Van Gogh, European Purity and the "Muslim Problem"

By Naeem Mohaiemen, AlterNet. Posted November 23, 2004.

The death of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh has unleashed a brutal cycle of hatred, familiar from Europe’s past, bringing the simmering xenophobia that lurks beneath Europe’s genteel surface to boiling point. Through his brutal murder – he was shot and stabbed repeatedly by a Dutch Moroccan man on Nov. 2 – Theo Van Gogh has become the catalyst for the demonization of Europe's Muslim population and for a striking re-evaluation of the meaning of tolerance.

Van Gogh, who wrote fierce diatribes against European Muslims, recently created controversy with the short film "Submission." The film’s images of Quranic verses, plastered over a naked woman, inflamed Muslim passions in Holland.

"Submission" was positioned as a film championing Muslim women. Women’s rights within Islam are, of course, a long-debated topic. There are myriad crises in the way that Muslim peoples and countries treat women. But many of these issues are linked to culture, misogyny, poverty, and above all, male fear of female advancement – not religion. In fact there is very little in Islamic texts that condones such behavior. But Theo Van Gogh had little patience for such nuanced discussions. Instead, "Submission" is a jumbled attack on abuse of Muslim women, which makes no distinction between distortion of religion and actual theology.

Longtime readers of Van Gogh's weekly column in the Dutch newspaper "Metro" know very well that his intention was not to reform male chauvinism, but rather to express crude bigotry. In his columns and interviews, Van Gogh called Muslims "goat fuckers" and "the Prophet's Pimps." His latest book, which lampooned Muslims as backward obscurantists, was defiantly titled "Allah Knows Best." His collaborator on "Submission," Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was equally florid, calling the Prophet Mohammed a "pervert" and a "tyrant." Theo Van Gogh's attacks were not limited only to Muslims. He blithely attacked Christian and Jewish symbols, once saying, "It smells like caramels – they must be burning Jewish diabetics."

All of these prejudices found full expression in "Submission." The film came about through Van Gogh's collaboration with right-wing Dutch-Somali MP Aymaan Hirsi Ali, an "ex-Muslim" who now denounces her former religion. Telling the story of a Muslim woman who is pushed into a forced marriage and then raped by her uncle, the 9-minute film intersperses a voice-over with images of Quranic verses on a praying woman. The woman is completely naked, only her face is covered with a veil. Across her breasts, navel, and thighs is a thin diaphanous cloth, through which text from the Quran is clearly visible on her body. Nude to the camera, she repeatedly bows down to pray. The camera lingers with a fetishist’s eye over her nakedness, at one point zooming in on her raised finger (used during prayer to indicate the one-ness of God).

European fascination with the veiled (and unveiled) Muslim woman is nothing new. During the colonization of North Africa, the eroticization of the "harem woman" was a trope of European art and literature. Van Gogh's film is a modern version of the same colonial male fantasy – a vision where the European male is the only liberator of Muslim women. The nudity in the film adds nothing to a critique of Islam, but it applies a calculated slap to the face of Muslim piety. There are many valid critiques of women's status in different Muslim societies, with their own specific colonial histories. Such work is already being spearheaded by Muslim theorists, activists and academics such as Fatima Mernissi, Asma Jahangir, Asma Barlas, Sachiko Murata, Leila Ahmed, Amina Wadud and Kecia Ali.

Though Van Gogh’s work was irresponsible, damaging and filmed with contempt, nothing can justify his murder. Just as Van Gogh was intolerant of Muslims, his murderer was intolerant of free speech. By pushing society into chaos, Van Gogh’s killer also hoped to spark a conflagration between the Netherlands and its Muslim immigrants. In the weeks following the murder, there were fire-bombings and attacks against 20 mosques and two Muslim schools. During the Bosnian conflict, Shabil Aktar wrote, "The next time they build gas chambers in Europe, it will be for Muslims." While that comparison may be excessive, anti-Muslim hysteria, eerily similar to the judeophobia of the 1930s, is steadily rising in Europe. Already, there is talk of developing a national database that will track the “risk profile” of immigrants in the Netherlands. The Dutch government has also said it will close all mosques teaching "non-Dutch" values. What exactly those "Dutch values" are is left unclear.

Of course, not all the trends are negative. A proposal to require mosque imams to give sermons in European languages, instead of Arabic, has been supported by local Muslim leaders. In another positive development, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende urged the European Union to work harder on integrating ethnic minorities. Citing the frenzy of reprisal attacks, he said, "The strong reactions and counter-reactions after the death of Van Gogh shows there is tension in our society. In Europe, we have to learn from one another in the area of integration of minorities." While Balkenende is a rational voice, there are equal numbers of voices that are pushing for extreme measures. In a Dutch government with prominent right-wing demagogues like cabinet ministers Rita Verdonk and Gerrit Zalm, and Members of Parliament Gert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, there is a strong possibility of excessively zealous legislation being pushed through. The American experience, where decades of civil liberties gains where jettisoned in the post 9/11 hysteria, can serve as a blueprint for European right-wingers.

Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Shobak.Org and Director of the documentary Muslims or Heretics?.