[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Dan Lusthaus]

>> Even the once tolerant
> > Netherlands   are  changing  quite  dramatically  and
> > becoming intolerant.
>
> I  can  see US Government behind this nationalism boom,
> and  I can see corporations behind US Government. Maybe

Beni, you can't tell the ropes from the snakes. The change in Holland has
nothing to do with the US and everything to do with domestic perceptions of
domestic Islam (ditto Britain's recent culture shock -- Canada will join
those shocked ranks soon). The Theo van Gogh assassination (and the death
threats against a woman Muslim Dutch legislator who collaborated with him on
the film he was killed for -- the threat was stuck on a note with a knife to
his chest), the unrepentent savagery masquerading as religious zealotry, the
intricate webs of terrorist cells and plots continually being uncovered
there, the belligerent lack of remorse and additional threats uttered by van
Gogh's murderer in court, etc., the increasing belligerance coupled with
rejection of Dutch mores or any assimlilational compromise, etc. -- all that
profoundly shocked the Dutch, who prior to that didn't want to believe that
people could be that messed up, much less represent a cultural matrix that
is generating an endless supply of likeminded jihadists for whom killing
film-makers and Muslim women espousing reform in the contemporary Islamic
treatment of women is more important than their own life. They make the more
rabid anti-abortionists in this country look like uncommitted,
procrastinating amateurs.

That the Dutch have no better response than right wing nationalism is
disturbing, but that their concern and anxiety is legitimate is also
unquestionable. The problem of Islam in Europe is real. As Bat Yaor has
warned, if Europe doesn't wake up, it will *be* the Muslim world in less
than 20 years (like Kashmir, Bali soon, etc.). It's a war of hegemony.
IThat's a deeper identity question than mere nationalism, as a Buddhist
might point out. Europe's liberal openness (if that ever really was anything
more than rhetoric used by Europeans to try to shame non-Europeans who
weren't as "enlightened" as they were) is already passe. France, Britain,
Netherlands, et al. are rethinking where to draw the line, and how to
enforce it.

Just as the western european communists had to finally come to terms (in the
60s and 70s, for goodness sake) with the fact that Stalin was not a good
guy, contemporary leftists are going to have to come to terms with the fact
that all evil doesn't begin and end in the USA, or even the current
miserable administration. The US didn't blow up a bunch of people in Bali a
few days ago, and the target was not Americans (the only Americans wounded
in that were natives revisiting the homeland on vacation). It is Muslims
undermining the Hindu remnant of that country. Don't let them distract you
with the false rhetoric they've learned is so effective at neutralizing
critical scrutiny of who they are and what they are doing. (And if anti-US
diatribes don't work, there is always the ubiquitous antisemitic/anti-Israel
line to fall back on).

Let me put it this way: unless people on the left begin to recognize the
reality of the problem of Islam and devote some creative energy to dealing
with that (enlisting and empowering moderate Muslims would be a start), the
only ones who will be dealing with it are the Bushes and right wing
demagogues. As long as the left thinks the way to solve the problem is to
join the jihadists in their anti-American choruses (as if that somehow
immunizes them from being the target of the next attack -- it doesn't), the
problem will only get worse, and those in the middle will continue moving to
the right.

Dan