I have a confession to make. I’m Dutch. Born, raised and still living in the land of wooden shoes, tulips and windmills. The country of weed, prostitution, abortions and gay marriages. The nation of tolerance.
Yes, tolerance… Is that really what makes a true Dutchman? I’ve done some research and would like to present some statistics to you.
- Gay marriages. Approximately 20% of the Dutch are against it. 10% believes sex between two people of the same sex is wrong.
- Euthanasia. Okay, we were the first European country to take care of legal possibilities for it in our laws. But nearly one third of the members of parliament was against it.
- Drugs. Somewhat 6% of the Dutch have used cannabis recently (in the past year). This is more than countries like Finland and Portugal, but less than for instance England and Wales. Compared to the United States and Australia, The Netherlands has less ever users of cannabis, cocaine or even our favourite export good XTC. Estimated is that 3% of the Dutch have an actual drugs problem, compared to nearly 10% in the United Kingdom.
- Prostitution. 5 to 10% of our citizens feels the existence of buyable sex is condemnable.
- Abortion. 10% of women and even 20% of men think abortion is murder.
- Racism. It appears that the Dutch may have a less racist point of view than for instance the French, but compared to most European countries we are definitely not very good in genuinely embracing other cultures.
To sum thing up: the Dutch have some pretty tolerant laws, but this doesn’t mean the Dutch actually embrace all the possibilities this tolerance promises. We’re not all on drugs. And it sure doesn’t mean every Dutch citizen agrees. A lot of us are actually against the freedom and tolerance we have. So why are we known to be so tolerant? Because we confuse tolerance with a weak form of acceptance. Our tolerance is actually plain old indifference. We don’t care what somebody else does, as long as it doesn’t hurt us. And in fact, we don’t care what others think of what we do. We really simply just don’t give a fuck.
And that’s where Geert Wilders with his movie Fitna comes in.
What? Who? Well, lately concern about fundamentalist Muslims and the effect on our society has risen in The Netherlands. It’s a two way thing: there actually are certain problems like forced marriages and the repression of women that scream for a solution. However, there are also a lot of xenophobic people that suddenly start interfering with politics. Geert Wilders is one of them. He did get elected into our parliament. He and his party do sit on 9 of the 150 available seats. Frightening, but still a minority, and he hardly has any influence on any policies or laws.
However, he does think that prohibiting the Koran will be an effective solution. And now he has made a movie: fifteen minutes about why the Koran is such a threat. While writing this column nobody has seen it yet and nobody knows the exact content.
Nevertheless, we are afraid. We are afraid of the same thing that happened in Denmark in reaction on those cartoons. We are afraid certain people might confuse ‘just a member of parliament’ with ‘the point of view of the Dutch’. Our government set the national terror alert to a higher level. But, due to our laws about freedom of speech, that’s all that they can do.
So many questions. Wouldn’t it say enough about fundamentalist Muslims, if they actually do feel provoked by this movie and start terrorist attacks on my country and my people? But do we have the right to provoke others when they are bound to feel insulted? Where does freedom of speech end and pure insult begin? Is a member of parliament allowed to risk the safety of his nation like this? Only time will tell what will happen.
A lot of the fundamentalist Muslim matters are impossible to be stopped because of our constitution: freedom of speech, thought, religion and beliefs. And now the threatening movie of Wilders cannot be stopped because of the same laws. He and his enemies fight each other with the same weapon. How very ironic.
Still, there’s one thing Wilders achieves by this.
Despite the fact that I’m scared, despite it will all maybe turn out a storm in a glass of water: maybe this will finally wake up the Dutch. What are we willing to accept and what does go too far? What defines Dutch culture, Dutch boundaries of good and evil? Our boundaries of indifference are sure to be redefined in the coming period. Maybe then we will finally begin building real boundaries concerning our tolerance.
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Forgive my broad brush heavy sweeping highly generalising statement here but from your post Dutch culture sounds pretty similar to British culture. Indifference is rife in the UK too. You need only look at the percentage of populus who voted in the last election to see how much our citizens couldnt give a flying hoot about anything either. But they do say everything goes in cycles .. maybe one day we might `wake up’ and stop giving a platform to these individuals.
Left by London Lass on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008