Michael van der Galien writes in 2009: Most regular readers of Poligazette will know by now that I’m a Muslim, specially drawn to Sufi Islam (which doesn’t make me very popular among fundamentalists, to put it mildly). Fortunately, any time I’ve mentioned this fact on this site, I’ve received (virtually) no negative feedback. Most consider this a private matter, and therefore of little or no concern politically. As I found out last week, however, not everybody necessarily agrees.
Professor Hans Jansen and I were contributors to a new Dutch blog called Dagelijkse Standaard. He was the resident Arabic, Middle East and Islam specialist, I the American politics expert. I focused, and continue to focus, mainly on America (with the odd excursion into Turkish politics, another field of interest of mine). During one of my conversations with Jansen – I helped him publish his posts, insert links, etc. I even phoned him a couple of times to help him out with technical problems – I mentioned the fact that I am a Muslim. He responded by insulting me (he wondered, among other things how an intelligent young man like myself could “join the side that wants to destroy the West” – a pretty blatant example of prejudice, nay discrimination). As I understand it, he then emailed the owner of the site Joshua Livestro that he had to think about whether or not it was possible for him to continue defending freedom of speech on one website with a Muslim, seemingly no matter how liberal that Muslim may be.
Regular readers will probably strike this as rather odd. After all, I defend freedom in all its forms constantly and my focus is on politics, not on theological issues. In the end, after having communicated with Livestro a couple of times, Jansen said he would indeed stop writing for Dagelijkse Standaard altogether. Jansen himself says the reason for his sudden resignation was nor is my personal faith, but Livestro’s attitude towards Jansen after the first received the latter’s “have to think about” e-mail.
Whatever the case, Jansen is quite a well known character in The Netherlands. He’s an emeritus professor who advises Geert Wilders and other politicians on Islamic affairs and who is a regular guest commentator on TV on all issues related to Islam. This makes it virtually inevitable that his departure will receive some (perhaps but hopefully not a lot of) media attention here in Holland. What will be, will be. I just want to make it absolutely clear to any visitors from The Netherlands who were drawn to this site as a result of this affair that this blog nor my public appearances are about my personal faith. I’m a secularist. I look at politics from a secular, more politically conservative perspective. This post will therefore be my first and only public comment on the subject. I am an expert on American politics, not a theologian. Nor am I a spokesman for this group or another. No, I don’t understand the problem one could possibly have a problem with me being a liberal, anti-fundamentalist, open-minded Muslim who actively defends Western values like freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and equality of men and women, either. Perhaps it has something to do with the view expressed by people like Wilders that Islam is “a fascist ideology”: it’s only a small step from this to “all Muslims are fascists,” as a commenter at DS proves in reaction to Livestro’s announcement of Jansen’s departure. (For American readers, the reader writes: “A logical decision. If you use words to fight against national-socialism you don’t join forces with a national-socialist either. Someone can then claim that this national-socialist is “a good person” and doesn’t accept the most radical aspects of national-socialism, but such a defense isn’t exactly convincing.”) It’s disheartening to read, but I don’t feel the need to respond to such comments.
This is all I have to say about this subject. From now on, I want the focus again to be on (American) politics. I don’t find it – Islam, me being Muslim and / or the exact reason for Jansen’s resignation – a particularly interesting debate. This is purely a ‘yes I know this happened’ post and nothing more.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, lets talk politics again as we’re used to do.
ROBERTS SPENCER WRITES IN 2007:
Michael van der Galiën is a 23-year-old American Studies student at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, and correspondent in the Netherlands for Pajamas Media. In a post entitled “Islamic Law and Violence,” he commented over a week ago on a response written by a student at Brown, Jebediah Koogler, to my Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week talk there. Since van der Galiën articulates so many common responses to and common misunderstandings of the work I am doing, I thought it might be useful to respond.
Jeb Koogler explains the obvious: Islamic law isn’t static. It changes over time. I also get a bit tired of people who say that the Koran preaches much more violence than the Bible and Torah do. I’ve read the Koran and I disagree; it doesn’t teach violence any more than the Bible or Torah.
I discuss this very common argument at length in my book Religion of Peace?; suffice it to say here that van der Galiën’s statement, that the Qur’an doesn’t teach violence any more than the “Bible or Torah” is flatly false. For while the Bible contains descriptions of violent acts committed in the name of God, nowhere does it teach believers to imitate that violence. Where people are commanded to commit acts of violence, these are commands directed to specific individuals or groups in particular situations; they are not universal commands.
The Qur’an, on the other hand, quite clearly does teach believers to commit acts of violence against unbelievers — see 2:190-193, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, etc. There are no equivalents to such open-ended and universal commands, addressed to all believers to fight unbelievers, in the Bible.
Of course, van der Galiën would respond that such passages have not been understood as such by all Muslims throughout history, and that is no doubt true. We’ll discuss that in more detail in a moment. But it is not the point here, for when he says that the Qur’an “doesn’t teach violence any more than the Bible or Torah,” he is not talking about interpretative traditions, but the content of the text.
In fact, I’d say, the only way for people to defend terrorism or violence by the Koran is by quoting passages in it completely out of context and to ignore the spirit of the Koran, which is peaceful.
Unfortunately for van der Galiën, there is not a single traditional school of Islamic jurisprudence that would agree with his assessment here, for all of the schools that are considered orthodox teach, as part of the obligation of the Muslim community, warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers.
