17 september 2019

Sometimes the question is raised whether there exists a need for a European Islam. Hereafter I defend that at its core there is no need for such a thing and that it certainly is not up to atheists like myself to create something like a European Islam. I do believe that in the margins there might be room for a European “format”. I will explain that at another time in another text.

Of course we should not be naïve and be aware that if European governments apply the principle of separation between state and religion, the outcome may be that in practice Moroccan, Turkish, Saudi or Qatari governments organize Islam in our cities or preach their versions of Islam in our land. We should ensure that this does not happen.

What we can however offer to the Islam in Europe is a critical dialogue with Islam. Such a critical dialogue is not possible in its homelands, be it Saudi-Arabia or Iran. We can question the key values and their underpinning, their sources and the basic reasonings. We can question whether practices are really religious or rather cultural. However, again we should not be naïve.

In November 2014 the eminent Flemish professors Rik Torfs and Etienne Vermeersch gave an interview in the Flemish newspaper De Standaard. Earlier, Etienne Vermeersch, renowned atheist, had in another discussion with a hijab wearing muslima on television, stated in a very affirmative way that the Quran did not impose the wearing of the hijab. In the interview in de Standaard of November 2014, Rik Torfs, professor at (and at that moment also Rector of) the KUL questioned why the atheist professor tried to convince the Muslima of his point of view. According to the catholic professor, there was no reason why the atheist professor would intervene in what the catholic professor called an internal religious debate. According to me, Vermeersch answered correctly that his only intention was to correct a wrong statement by the muslima. Whether Vermeersch was correct with his statement on the hijab is in this context irrelevant. What we see at work is how an overall “rationalist” catholic professor tries to stonewall religious discussions against an atheist discours.

In his book “Snow”, the Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk describes a discussion with a muslima who states that “when God makes a clear and definite command, it’s not a matter for ordinary mortals to question”. However , she adds : “but do not assume from this that our religion leaves no room for discussion.” But she concludes : “I will say that I’m not prepared to discuss my faith with an atheist – or even a secularist. I beg your pardon.” (page 114)

These two examples demonstrate a refusal by religious people to discuss the religious phenomenon with outsiders. Religious people might prefer to flee (hide) in their “mental parallel-communities”, but that is something the Free, Critical West should not allow.

17 september 2019

Page 41 :

“The most striking aspect of the Burma debate today is its absence of nuance and its singularly ahistorical nature. Dictatorship and the prospects for democracy are seen within the prism of the past ten or twenty years, as if three Anglo-Burmese wars, a century of colonial rule, an immensely destructive Japanese invasion and occupation, and five decades of civil war, foreign intervention, and Communist insurgency had never happened. A country the size and population of the German Empire on the eve of the First World War is viewed through a single-dimensional lens, and then there is surprise over predictions unfulfilled and strategies that never seem to bear fruit. Burma is a place with a rich and complex history, both before the time of King Thibaw and Lord Randolph Churchill and since. Burmese nationalism and xenophobia, the ethnic insurgencies and the army dictatorship, and the failure of successive governments to keep pace with the rest of an increasingly peaceful and prosperous Asia – all these things have a history, a reason. And what emerges from these histories is not an answer to all of today’s ills but at least the beginnings of an explanation. And from this explanation perhaps a richer discussion and a better intimation of what may lie ahead.”

What Myint-U explains is that it does not make sense to assess the quality of welfare or democracy in states (In this case Burma) without taking into account its precedents. Liberal Democracy cannot be imposed in one day, welfare cannot be created overnight, based on simple voluntaristic decisions. Structures which were built over decades, if not centuries (?), determine the (im)possibility of the creation of a successful society, based on democracy and generating wealth for all its citizens. With an expensive word : the success of the implementation is path-dependant.

However, in his quote Myint-U probably does not focus on the main weakness of Burma; It contains an important set of minorities with for us in the West mostly unknown names : the Shan, the Karen, the Kachin, the Mon, the Chin, the Arakans, the Rohingya and many others. Burma’s existential question is probably whether it can survive without some level of dictatorial centralizing force.

17 september 2019

In the history of Europe as I described it in my book LIBERAL QUICKSAND I assign an important place to the principle of National Self Determination (PNSD). It was invoked throughout recent history to justify the creation of new nations/states.

To a certain degree the principle is used ( but only sparsely) in theories of political philosophy.

And in International Law we only find an explicit confirmation of this right when the status of colonies is discussed (Declaration on the Granting of Independance to Colonial Countries and Peoples – Resolution 1514 xv – 1960).

Therefore, what seems central in history, in the past does not seem to have a place in the world of today ?

13 september 2019

Nationalism is an emotionally loaded term. It should not be like that.

Nationalism refers in the first place to the process which started with the French Revolution whereby a nation creates a state or a state a nation with a linguistically homogeneous territory. An ideology that drives the process can an be called nationalistic. The end result of the process is a nation-state. As a consequence of the nationalistic process multinational states were transformed into linguistically homogeneous nation states. As said, the process started with the French Revolution and accelerated around 1848, after World Wars I and II and after the falling apart of the Sovjet-Union in 1989.

The process can take two different forms. Or the State takes the initiative to form the nation (France, Hungary) or a people, a nation takes the initiative to take hold of a territory of its own and impose its own language in that territory. The first process functions top-down while the second one is a bottom-up process. Both are “democratic” in the sense that in both cases the whole nation should learn the same language. Before the French Revolution only the elites had to be familiar with the language of the state. After the French Revolution everybody should learn that language. The new French Republic wanted to be sure that all citizens understood what the revolution was all about and did not hesitate to impose the French language and eliminate languages like Provencal, Breton and Flemish. In that sense the bottom-up approach is more democratic than the top-down approach because in the bottom-up approach a people or nation invoked the right to self-determination to create its own state with its own territory. That in such process the previous rulers were deported, executed or assimilated is then considered acceptable collateral damage.

To summarize : nationalism is a historical process that was realized in Europe in the last twohundred years and led to the creation of linguistically homogeneous nation-states. To the degree that the process can be supported by and boils down to the execution of the right to self-determination, nationalism should be evaluated morally in a positive way.

Nationalism, in the meaning explained above, does not contain a feeling of superiority versus other nations. Nationalism can of course be mingled with phenomena like imperialism and racism, but there is no intrinsic link between these phenomena. Imperialism and racism can as well be linked to ideologies like socialism and capitalism. Socialistists who tend to impose their ideology by force are imperialists ; in case a surge against a rich class is framed in terms of a surge against a certain race or nation, it becomes racist. Capitalists can deem some races so inferior that slavery and imperialism become acceptable.