Illiberal Europe
EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 14, 2004
The writer is Leone Ginzburg Research Fellow in Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Behind Europe's commitment to liberal democracy lurks an illiberal tradition. Every time freedom has failed in Europe, it is to that tradition – of violent repression, totalitarianism, xenophobia, and intolerance – that Europeans have reverted.
When the promise of liberalism failed to materialize Europe turned to fascism, Nazism and communism. Later, when crisis loomed in Europe's advanced capitalist countries, frustrated students and intellectuals turned to Marxism – some eventually embracing terrorism.
Now racial and cultural tensions are brewing in the heart of Europe. They stem from Europe's failure to integrate first- and second-generation immigrants from the lands of Islam, and in some cases from the immigrants' failure to embrace the values of the societies which sheltered them.
Europe should ponder well its own legacy. The new challenge to European liberal democracies – Islam's appearance across the continent – may well lead to the same rapid descent into the abyss of intolerance.
For too long mainstream European political parties labelled as racists those clamoring for restricted immigration or aggressive integrationist policies.
The result? Voters have turned to extremists who have no shame in fanning the flames of hatred.
Europe's default option – hatred in the wake of tolerance's failure – is but a stone's-throw away.
Liberal democracy has ducked the issue for so long, fearful that demanding full cultural integration of immigrants would be showing disloyalty to Europe's commitments to a pluralistic society. But in promoting multiculturalism Europe has forgotten the central tenet of liberalism: that one is free to do everything except cause harm to others, and that my freedom ends where your freedom begins.
The planners of the Madrid bombing last March enjoyed European freedoms, as did the alleged murderer of Theo Van Gogh, who had European citizenship.
They enjoyed freedom, but did not practice it.
JUDGING BY the way race relations are handled in Europe, two clear patterns emerge.
Freedom will be curtailed to protect intolerant cultures and communities.
Citizens will grow increasingly alienated from this state of affairs. They will vent their frustration by supporting extremist political groups, or by taking justice into their own hands and unleashing violence against the minorities they resent.
Consider the following. Last week a survey of European countries published in The Wall Street Journal Europe found that Europeans are growing increasingly alienated from Muslim immigrants and their offspring.
Seventy-five percent of Swedes and 30% of Central Europeans think there is "a lot of disapproval of Muslims living in Europe."
Yet Europe's elites seem oblivious to this swelling resentment. In fact, they are creating the ground for more hatred.
The Greek government has just donated 8.5 acres of land to allow the construction of a mosque outside Athens – funded by Saudi cash, as Stephen Schwartz reported in a recent article.
The catch? Saudi money will most definitely create, as Schwartz calls it, a "Trojan Horse of Wahhabism" in the heart of Greece, favoring the spread of a doctrine of hatred among Greece's burgeoning Islamic community.
Meanwhile, just months after London Mayor Ken Livingstone – in the name of multiculturalism – invited gay-bashing and suicide-bomber-endorsing Sheikh al-Qaradawi to city hall, Her Majesty's government is now considering a proposal called the Serious Organized Crime and Police Bill which would extend laws and measures against racial incitement to religious incitement as well.
That may seem innocuous, but it isn't.
Religious sensitivities are important, but forbidding comments that are offensive to a believer is a dangerous precedent on the way to curtailing freedom of expression.
Theo Van Gogh was murdered, after all, because his movie Submission was found to be deeply offensive to some Muslims. The veil was imposed on women in Iran soon after the 1979 revolution because immodestly dressed women were offensive to religious sensitivities.
What of scholarly research on the holy scriptures of revealed religions that casts doubt on the authenticity of certain episodes, the attributed authorship of those texts, and the historicity of their main characters?
Will such scholarship, no doubt offensive to some believers, eventually be prosecuted as well?
What about evolutionist theories? What about dinosaurs and movies about them, which imply that the world was created more than 6,000 years ago, as the Bible tells us?
What of equality between the sexes, gay unions and priesthood, unconventional religious practices, or mild paganism?
Limiting freedom can only be justified by the need to avoid harm to others. But opinion is sacred in liberal democracies, and its occasionally provocative or offensive nature can be neutralized by "more speech, not enforced silence," as late Justice Brandeis wrote.
There must be proof of causality between speech and violent action to stifle expression. Otherwise freedom will die.
In Europe, freedom has died more than once in the past. Europeans should see the ominous signs of illiberalism when governments protect illiberal values or a culture of violence in the name of multiculturalism.
That approach leads intolerant citizens to burn mosques in response.
This article can also be read at jpost.com |
