsterdam murder, the Nexus Instituut in the Netherlands launched a major European and trans-Atlantic project with the support of the Dutch government, dealing with the idea of Europe. Discussions were held in several European cities, from Rotterdam to Berlin and Warsaw. Among other topics, the project, which bore the inviting name "Europe, a Beautiful Idea?" dealt with the idea of Euro-Islam. Notwithstanding its ugly colonial past, two World Wars and Nazi crimes, Europe also has another side: the Europe of freedom, individual human rights, democracy, pluralism and civil society. That is a beautiful idea, one which can also be shared by non-Europeans, and so also by Muslims. Euro-Islam is an attempt to make the idea of a "European identity" palatable to Muslims, as a synthesis with Islam. At my presentation in Rotterdam, I asked whether over and above legal citizenship, Muslims can become "Citizens of Heart" by appropriating European values in the context of Euro-Islam, which shapes their migrant identity.

We must be careful in this discussion through distinguishing between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religious faith and a cultural system, while Islamism is a totalitarian ideology. With the Enlightenment, Europe brought forth a "disenchanted world" comprising a universalism of values that is neither ethnic nor religious, and which is consequently inclusive. This inclusiveness consists in openness to others. Far from being merely academic jargon, this is a model for reality that I as a Muslim and Arab am familiar with from my own life in Europe. Europe is challenged to achieve this model of inclusiveness in the context of immigration. What the immigrants for their part needs to achieve is an effort to bring their identity into harmony with Europe and its cultural system. Euro-Islam is a vision that aims to realise this. Despite allegations to the contrary, the European idea is not Christian: it is secular and its sources lie in Hellenism. At the highpoint of Islamic civilisation, the same Hellenism was among the sources of medieval Islamic rationalism. So there is a bridge linking the two.

A Muslim can be European without being Christian, and without having roots in Europe. The sole precondition is adopting the European civic values that are the result of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. And if you do that, you can remain Muslim. But how can Muslims wholeheartedly become European citizens and espouse "Europe, a Beautiful Idea" without reforming and rethinking Islam? The Islamists nestled in among the Islamic Diaspora don't share the idea of a "beautiful Europe" and are enmical to the need of a reform. They view integration in Europe as camouflaged Christian proselytism, and reject it offhand. Islamists aren't after integration, they want to Islamise Europe through the Jihad. Europeans can only parry this attempt together with Euro-Muslims. In this conflict it is crucial to determine the exact content of Euro-Islam. Numerous European politicians make speeches in favour of the idea of Europe, but do they take themselves and their pronouncements seriously? Many Muslim citizens of Europe look sceptically on the vision of Euro-Islam, because while Europeanisation of the Islamic challenge is propagated as inclusion, words are not followed by deeds. As stated above, European inclusiveness is a model to be achieved, not yet reality - similar to the vision of a Euro-Islam. In other words: for bringing Islam and Europe together on European soil, both Muslims and Europeans are challenged to do their homework in a project for the inner peace of Europe.

It should be seen as a positive development that today's Europeans are turning away from their former Eurocentrism. Unfortunately, however, there is also a negative aspect to this trend, since for many it has also meant renouncing European values. The debate we are concerned with here, in which the Enlightenment has been passed off as a sort of fundamentalism, demonstrates not only intellectual confusion but also a lack of orientation. Postmodern value relativism is not the opening that Europe needs. The vision offered by Euro-Islam stands in contrast to the value-relativism of today's Europeans, first and foremost regarding the EU as a value community. Here it assumes a commitment to European values not shared by Islamism. The moderate Islamist Hasan Hanafi correctly recognised that Europe is in a crisis and suffers from a lack of orientation. His solution? Islam! Is this Islamisation the solution that will bind Europeans and Muslims? I fear not! In a Cornell project chaired by Prof. Peter Katzenstein I established a scenario for Europe's future with the formula "Europeanisation of Islam or Islamisation of Europe".

With the Muslim influx from Asia and Africa, but also - and primarily - from the southern and eastern Mediterranean where identity is a matter of a collective consciousness, some Muslim clerics are demanding that Dar al-Islam/The House of Islam should be extended into Europe. Orthodox Islamic doctrine prescribes that Hidjra/migration should serve the worldwide dissemination of Islam. The emergence of parallel societies is the first step in this direction, and it must be possible, notwithstanding the rules of political correctness, to discuss this openly.

However we must proceed with care. When Tariq Ramadan, whom the newspaper Die Zeit terms a "double agent", calls Europe a Dar al-Shahada, he is doing nothing other than applying the term Dar al-Islam/ House of Islam to Europe as an Islamic territory. The implication is clear: Europe becomes a part of Dar al-Islam, and so to all intents and purposes appropriated, simply because it has opened up to Islam. The London-based imam Zaki Badawi, who was decorated by the queen, argued along these lines when he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that any territory where Muslims live belongs to Dar al-Islam. Against naive Europeans, orthodox Salafites and Islamists, Euro-Islam seeks to make Islam part of Europe and share its identity, and not the other way around. To be sure, these are two different projects for the future of Europe, as suggested in the Cornell formula cited above.

And now the head of the Turkish Justice and Development Party, Tayyip Erdogan, is also talking of a "shared value community." What is that? What are the European values, and what constitutes the identity of Europe? Must Western universalism go hand in hand with European value relativism? These questions are not addressed, and even taboo, in European discourse today. As a Muslim and a European by choice, I claim my right to freedom of speech in seeking to dispel taboos about Europe.

Despite Bush's escapades, America remains the land of freedom. As a Muslim, I have had more room to discuss these questions in the USA than in Europe. The concept of the Europeanisation of Islam proposes answers to the questions raised above. Here, I refer again to the project "Islam and the Changing Identity of Europe," initiated at UC Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies and by the other for European Studies. In the book published it is acknowledged that Islam is permeating Europe and changing Europe's identity. Both of its authors are Americans with Euro-Islamic pedigrees: the Egyptian Nezar AlSayyad as a Middle-Eastern scholar, and the Spaniard Manuel Castells as an expert in European Studies.

In their search for solutions to the conflict that were free from Eurocentric arrogance, the two scholars invited me years ago to integrate my concept of Euro-Islam as a bridge between civilisations into their project. The result was the book "Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam?" The title clearly expresses the options available: either Europe Europeanises Islam, or Islam Islamises Europe. Two universalisms collide. Europeans cannot respond to this competition of models with silence, or with censorship in the form of political correctness. Things are developing in this direction whether we like it or not, and they will continue to do so regardless of whether they are hushed up or kept silent by other means.

This debate is about objective processes, and has little to do with confrontation, let alone hostility towards Islam. Well aware of this danger, I contributed to the book "Preventing the Clash of Civilizations" by the former German President Roman Herzog, who takes issue with Samuel Huntington. Europeans can rise to the existing challenge with a policy of Europeanisation. As opposed to the universalist ideology of Westernisation, the concept of Europeanisation is limited solely to bringing European values and standards to bear on Europe itself, within the territory of Europe. As opposed to what Islamists or orthodox Muslims maintain, Europe certainly does not belong to Dar al-Islam, and has its own non-Islamic identity to be respected by Muslim immigrants.We are left with the following imperative: those who seek to come to Europe must also strive to become part of its community, adopting the democratic consensus expressed in its value system. They must want to become European and to participate in the European identity, rather than seeking to alter it. In a word: Europeanisation, not Islamisation. If this idea becomes a political concept of the EU, together with the political will to push it through, the Islamic enclaves of the parallel societies in city districts where the Turkish or other clearly non-European flags are brandished will no longer be tolerated. The alternative to this cultural segregation is inclusive Europeanisation, not exclusion. This also goes for Islamic Turkey, which aspires to join the EU.

The reasoning about the potential of a Europeanisation of Islam in the European Diaspora took a further development at Cornell University. As stated above, Peter Katzenstein chaired the project "Transnational Religion and Accession," dealing not just with Islam, but also with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. A key assumption of the project is that "accession" - the inclusion in the political culture of the EU - presupposes a "Europeanisation" in the limited sense described above, that is for the territory of the EU. According to secular standards, Europeanisation is separated from religion and ethnicity and linked solely to the values of democracy, individual human rights and civil society. That this concept is not Eurocentric is amply illustrated by the possible synthesis of Islam and Europe in Euro-Islam, an idea I have been advocating for over 15 years summarized in the Cornell formula cited above and published most recently in the book edited by Peter Katzenstein and Timothy Byrnes "Religion in an Expanding Europe". Are the findings of the Cornell project, which argues for Europeanisation as a criteria not only for accepting the Turks of the Diaspora as European citizens, but also Turkey in the EU, acceptable for the Turks? The Turkish magazine Turkish Policy Quarterly did not see in this idea any European arrogance published 2004 my essay "Euro-Islam. The quest of Turkey and Muslims to become Europeans".This text met with general approval, although neither the governing Islamists, nor the German Islamic Council under Milli Görüs approve of it, because they are against Europeanisation, a fact corroborated by the enlightened Turks I have spoken with on my repeated visits to Ankara.

In closing I would like to refer to a concept developed by the last major Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who died 600 years ago. He coined the term asabiyya (esprit de corps, or collective civilizational identity), to measure the strengths and weaknesses of a civilisation. How strong is European asabiyya? Only when Europeanisation succeeds as a democratic response to the Islamic challenge can one speak of a strong European asabiyya in Ibn Khaldun's sense. The crucial thing is to integrate Europe as a civilisational entity in a pluralistic world. This entity must have its own asabiyya and a clear idea of its make-up, while remaining open to others and incorporating them through Europeanisation. Europe is more than an economic or business community, and it is well worth preserving it as a "beautiful idea." This can be achieved with Islamic participation, provided the vision of Euro-Islam becomes a political concept approved in the European diaspora of Islam. The task of preserving Europe with Islamic participation is viewed as a peace project for the 21st century.

*Bassam Tibi teaches international relations in Göttingen and is A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. He is author of the book "Europa ohne Identität?" (Europe without an identity?) published in many editions by Siedler Verlag as well as the Harvard book "Islam between Culture and Politics", published by Palgrave Press.Translation: nb, lp, jab.

Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?

From the kitchen: Given the claims these days of Muslims that they are "Europe's New Jews", I thought I would educate myself on what the real issues are with respect to the apparent failure on the part of Europe's Muslims to assimilate into the larger societies. This was very, very interesting and critical to a rational understanding of what "Enlightened" cultures, should be expected to look like, at least in this author's opinion.

This will be the first in a series of articles on this important topic that I will reproduce here in full. This was a lengthy piece, but worth the time if you are interested in what the cultural issues are which are now facing Europe as well as the United States.

I have a sense that were it not for European reliance on Arabian oil as well as the very powerful political forces and alliances that have been formed over the exploitation of that oil, Europe would hardly be as "tolerant" as it traditionally has been after 1968, though recent reports out of France do give us some hope. Sarkozy appears to want a return to "France for Frenchmen", whether you are Morroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, Polynesian or from Cote d'Ivoire.

Randy Shiner

Pascal Bruckner, born in 1948, counts among the best-known French "nouveaux philosophes". He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne under Roland Barthes. His works include The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement (Algora Publishing, 2000), The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt (The Free Press, 1986) The Divine Child: A Novel of Prenatal Rebellion (Little Brown & Co, 1994) Evil Angels (Grove Press, 1987)

24/01/2007
Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?

Pascal Bruckner defends Ayaan Hirsi Ali against Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, condemning their idea of multiculturalism for chaining people to their roots

Pascal Bruckner's fiery polemic has kindled an international debate. By now Ian Buruma, Timothy Garton Ash, Necla Kelek and Paul Cliteur have all stepped into the ring. Read their contributions here.

"What to say to a man who tells you he prefers to obey God than to obey men, and who is consequently sure of entering the gates of Heaven by slitting your throat?" - Voltaire"

Colonisation and slavery have created a sentiment of culpability in the West that leads people to adulate foreign traditions. This is a lazy, even racist attitude." – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There's no denying that the enemies of freedom come from free societies, from a slice of the enlightened elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to the rest of humanity, and more specifically to their compatriots, if they're unfortunate enough to belong to another religion or ethnic group.

To be convinced of this one need only glance through two recent texts: "Murder in Amsterdam" by the British-Dutch author Ian Buruma on the murder of Theo Van Gogh (1) and the review of this book by English journalist and academic Timothy Garton Ash in the New York Review of Books (2). Buruma's reportage, executed in the Anglo-Saxon style, is fascinating in that it gives voice to all of the protagonists of the drama, the murderer as well as his victim, with apparent impartiality. The author, nevertheless, cannot hide his annoyance at the former Dutch member of parliament of Somali origin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a friend of Van Gogh's and also the subject of death threats. Buruma is embarrassed by her critique of the Koran.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali. © Bettina Flitner

Garton Ash is even harder on her. For him, the apostle of multiculturalism, Hirsi Ali's attitude is both irresponsible and counter-productive. His verdict is implacable: "Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a brave, outspoken, slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist." (3). He backs up his argument with the fact that this outspoken young woman belonged in her youth to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. For Garton Ash, she has merely exchanged one credo for another, fanaticism for the prophet for that of reason.

This argument of equivalence is not new. It was used throughout the 19th century by the Catholic Church to block reforms, and more recently in France at the time of the "Islamic Headscarf Affair" by those opposed to the law. In the case of Hirsi Ali, herself subject to female circumcision and forced marriage, who escaped Africa to the Netherlands, the accusation is simply false. The difference between her and Muhammad Bouyeri, the killer of Theo Van Gogh, is that she never advocated murder to further her ideas.

"The Koran is the work of man and not of God," she writes. "Consequently we should feel free to interpret and adapt it to modern times, rather than bending over backwards to live as the first believers did in a distant, terrible time." (4) One searches this sentence in vain for the least hint of sectarianism. Hirsi Ali's sole weapons are persuasion, refutation and discourse. Far from the pathology of proselytism, she never transgresses the domain of reason. Her hope of pushing back tyranny and superstition does not seem to result from unsound or unhealthy exaltation.

But in the eyes of our genteel professors, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, like the dissenting Muslims Taslima Nasreen, Wafa Sultan, (see her interview on al Jazeera), Irshad Manji, Seyran Ates and Necla Kelek, has committed an unpardonable offence: she has taken democratic principles seriously.

It is well known that in the struggle of the weak against the strong, it is easier to attack the former. Those who resist will always be accused by the cowardly of exciting the hatred of the powerful.

Not without perfidy, Ian Buruma denies Ayaan Hirsi Ali the right to refer to Voltaire. Voltaire, he writes, confronted one of the most powerful institutions of his time, the Catholic Church, while Hirsi Ali contents herself with offending "a vulnerable minority in the heart of Europe." (5)

However, this statement disregards the fact that Islam has no borders: the Muslim communities of the Old World are backed up by a billion faithful. Crisscrossed by diverse currents, they can either become the advance wing of a fundamentalist offensive or exemplify a type of religiosity more in harmony with reason. Far from being a negligible affair, this is one of the major challenges of the 21st century! It's not enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live like a recluse, threatened with having her throat slit by radicals and surrounded by bodyguards. She - like the French philosophy professor Robert Redeker who has also been issued death threats on Islamicist websites - has to endure the ridicule of the high-minded idealists and armchair philosophers. She has even been called a Nazi in the Netherlands. (6) Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!

This vicious mechanism is well known. Those who revolt against barbarism are themselves accused of being barbarians. In politics as in philosophy, the equals sign is always an abdication. If thinking involves weighing one's words to name the world well, drawing comparisons in other words, then levelling distinctions testifies to intellectual bankruptcy. Shouting CRS = SS as in May '68, making Bush = Bin Laden or equating Voltaire to Savonarola is giving cheap satisfaction to questionable approximations. Similarly, the Enlightenment is often depicted as nothing but another religion, as mad and intransigent as the Catholicism of the Inquisition or radical Islam.

After Heidegger, a whole run of thinkers from Gadamer to Derrida have contested the claims of the Enlightenment to embody a new age of self-conscious history. On the contrary, they say, all the evils of our epoch were spawned by this philosophical and literary episode: capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism. For them, criticism of prejudices is nothing but a prejudice itself, proving that humanity is incapable of self-reflection. For them, the chimeras of certain men of letters who were keen to make a clean slate of God and revelation, were responsible for plunging Europe into darkness. In an abominable dialectic, the dawn of reason gave birth to nothing but monsters (Horkheimer, Adorno).The entire history of the 20th century attests to the fanaticism of modernity. And it's incontestable that the belief in progress has taken on the aspect of a faith, with its high priests from Saint Simon to August Comte, not forgetting Victor Hugo. The hideous secular religions of Nazism and communism, with their deadly rituals and mass massacres, were just as gruesome as the worst theocracies - of which they, at least as far as communism goes, considered themselves the radical negation. More people were killed in opposition to God in the 20th century than in the name of God. No matter that first Nazism and then communism were defeated by democratic regimes inspired by the Enlightenment, human rights, tolerance and pluralism.

Luckily, Romanticism mitigated the abstraction of the Enlightenment and its claims to having created a new man, freed from religious sentiment and things of the flesh.Today we are heirs to both movements, and understand how to reconcile the particularity of national, linguistic and cultural ties with the universality of the human race. Modernity has been self-critical and suspicious of its own ideals for a long time now, denouncing the sacralisation of an insane reason that was blind to its own zeal. In a word, it acquired a certain wisdom and an understanding of its limits. The Enlightenment, in turn, showed itself capable of reviewing its mistakes. Denouncing the excesses of the Enlightenment in the concepts that it forged means being true to its spirit.

These concepts are part and parcel of the contemporary make up, to the point that even religious fanatics make use of them to promote their cause. Whether we like it or not, we are the sons of this controversial century, compelled to damn our fathers in the language they bequeathed to us.

And since the Enlightenment triumphed even over its worst enemies, there is no doubt that it will also strike down the Islamist hydra, provided it believes in itself and abstains from condemning the rare reformers of Islam to the darkness of reprobation. Today we combine two concepts of liberty: one has its origins in the 18th century, founded on emancipation from tradition and authority. The other, originating in anti-imperialist anthropology, is based on the equal dignity of cultures which could not be evaluated merely on the basis of our criteria. Relativism demands that we see our values simply as the beliefs of the particular tribe we call the West.

Multiculturalism is the result of this process. Born in Canada in 1971, its principle aim is to assure the peaceful cohabitation of populations of different ethnic or racial origins on the same territory. In multiculturalism, every human group has a singularity and legitimacy that form the basis of its right to exist, conditioning its interaction with others. The criteria of just and unjust, criminal and barbarian, disappear before the absolute criterion of respect for difference. There is no longer any eternal truth: the belief in this stems from naïve ethnocentrism.

Anyone with a mind to contend timidly that liberty is indivisible, that the life of a human being has the same value everywhere, that amputating a thief's hand or stoning an adulteress is intolerable everywhere, is duly arraigned in the name of the necessary equality of cultures. As a result, we can turn a blind eye to how others live and suffer once they've been parked in the ghetto of their particularity. Enthusing about their inviolable differentness alleviates us from having to worry about their condition. However it is one thing to recognise the convictions and rites of fellow citizens of different origins, and another to give one's blessing to hostile insular communities that throw up ramparts between themselves and the rest of society. How can we bless this difference if it excludes humanity instead of welcoming it?

This is the paradox of multiculturalism: it accords the same treatment to all communities, but not to the people who form them, denying them the freedom to liberate themselves from their own traditions. Instead: recognition of the group, oppression of the individual. The past is valued over the wills of those who wish to leave custom and the family behind and - for example - love in the manner they see fit.

One tends to forget the outright despotism of minorities who are resistant to assimilation if it isn't accompanied by a status of extraterritoriality and special dispensations. The result is that nations are created within nations, which, for example, feel Muslim before they feel English, Canadian or Dutch. Here identity wins out over nationality. Worse yet: under the guise of respecting specificity, individuals are imprisoned in an ethnic or racial definition, and plunged back into the restrictive mould from which they were supposedly in the process of being freed. Black people, Arabs, Pakistanis and Muslims are imprisoned in their history and assigned, as in the colonial era, to residence in their epidermis, their beliefs.Thus they are refused what has always been our privilege: passing from one world to another, from tradition to modernity, from blind obedience to rational decision making. "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting (7) and marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values", Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in her autobiography (8).

The protection of minorities also implies the right of individual members to extract themselves with impunity, through indifference, atheism and mixed marriage, to forget clan and family solidarities and to forge their own destinies, without having to reproduce the pattern bequeathed to them by their parents.

Out of consideration for all the abuses they may have suffered, ethnic, sexual, religious and regional minorities are often set up as small nations, in which the most outrageous patriotism is passed off as nothing more than the expression of legitimate self-esteem. Instead of celebrating freedom as the power to escape determinism, the repetition of the past is being encouraged, reinforcing the power of collective coercion over private individuals. Marginal groups now form a sort of ethos-police, a flag-waving micro-nationalism which certain countries of Europe unfortunately see fit to publicly support. Under the guise of celebrating diversity, veritable ethnic or confessional prisons are established, where one group of citizens is denied the advantages accorded to others.

So it comes as no surprise that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is sanctioned by our intellectuals. Nothing is missing from the portrait of the young woman painted by Timothy Garton Ash, not even an outmoded machismo. In his eyes, only the beauty and glamour of the Dutch parliamentarian can explain her media success; not the accuracy of what she says. (9) Garton Ash does not ask whether the fundamentalist theologian Tariq Ramadan, to whom he sings enflamed panegyrics, also owes his fame to his Playboy looks. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it is true, does elude current stereotypes of political correctness. As a Somali, she proclaims the superiority of Europe over Africa. As a woman, she is neither wife nor mother. As a Muslim, she openly denounces the backwardness of the Koran. So many flouted cliches make her a true rebel, unlike the sham insurgents our societies produce by the dozen.

It is her wilful, short-fused, enthusiastic, impervious side to which Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash object, in the spirit of the inquisitors who saw devil-possessed witches in every woman too flamboyant for their tastes. Reading their utterly condescending words, it becomes clear that the war against Muslim fundamentalism will have to be won first on a symbolic level, and by women. Because they represent the pivot of the family and social order. Liberating them, guaranteeing them equal rights in all fields, is the first condition of progress in Arab Muslim societies.

Incidentally, each time a Western country has wanted to codify minority rights, it is the members of these minorities, mostly women, who have risen up in protest. The generous desire to be accomodating - like that of the Canadian province of Ontario which sought to judge Muslims according to the Sharia, at least for litigations of succession and family - or the proposition of a former German constitutional judge, Jutta Limbach, to create a minority status in the German Basic Law excusing Muslim girls from gym class, is experienced as a regression, a new imprisonment (10).

The mystique of respect for others which is developing in the West is highly dubious. Because etymologically, respect means looking on from a distance. Remember that in the 19th century native peoples were seen as so different from us that it was unthinkable that they should adopt the European model, or even French citizenship. Once considered inferiority, the difference is now experienced as an impassable distance. Pushed to the extreme, this eulogy of autarky is at the base of ill-starred political measures. What was apartheid in South Africa if not the respect of singularity pushed to the point that the other no longer has the right to approach me?

So the search for religious equilibrium may frustrate the desire for change in a confession, maintaining the minority status of part of the population, in general women, and condoning a subtle segregation camouflaged as diversity. Unabashed praise for the beauty of all the cultures may hide the same twisted paternalism as that of the colonialists of yesteryear. One may counter that since Islam appeared in the 7th century, it will inevitably be somewhat behind or, as Tariq Ramadan maintains, the faithful masses have not matured to the point where they can abandon practices such as stoning (he himself calls for a moratorium on stoning, not a full stop) (11). This flies in the face of "the impatience for liberty" (Michel Foucault) which seizes Muslim elites when faced with the spectacle of secular nations, freed from the fetters of restrictive dogma and retrograde morals.

The Enlightenment belongs to the entire human race, not just to a few privileged individuals in Europe or North America who have taken it upon themselves to kick it to bits like spoiled brats, to prevent others from having a go. Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism is perhaps nothing other than a legal apartheid, accompanied - as is so often the case - by the saccarine cajolery of the rich who explain to the poor that money doesn't guarantee happiness. We bear the burdens of liberty, of self-invention, of sexual equality; you have the joys of archaism, of abuse as ancestral custom, of sacred prescriptions, forced marriage, the headscarf and polygamy. The members of these minorities are put under a preservation order, protected from the fanaticism of the Enlightenment and the "calamities" of progress. Those termed "Muslims" (North Africans, Pakistanis, Africans) are prohibited from not believing, or from believing periodically, from not giving a damn about God, from creating a life for themselves far away from the Koran and the rites of the tribe.

Multiculturalism is a racism of the anti-racists: it chains people to their roots. Thus Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam and one of the mainstays of the Dutch state, demands that one accept "the conscious discrimination of women by certain groups of orthodox Muslims" on the basis that we need a "new glue" to "hold society together." In the name of social cohesion, we are invited to give our roaring applause for the intolerance that these groups show for our laws. The coexistence of hermetic little societies is cherished, each of which follows a different norm. If we abandon a collective criterion for discriminating between just and unjust, we sabotage the very idea of national community. A French, British or Dutch citizen will be prosecuted for beating his wife, for example. But should the crime go unpunished if it turns out that the perpetrator is a Sunni or Shiite? Should his faith give him the right to transgress the law of the land? This is the glorification in others of what we have always beaten ourselves up about: outrageous protectionism, cultural narcissism and inveterate ethnocentrism!

This tolerance harbours contempt, because it assumes that certain communities are incapable of modernising. Could it be that the dissidence of British Muslims is not only a function of the retrograde rigorism of their leaders, but also stems from a vague suspicion that all the consideration show to them by the state is little more than a subtle form of disdain, basically telling them that they are just too backward for modern civilisation ? Several communes in Italy are planning to reserve certain beaches for Muslim women, so they may bathe unexposed to male eyes. And within a few years the first "Islamic hospital," complying in all points with the prescriptions of the Koran, may open in Rotterdam. Anyone would think we are reliving the days of segregation in the southern United States. Yet this segregation has the full backing of Europe's most prominent progressives! Theirs is a fight on two fronts: minorities must be protected from discrimination (for example by encouraging the teaching of regional languages and cultures and adapting the school calendar to religious holidays); and private individuals must be protected from intimidation by the community in which they live.

Finally, one last argument militates against Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism: on the government's own avowal it doesn't work. Not content to have serves as an asylum for Jihad for years on end, with the dramatic consequences known to all, the United Kingdom must admit today that its social model based on communitarianism and separatism doesn't work. Many people scoffed at French authoritarianism when parliament voted to foribid women and young girls from wearing headscarves in school and in government offices (news story). Timothy Garton Ash for his part, who starts his review in Seine Saint-Denis, demonstrates a Francophobia worthy of Washington's Neocons.

Yet now political leaders in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, shocked by the spread of hijab and burqa, are considering passing laws against them (12). The facts speak against the appeasers, who enjoin Europe to fit in with Islam rather than vice versa. For the more we give in to the radicalism of the bearded, the more they will harden their tone. Appeasement politics only increase their appetite. The hope that benevolence alone will disarm the brutes remains for the moment unfounded. We in France also have our Jihad collaborators, on the extreme left as on the right: at the time of the Muhammad cartoon affair last year, deputies of the UMP proposed to institute blasphemy laws that would have taken us back to the Ancien Regime. But modern France was forged in the struggle against the hegemony of the Catholic Church.

And two centuries after the Revolution it will not support the yoke of a new fanaticism. That is why attempts by revanchist Islamic tendencies such as the Saudi Wahabites, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists or Al Qaida to gain ground on European territory and reconquer Andalousia resembles a colonial enterprise that must be opposed (13). How did Europe and France become secular societies? Through an unrelenting struggle against the Church, and its hold on the right to regiment people's minds, punish recalcitrants, block reforms and maintain the people - primarily the poorest - in the stranglehold of resignation and fear. The fight was extraordinarily violent on both sides, but it brought about incontestable progress and eventually led to the law of the separation of Church and state being passed in 1905.

The superiority of the French model (copied by the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal) is a result of the victory over obscurantism and events like the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. How could we tolerate in Islam that which we no longer tolerate in Catholicism? Secularism, which incidentally is written into the Gospels, is based on a few simple principles: freedom of religious affiliation, peaceful coexistence, neutrality of the public space, respect of the social contract, and the common acceptance that religious laws are not above civil ones but reside in the hearts of believers. France, said the philosopher Hannah Arendt, treated its colonies both as brothers and subjects. Happily, the time of colonies is over. But the republican egalitarian ideal postulates that all human beings have the same rights, independently of their race, sex and confession. This ideal is far from being realised. It is even in crisis, as the riots of November 2005 proved. Nevertheless it seems to be a better guiding light than the questionable worship of diversity. Against the right to difference, it is necessary to ceaselessly reaffirm the right to resemblance. What unites us is stronger than what divides us.

The positions of Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash fall in with American and British policies (even if the two disapprove of these policies): the failure of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in their wars against terror also result from their focussing on military issues to the detriment of intellectual debate. The diehard sanctimoniousness of these two leaders, their blend of strategic bravado and starry-eyed naivete, prevented them from striking where it was necessary: on the terrain of dogma, on the reinterpretation of holy scriptures and religious texts (14). Yesterday the Cold War was caught up in a global combat against communism, where the confrontation of ideas, the cultural struggle in cinema, music and literature played a key role. Today we observe with consternation as the British government and its circle of Muslim "advisers" flirts with the credo: better fundamentalism than terrorism - unable to see that the two go hand in hand, and that given a chance, fundamentalism will forever prevent the Muslims of Europe from engaging in reform.

Yet fostering an enlightened European Islam is capital: Europe may become a model, a shining example for reform which will hopefully take place along the lines of Vatican II, opening the way to self-criticism and soul-searching. However we must be sure not to speak to the wrong audience, styling the fundamentalists as friends of tolerance, while in fact they practise dissimulation and use the left or the intelligentsia to make their moves for them, sparing themselves the challenge of secularism (15).

It is time to extend our solidarity to all the rebels of the Islamic world, non-believers, atheist libertines, dissenters, sentinels of liberty, as we supported Eastern European dissidents in former times. Europe should encourage these diverse voices and give them financial, moral and political support. Today there is no cause more sacred, more serious, or more pressing for the harmony of future generations. Yet our continent kneels before God's madmen, muzzling and libelling free thinkers with suicidal heedlessness. Blessed are the sceptics and non-believers if they can calm the murderous ardour of faith! It is astonishing that 62 years after the fall of the Third Reich and 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment Europe's intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy. They maintain it is best to cede and retreat, and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet we are a long way off the dramatic circumstances of the 1930s, when the best minds threw themselves into the arms of Berlin or Moscow in the name of race, class or the Revolution. Today the threat is more diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing that resembles the formidable peril of the Third Reich. Even the government of Mullahs in Tehran is a paper tiger that could be brought to its knees with a minimum dose of rigour. Nevertheless the preachers of panic abound. Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!--------------------------------------------------------------(1) Ian Buruma: "Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance", New York (Penguin Press) 2006(2) "Islam in Europe" in: New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006(3) Buruma too speaks of "Enlightenment fundamentalists", p. 27.(4) Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Infidel", Free Press, 2007(5) Buruma, op. cit., p. 179.(6) According to Ian Buruma, the well-known Dutch author Geert Mak compares Ayaan Hirsi Ali's film "Submission" with the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film "Jud Süß" ("Murder in Amsterdam", page 240).(7) In France, 30,000 women of African origin have been subject to genital cutting, and another 30,000 women risk cutting in the future. France has long been the only country to prosecute genital cutting, and the law 4/04/06 has reinforced these measures.(8) Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Infidel".(9) Timothy Garton Ash, in "Islam in Europe." For Garton Ash, Ayaan Hirsi Ali "is irresistible copy for journalists, being a tall, strikingly beautiful, exotic, brave, outspoken woman with a remarkable life story, now living under permanent threat of being slaughtered like van Gogh. (...) It's no disrespect to Ms. Ali to suggest that if she had been short, squat, and squinting, her story and views might not be so closely attended to."(10) Jutta Limbach: "Making multiculturalism work", in: signandsight.com(11) Ramadan reiterated this position during a debate with Nicolas Sarkozy on November 20, 2003 on French television. His brother, Hani Ramadan, also a Swiss citizen, defends stoning as punishment.(12) According to various surveys, 87 percent of British Muslims feel primarily Muslim; in France it is 46 percent. So the majority of Muslims stand behind the republican ideal, puting their religious principles behind their loyalty to the French nation.(13) Remember the communiques of Al Qaida on September 18, 2001: "We shall break the cross. Your only choice is Islam or the sword!" And in September 2006 after the declarations of Benedict XVI in his Ratisbonne speech on violence and religion, demonstrators in Jerusalem and Naplouse bore signs saying "The conquest of Rome is the solution." And Chiek Youssef Al-Quaradhawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and mentor of Tariq Ramadan, said in one of his most famous sermons that he was certain that "Islam would return to Europe as a victorious conqueror, after having been twice expelled. I maintain that this time the conquest will not come of the sword, but of preaching and ideology." Al Quaradhawi also condones suicide attacks.(14) In 2004, Tony Blair printed up two Christmas cards, one of which was addressed to non-Christians and made no reference to the birth of Christ. What paternalism lurks behind this debauchery of good intent!(15) On Tariq Ramadan's duplicity and deep-seated anti-Semitism: he believes the machinations of the deeply reactionary "Zionist Lobby" are responsible for the bad reputation of his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The very well-researched and convincingly argumented book "Frere Tariq" by Caroline Fourest (Paris, Grasset, 2004) is highly recommendable in this context. After it was published, the author was physically threatened on the webside of the friends of Ramadan, Ouma.com. Subjected to a witch hunt, she had to be protected by the police for some time.*The article originally appeared in German in the online magazine Perlentaucher on January 24, 2007.

Pascal Bruckner, born in 1948, counts among the best-known French "nouveaux philosophes". He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne under Roland Barthes. His works include The Temptation of Innocence - Living in the Age of Entitlement (Algora Publishing, 2000), The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt (The Free Press, 1986) The Divine Child: A Novel of Prenatal Rebellion (Little Brown & Co, 1994) Evil Angels (Grove Press, 1987)Translation: jab.