The test
February 17, 2008How about this.
Choose a certain period in your life; say the coming week. Then, write down every instance something that happened in your life, something that happened to you, or with you, made you feel annoyed, uncomfortable, or unpleasant. Reading something in the paper and feeling annoyed does not count, since the thing you read about in the news did not happen to you.
Then, for every item on your list, write down if it was caused by someone from Dutch/West ancestry, or by someone from Muslim ancestry.
After a week, you’ll see that most of the things that make you feel annoyed, sad, or angry, are caused by Dutch people, with a Dutch background. Doing a test like this (you have to have the guts to be honest with yourself!) will show you that no, your grieves are not caused by people with a Muslim background. They are caused by your fellow Westerners.
The reason I devised this simple test is that I see a lot of people who have zero interaction with Muslims that still see Muslims and the Islam as the cause for the problems in The Netherlands. I live in a very small, and cosy little town, and no, there barely are any Muslims in here, and most of the people I know here barely ever leave this town - they see my casual trips to Amsterdam which I make a few times a week as something special. Dude, that’s like, the other side of the world.
If these people do not see Muslims as the cause for their problems based on their own experiences with them, it must mean that this is caused by something else. The obvious suspects? The media, and our politicians. They give much more attention to the whole Islam debate than it deserves, talking their cattle buyers/voters into unsubstantiated fear and hatred; fear and hatred that will make them vote for them or buy their newspapers.
It is a despicable tactic, but in today’s political climate, there are few who dare to properly stand up against it, there are few who dare to openly do their duty as Dutchmen and women to fight for equality, tolerance, and respect. The Muslims in this country carry a Dutch passport, just like we do, and as such, they automatically have all the rights we have. They have the right to believe their own believes, to wear the clothes they want, to send their children to a school they want. Denying these basic rights to people carrying the Dutch passport (what some of our politicians openly advocate) is, as far as I’m concerned, treason. Those politicians, as well as their sheepish followers, are stepping upon the graves of our ancestors - ancestors who have fought for all that we have today.
Do the test, and you’ll see.
My only fellow team member at work is a Muslim immigrant, from Pakistan.
Over the course of my life, I have encountered, but not known well, perhaps 100 Muslims from various parts of the world. I have stood behind them in line at supermarkets, been behind them picking up their children from school, sat at lunch tables with them.
In my entire life, I have not had a single issue or problem with a Muslim, ever. The one thing you can perhaps say about Muslims in the United States is some of them tend to be a little insular, but this is always an issue of being immigrants, rather than being Muslim. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a Muslim who was born here except for Black Muslims (Nation of Islam / African American Muslims).
Even with the orgy of stupidity that goes on here and other places in regard to Muslims who have come to the West with every intention of living peaceful lives and being tolerant of others, I am simply not able to connect my own experience with Muslims with, say, the Taliban.
I simply have never had an issue, they have never been bad neighbors, nor have I ever felt threatened or scared around them. In point of fact, if I think about it, the vast majority of problems I’ve had in my life have been with white Americans. Since I am a white American, I have lived mostly around other white Americans, less by choice than by circumstance.
I’m not trying to make any kind of progressive point about tolerance. This is simply the reality of my experience.
Comment by Quag7 — February 18, 2008 @ 2:06 am
But, Thom, you surely must realize that your test is, at best, inconclusive due to being incorrectly designed! Correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, Muslim population in Netherland was far from being a majority. Furthermore, even though I have never been in your “very small, and cosy little town”, something tells me it’s not exactly crawling with Muslim folks. Therefore, statistically speaking, you are far more likely to be annoyed by a member of some sort of majority around you, which in this case happens to be the white Europeans. No surprise here. Which is why one can’t use the results of your proposed experiment as evidence for or against something.
That’s not to say that politicians in your country and in both of mine (USA and Ukraine) aren’t being manipulative, lying, self-serving weasels. The tactics of spreading FUD aren’t exactly limited to the IT world, f*cking politicians have been doing it for millennia.
Comment by Snifflez — February 18, 2008 @ 8:32 am
The more apples you have in an apple tree, the bigger the probability that there may also be some rotten apples in the tree. However, a few rotten apples doesn’t mean that all apples would be bad. Of course, you may still not like apples or you might even be allergic to them, but don’t try to force your taste of fruits on everyone else. The same goes for social and cultural taste and values.
Comment by hobo — February 18, 2008 @ 8:59 pm