November 11, 2004
Babble-on
While we were in Istanbul our Turkish guide interrupted his normal delivery outside the Blue Mosque to foray into the history and general-shape of Turkish Islam and all the reasons why Turkish Moslems were unlikey to be extreme fundamentalists and shouldn't be confused with fundamentalists from other parts of the world. And how most Moslems no matter where they were from were not extremists and that the Koran in its most usual interpretations actually forbade the use of violence.
At the time it struck me as very sad that he felt the need to do this and also a tiny bit annoying. Didn't he realise that his audience, a group of Netherlanders + one Australian, all came from reasonably sophisticated, well-educated, multicultural countries that had welcomed immigrants from all parts of the world for decades and might be expected to be able to work this out for themselves?
Then of course we landed back in the Netherlands to discover that some brainiac had BOMBED a Moslem PRIMARY SCHOOL for God's sake. Seems the guide in Turkey knows a bit more about people then I do! (But then I'm the one who said Howard would never win an election in Australia and three, THREE terms later is still unable to believe that anyone, ever voted for him. I mean WHO are these people?)
Since then things have been getting weirder and weirder, Mosque's have been attacked, and burnt, apparently one Catholic school as well and yesterday morning I did my usual Nu thing to discover that the air space over Den Haag had been closed, a man in his underpants had been arrested, everyone was looking for a Syrian, grenades have been thrown, officers injured and a house in the Hague was under siege.
The rest of the day was particularly spooky as there was no more information forthcoming from the Police, Army, Government or anyone else about any of this until well into the evening. The entire day was spent then greeting everyone you met with WHAT THE FUCK is going on and rumours were rife.
I have no idea which way all this is going to go but the Netherlands definitely has the feel of a tinderbox waiting to go off right now. The Dutch tolerance for immigrants is famous but for most of the Netherlands it was only ever tolerance. More than a few Netherlanders have explained to me this way; the other side of tolerance is "couldn't give a fuck". There are only some areas where diversity is embraced. For the four years I've lived here racism has been a constant presence and recently there have even been attempts to shape immigration laws based on the country of origin of the applicant.
What makes it ALL SO UNREAL is that living in an area like de Pijp, a multicultural suburb for over a hundred years, all of this seems so far away and removed from daily life. I go to the Moslem Ethiopan butcher on the other side of the market because he has the best cuts, the Turkish grocer because he has vegetables I can't find anywhere else, a Dutch cheese stand on the market because, well, he sells cheese and I buy cheap 3-for-one toiletries from Pakistanis on the Albert Cuyp. On the corner of our street I pass an Islamic cultural center and my son is in a creche where some of his carers are wearing headscarves and there is only one child out of six with two Dutch parents. In de Pijp there isn't just tolerance but a genuine acceptance of diversity.
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