DEARBORN — While campaigning to become president of the United States, Barack Obama was accused of a lot of things. Being of Dutch ancestry was not one of them. But according to the Netherlands’ Cabinet Minister of European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, Obama’s election actually received more attention in the Netherlands than the country’s own election. Speaking here this week with a group of interfaith leaders and activists on a visit arranged by the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan (CIOM), Timmermans’ glowing reports of how much hope he himself places in Obama might make you think the Dutch may one day consider him among the group of Dutch American presidents, which includes, so far, Martin van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A group of interfaith leaders at the Islamic Center of America pose with Dutch Cabinet Minister for the European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, third from right.

Presidents are not the only thing the Dutch have given America. New York is an outgrowth of the Dutch colony New Amsterdam. It was the values inherent in the Dutch republic of tolerance, freedom and openmindedness that heavily influenced America’s Founding Fathers. And, in fact, it was the Dutch delegation from New York to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that would not ratify the Constitution unless a “bill of specific individual rights were (sic) attached to it.” In 1791, the United States of America adopted the Bill of Rights. And it was the Dutch belief in mercantile capitalism that gave birth to Wall Street.
The Netherlands indeed has been a beacon of freedom and tolerance for many, including not least of all for freedom of economic endeavors and of religion. Amsterdam is often called the most liberal city in the world, with legalized use of soft drugs, prostitution, euthanasia and an openly gay community.

But other things have changed. There is now a large minority community in the Netherlands — almost eight percent of the population — of mostly Moroccan and Turkish Muslims. Having such a large minority community is new to the Dutch, said Timmermans. And it is well known that Muslim views on drugs, prostitution, euthanasia and homosexuality are not liberal.

Timmermans told the audience that the starting point of all world religions as well as of those humanists who want to live their lives based on moral behavior, is to not do to others what you would not have them do to you. In other words, he said, one must take responsibility for the other as well as for oneself. “If we can just rekindle that issue as a starting point for our dialogue,” he said, “I think we would be well served.”

The minister said the Dutch have always been good at tolerance, at letting everyone live their own lives and not interfering with each other. “But the question is, were we ever good at real dialogue?”

The live and let live attitude no longer applies to today’s world, Timmermans said. “This world need dialogue.”

And he supports that statement by saying that the greatest fear of Islam in the Netherlands is in the areas of the country with no Muslims. In the inner cities and the urban areas where there are Muslims, the fear is much less. And he said it is up to the politicians and the leaders to make sure this dialogue happens.

The global economic meltdown has included the middle class in the Netherlands and all of Europe. And when people suddenly lose control over their lives, said Timmermans, they become afraid and they blame things around them which have changed. Post 9/11, Timmermans said, what they blame is Islam. In the Netherlands, what they blame is Islam. Timmermans said we have to look at this phenomenon and try to explain it. He again pointed to fear. “This is the first time since World War II that the middle class have the feeling of decline and no longer believe in progress. They think we have reached the pinnacle and it’s downhill from here.” To have a large, visible community of Muslims who do not assimilate and dissappear as other immigrant communities have done, is also frightening. According to Timmermans, this is not an orchestrated campaign to malign the faith, but “simply a knee-jerk reaction” to fear.

Timmermans also expressed concern about the increase in anti-Semitism and in homophobic incidents. He said these were things he did not want to see in his country. He expressed admiration for the interfaith nature of this week’s gathering and asked the audience members to advise him on how they have come together. He also said that the American Muslim community is socially and economically more advanced than the Dutch Muslim community and he felt that had an impact on the situation in the Netherlands.

To address the distance between the mainstream Dutch and the Dutch Muslims, Timmermans said: “We have to look for more dialogue… We need to create more storylines. We need to get more stories out there. Why did you come to the Netherlands? What happened in your life? How do you see the future of your children? And we need to talk to each other about this and not just stay within our communities.”

Timmermans acknowledged that the politicians in his country have not been able to progress in this area. While he did not elaborate, it was no doubt a reference to the popularity of the far right-wing political party of parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the Party for Freedom (PVV). Its popularity continues to rise, according to a Radio Netherlands report on March 29, 2009. Wilders’ (pronounced Veelders) rapid rise in popularity began when Britain barred him from entering the UK in February because of his film “Fitna.”

According to BBC, Wilders was born of a German father on the border town of Venlo and raised a Roman Catholic; he formed many of his political views in his travels to Israel and the neighboring Arab countries. His early job at the Dutch social insurance agency moved him to politics, where he worked as a speechwriter for the liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. In 1996, he moved to the city of Utrecht, and represented his pluralistic neighborhood in the city council, and later the House of Representatives of the Netherlands. There he was noted for his witty one-liners and outlandish blond hairstyle.

Citing irreconcilable differences on the party’s position on Turkish accession to the European Union, Wilders left the People’s Party in 2002 to form his own party, the Party for Freedom. Since then, he has been outspoken on the “evil of Islam.” His provocative 2008 film about Islam in the Netherlands, “Fitna,” has received international attention and condemnation. For his views, he has been forced into guarded isolation. He is being prosecuted in his own country for inciting hatred and also possibly in Jordan and France. FrontPage Magazine’s Jacob Laksin has noted Wilders’ policies include support for “restricting immigration from Muslim countries; for more aggressively monitoring domestic extremism, including radical mosques; and for reducing an indulgent welfare state that allows immigrants to live comfortably without assimilating” – all positions gaining ground as the traditionally tolerant land witnesses increasing physical assaults upon its homosexual population and, according to Timmermans, increasing anti-Semitic sentiments from young Muslim males.

Timmermans said he knows that there are differences in attitudes toward moral and social issues. But we need to talk about these things, he said, and we need to share our values. “I think social peace is not just about acknowledging what you share but it’s about accepting where you differ.”

Questioned later about the movie “Fitna,” Timmermans said he did not come prepared to talk about it but would be happy to do so. It was a strange remark considering the movie was produced by a Dutch parliamentarian and the minister was addressing a group in the largest mosque in America. What Timmermans did say was that the very best way to handle this type of behavior is to ignore it, which may have accounted for his not addressing it to begin with. He said when Britain refused entry to Wilders, the publicity he received skyrocketed. That was a strange remark also following a long and eloquent address on the need for dialogue and the fact that Islamophobia is generated by fear. However, Timmermans maintained that the Muslim community in the Netherlands basically judged the movie as poorly done and irrelevant and that worked. He said that to claim Wilders had no right to make the film or no right to express his beliefs was the best way to strengthen his argument and to identify Islam as an intolerant faith. What makes xenophobes thrive, he said, is to interdict them and make them martyrs for freedom of expression.

When asked by The Arab American News why there should be laws against anti-Semitism in Europe but Muslims should remain silent about anti-Islamic speech and behavior, the minister said “Well there is, I mean, there is always this dichotomy, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia. The Jewish community comes to us and says ‘you’re not doing enough about anti-Semitism,’ the Muslim community comes to us and says the same thing.” Timmermans said he was of Roman Catholic background and anti-Catholic cartoons don’t bother him. He doesn’t care. “You reach a point where you are beyond that,” he said, apparently unaware of the condescension evident in his statement. Indeed, throughout the minister’s remarks, there was a lurking sense of the opinion that as one becomes more secular, one becomes more in tune with modern life, more amenable to democratic societies, a sentiment that many Muslims would surely disagree with.

Timmermans admitted that the population of the Netherlands is very reluctant to see Turkey admitted to the European Union, although he himself approves of it. He said, however, that the reluctance is not so much about the country being Muslim as it is about the EU having grown so rapidly and the Netherlands being such a small country in a union of much larger entities.

What would he most like to see happen in his country to address the situation? Without hesitation he said that greater educational achievement and economic advancement among the minority Muslims would go the farthest toward eliminating their perceptions of a double standard. That, and the dialogue, of course.