Spiritual violence

It recently was twenty years ago that seven monks were kidnapped from their monastery in Tibhirine by Algerian Islamists. Two months later, on May 30, 1996, only their heads were found.

They had let it happen. The monks knew of the advancing Islamist violence in the region. They did consider to leave, but decided to remain in their monastery in solidarity with the local population and to refuse protection by the military.

And time and again at every commemoration, most recently by Stefan Waanders in Trouw, there are those gushy comments which extol the monks’ behavior as a sign of ultimate sacrifice readiness. This time Waanders adds to his article Brother Christian’s ‘testament’, in which he sums up the essence of his life. “This is a testament of the great spiritual texts of the last century”, says Waanders.

In the text, Brother Christian de Chergé, the prior of the monastery, speaks of his willingness to die out of solidarity with the Algerian Muslims who for more then a century were humiliated by the French. The respect that he thus shows to victims of French colonialism is certainly sympathetic, although I do not see how an Islamist massacre can benefit the image of Islam.

What stings me, and what makes questionable the whole gesture of the monks for me, is the following passage in Christian’s testament.

“Of course my death will seem to confirm all those who derided me as naive or idealistic: ‘Tell me, what do you think about it now!’ But people need to know that what torments and makes me curious most, will finally get a liberating answer. Because I will, if it pleases God, I will be allowed to let my sight be united with that of the Father to look with him to his Muslim children. I will see them as he sees them, bathed in the light of the glory of Christ, fruit of His Passion and coated with the gift of the Spirit, who always with hidden joy will create community and, playing with all the differences, will restore the similarities.”

This text strikes me as a mark of spiritual imperialism, one of the most unsympathetic kind, and, I fear, exemplary of Christianity. When reading such a passage I ask myself in despair: Is there no one who will see how here, from under a blanket of fluffy piety, in one blow every deviating, differently defined identity is assimilated to what for this monk rises over everyone and everything? Gone all otherness, away with plurality. Doesn’t anybody – this monk, or the author of the article, or the public – feel that there is coarse mental violence, pure imperialism at stake?

I know, irenic souls like Erasmus and others had exactly the same view. To me that only confirms what I tend to consider as the blind spot in our civilization, namely that mental pressure is not perceived as violence, and therewith as condemable as physical violence. Mental pressure is not innocent, if only because frustrated mental pressure can still lead to physical violence. As Luther’s dealings with the Jews can illustrate: when his preaching could not convince the Jews, he towards the end of his life turned to hate speech against the Jews.

This has got much to do with Thinking for someone else. Also see Reversal of values.

The whole world – or just a small part?

The relationship of Western culture to the bordercrossing and sometimes terrorist ambitions of Islam is more complex than is often thought. There is a strong inner relationship between the universalist orientations of the West and of Islam. That’s my conclusion after reading an enlightening article by the Arabist Maurice Blessing.

This conclusion is reached by the observation that 1. both the West and Islam start from a universalist, transnational ideal; 2. this ideal is not satisfied with less than global universalism; and 3. to achieve that goal the use of force is justified.

The presence of a universalist ideal appeared in the West since the time that Christianity got solid foothold there. From that moment it was its declared objective to from the West further Christianize the world. Think of the Catholic  and Protestant missionaries who certainly at the time of the 18th and 19th century imperialism, took it for their task (‘the white man’s burden’) to spread the Christian message to the farthest corners of the earth. When Christianity began to make way for the values of the French Revolution, such as democracy and human rights, the universalist fervor was no less.

In the case of Islam, according to Blessing, there is a religious commitment to ‘higher spheres’ that by its nature can accept no limits that prevent its spread. Because of that universalist orientation Islam can not but consider all national, particularistic borders as void and meaningless. Not only of non-Islamic countries, but also of Islamic countries, as evidenced by the change of the name ISIS (‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, so tied to a limited territory) in IS (‘Islamic State’). Loyalty should not be shown to human citizenship but to Allah. And Islam does not go for less than the whole world.

The conviction of having a universally applicable message was sufficient legitimacy for Christians to proceed to conversion under pressure. For example, of Jews in Spain, or of Indians in South America. And later, for the secular revolutionaries of the RAF and the Red Brigades to perpetrate their attacks. To the revolutionary Muslims it is sufficient justification for committing acts of terrorism around the world and for the destruction of national heritage.

Thus revolutionary fervor, stemming from the sincere belief to have a beneficial or even spiritual message for everyone, might point to greater affinity between Islam and the West then we usually tend to assume. A – not unimportant – contemporary difference is that the West has tempered the use of violence by attributing the monopoly of violence precisely to the national state. Such a concession to the national state radical Islam will not easily do, says Blessing. Indeed, Islamic terror is the very protest against this domestication of Islam and its binding to national borders.

But even with that difference the congeniality in universalist orientation between the West and Islam remains striking. Expanding your ideal all over the earth, as a necessary part of the ideal’s concept, appears to be an inseparable characteristic of both Christianity/Enlightenment and Islam. Could it have to do with a certain Greek conception of truth? That something called ‘truth’ only deserves the name if it has proven to be ‘universally valid’? Well, then you must first conquer the world.

Whatever you may say of the Jewish tradition – that it inspires people to discrimination against Israeli Arabs and encourages colonization of the West Bank –for roughly two thousand years it is a fact that Jewish attention is directed particularisticly, namely towards the welfare of the Jewish group. You might find that  narrow-minded, but maybe nicely modest as well.

In any case, the urge to missionate or conquer the world, including the immense brutality that goes with it, is foreign to the Jewish tradition. Except of course if you believe in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

Also see Borders and Countries without borders

‘Intrinsically disordered’

The Ministry of Education is going to start information sessions in asylum centers about gay rights. It are especially asylum-seekers from the Middle East who will be informed that homosexuality is not wrong.

Is that going to work? In the rejection of homosexuality, by both immigrants and natives, often several elements play a role. For example, the security of a world in which there is a natural order, which at the same time is divine because nature is considered to be designed by God. And if nature is designed primarily for procreation, God has willed heterosexuality, not homosexuality.

For me it is a serious question whether you can ‘out-educate’ such a view. The Roman Catholic church, however Western it is, has not yet succeeded in that, anyway. During last year’s extraordinary synod on the family there was officially no change in the view of homosexuality as ‘intrinsically disordered’. It is thought that homosexual relationships “are contrary to divine and natural law”.

In the Anglican church a form of education has indeed been on the agenda, mainly from the white part to the colored and black part. During the last decades gay priests have been ordinated Anglican bishop. But in some parts of the church this caused so much resistance that now one must say such education would appear to have failed. Especially on the African continent and with conservative Americans feelings on the subject ran high, and a church schism was feared. Thanks to a gay-unfriendly compromise that danger could recently (temporarily?) be averted.

If acceptance of homosexuality can be so problematic, even in a church community with common traditions and customs, how difficult it must be for people from the Middle East who share a lot less in terms of ideas and traditions with us?

Also see (Un)purity

Compassion or Competition

Last week the frontpage of my newspaper presented an article by Marli Huijer under the title: “Try to imagine: you fight for air in a refrigerator”.  With me this headline generated the following thought: before I let all kinds of suggestions from others in response to the refugee crisis foist upon me, I want to elucidate for myself this kind of admonitions and exhortations.

In Huijer’s article I come across the following exhortations, whether or not interconnected: feel the proximity of the refugees; remember that you could have been one of them yourself, make yourself an idea of the situation; identify with the refugees. Below I try to unravel for myself what I think of each of those admonitions.

1.Feel the proximity. “That refrigerator-truck could as well have stood close to us around the corner on the highway. Austria, that’s European soil. Such proximity makes we are even more addressed in our responsibility. Our commitment is increased. We realize: we could ourselves have been it.” This passage follows the observation by Huijer that already earlier we were shocked by reports about boats and other dramas that took place outside the European continent.

I do agree with Huijer that physical proximity of misery touches you stronger than when it is farther away. Note in this connection that such an observation also works the other way: the further away the sorrow, the less we feel accountable. So there is no absolute responsibility on our side for refugees, closeness counts.

Furthermore, if you’re talking about proximity as a factor that counts, then this immediately also implies cultural proximity. That kind of closeness will count as well. Which can, very consistently, again work both ways: we are not waiting for more imports of Islamic fundamentalism or anti-Semitism. But perhaps we dó sympathize with critical, emancipated Middle Eastern citizens who are fed up with the backwardness of their governments.

2. Consider that you could have been it yourself. “Nobody wants to imagine to choke as a refugee in a truck, but you just have to imagine ... We realize: we could have been there ourselves.”

In this motivation to imagine what refugees go through, a certain sense of reciprocity and enlightened self-interest resounds. Something like: we might also once find ourselves in such a pitiable situation. If we help them now, we may hope that we will also be helped then by others. By the way, there is nothing wrong with this argument.

3. Identify yourself with the refugees: “We are able to identify with other people. That we can have compassion for the other, proceeds therefrom; we are rather similar.”

I think that’s true. When you recognize yourself in someone else that máy evoke  compassion. But, as the philosopher René Girard keeps emphasizing tirelessly,  recognizing the other as yourself can also trigger competition and mimetic desire: I want the same things and safety as the other, or rather I want to avoid for myself the insecurity which I see another is experiencing. Properly functioning mirror neurons work both ways: it can lead to competition and fencing off of what the other person wants from you; and it can lead to compassion.

This observation is consistent with the two camps that Huijer sees arise in the Netherlands. One camp is driven by compassion and wants to help but does not know how. The other camp is afraid of being eclipsed by what is coming down upon us. “It is up to the politicians to deal with it”, Huijer says. That last thought I might find the most convincing, but also the least spectacular.

Huijer’s other thoughts leave me, after the above weighing, in a state of moral confusion, coupled with the unpleasant feeling of being addressed somewhat moralistically.

Fortunately European politics, with the joint initiatives of Germany, Britain and France over the past week, now get some movement. That is – apart from the grand scale spontaneous reception of refugees, whether or not driven by mirror neurons – is a good thing, I think.

Also see Where do universal values bring us? and Levinas and Empathy

Liberation from fundamentalism

On May 5th, Dutch Liberation Day, moralism is never far away: do we actually realize how big is the privilege to be free? Remembering the misery of war and occupation must help us to strengthen our sense of freedom.

Strangely enough, the awareness of another liberation, which was in its own way no less radical, seems to be only poor and confused. I refer to the collective liberation from collective dogmatic thinking.

It might be hard to imagine nowadays, but in 1950 the majority of the Dutch population believed that a hell existed, and that a bad life or destination could bring you there and that unbaptized died children would undoubtedly end there. And that redemption from that threat could proceed through Jesus.

To be freed from such oppressive dogmatism seems to me to a memorable happening. And indeed, some do remember that liberation as groundbreaking, and can link a date to it. For example, the recently deceased philosopher and former priest Samuel IJsseling, who locates the turn in the year 1968. “Suddenly it was allowed to discuss whatever you liked”, he said in an interview with Ger Groot, “which was previously almost unthinkable. That was a joy, belief me.”

If a day could be indicated on which this liberation has taken place, that day would be worthy of an annual celebration. But, of course, there is not such a day, this kind of  liberations proceed in a more fuzzy and gradual way than a physical liberation. Perhaps this fuzziness is precisely the reason why this liberation is also regularly questioned, or why the oppressive character of the then prevailing dogma is neglected. The latter I believe to perceive in recent articles, and I have these in mind when I talk about a poor and confused notion of this ‘other liberation’.

Neglect or even denial of the liberation of Christian dogma I encountered in a recent column by James Kennedy. He believes that the reasons for secularization are often not properly displayed. “It's not a matter of restrictive dogma”, he says, but of changing life styles. “Parents don’t give their children the spiritual support they need to maintain a philosophy of life, perhaps because they themselves no longer believe in it.”

In other words, I think to myself, they were being allowed gradually to say what they thought. And even though it was gradual, and though only in the course of time they discovered that until then others had determined for them what to think – it remains a liberation.

Another author, Paul van Geest, downplays the dogmatic oppression – and therewith the liberation – through a semantic debate about the word fundamentalism. He does so in response to Naema Tahir, who wrote in Trouw that, in terms of fundamentalism, many Muslims are not so different from Luther. Van Geest rejects that suggestion, because it was precisely Luther who let go of the literal reading of the Bible.

But by arguing this way, Van Geest ignores the wider meaning of ‘fundamentalism’, as it exists in common parlance. In it, the meaning of the word is no longer limited to the historical-literal reading of the Bible or Koran, but it stands for: to remain meticulously within once handed down frameworks, or dogmatic thinking. That’s why nowadays for example you also have ‘enlightenment fundamentalists’ or ‘human rights fundamentalists’.

From that perspective, Luther may indeed be regarded a fundamentalist, namely an ‘Augustine fundamentalist’. Because, under the direction of Augustine he relates – as Van Geest himself says – everything he reads in the Bible to (the coming of) Christ, however big the number of artifices he needs for this. That’s what you would call ‘fundamentalist’,  or ‘dogmatic’.

With his portrayal of Luther, Van Geest presents half of the kind of the ‘other liberation’ that I try to focus on. He recalls the liberation from a literal reading of a foundational document. The other half – namely the liberation from a reading of the Bible and creation as prescribed by the tradition; in this case: the Christological way of reading – he does not mention. Probably Van Geest does not need such liberation, because he personally does not experience any oppression. But the point is: in Luther it would not be available, Tahir is just right at that point.

Nevertheless, also the latter liberation somewhere after the war for large groups of Dutch actually occurred.

Also see What happened in the West?

Numbers

Is it going to be a question of numbers?

I mean, are we witnessing a clash of civilizations à la Samuel Huntington? In the sense of a massive cultural conflict between Islam and the West, to be won by the largest and the strongest?

I don’t want to think along those lines. But sometimes – out of fear – I let myself be carried away by the idea. And for the duration of this piece I let that happen.

Because, what we experience, sometimes is quite similar to a battle of civilizations. Last week, in the News an imam was interviewed who made mention of the unbearable humiliations he and the entire Islamic community had to undergo. He was a gentle man, but he did not miss the opportunity to say that they together amount to 1.7 billion.

And Amsterdam Mayor Van der Laan repeated his legitimate message that we may well be afraid, but should not let ourselves be terrorized. There is no need for that, he added, because “we are with many more”, by which actually he was referring to a coalition of all those who are against terror.

But if numbers are that important, then prospectives for Jews are not so good. Because in that respect, we of course draw the short straw.

It’s true, we consider ourselves as part of the coalition against terror, and are usually considered by others to do so. You can even say that Israel - apart from the landgrabbing  Greater Israel supporters – is geographically in the frontline against barbarism.

However, It only takes something small to happen in the Middle East for the Western public opinion to believe that the Jews actually do nót belong in the partnership. For the Islamic public opinion this is already a foregone conclusion anyway, so then it’s going to be pretty cramped with those small Jewish numbers. You would be Greater Israel-fan because of it.

But that’s what I do not want to be.

Also see Incentives and Another Judaïsm?

Je suis (pas) Charlie

A strange feeling of kinship with the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo lives in me.

Strange because I – unlike Charlie Hebdo – don’t like provocations so much. Instead, I tend to prefer to bridge divergent interests and disagreements through discussion and mutual understanding. Definitely different from what the murdered cartoonists used to do.

Does it perhaps have to do with the fact that except cartoonists also Jewish targets are high on the Muslim Terrorist targets lists? Then my sense of kinship would arise out of a shared threat. Solidarity by an accidentally shared situation.

But then, I think, is this shared first place on the list of targets so accidental really? Isn’t it possible to designate Jews in European cultural history as the freethinkers of the West? They already started being so in the first millennium of the Christian era, when the Jews were so rude to reject the so-called universal Christian truth. That was experienced by the surrounding society as outrageous and offensive. Perilous, but they did it, the Jews.

And they persevered, despite many persecutions, during the second millennium. Even when, from the 18th and 19th century secularization struck, Jews, accustomed to cherishing their own socio-inner life, kept drawing therefrom. They often contributed in an original way to Western music, philosophy and literature. Different from the (Victorian) mainstream, not constricting their hearts and sexual lifes, and therefore sometimes offensive again.

Today (Western) Christians are bothered much less by the Jewish free-mindedness than before, when the universal Christian truth pretensions were still intact. But now some Islamic movements have elevated many of these universal pretensions to ruthless truth and, again, transverse Jews don’t fit in. That may explain why their reputation for stubbornness, fanned by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, makes Jews into top butt for Muslim Terrorist attacks.

So, although I do not go on the streets with “Je suis Charlie” – I do feel that way.

Also see Parrhesia

Is Islamic compartmentalization possible and desirable?

In the debate about the integration of groups of newcomers in our country it is frequently suggested that the model of social-religious compartmentalization, as existed in the Netherlands during the twentieth century, could be valuable once more. Especially for the integration of Muslims the creation of an Islamic compartment (‘pillar’) could possibly serve us, so it is thought. Because such a compartment, with its own schools, broadcasting companies and  political parties, would on the one hand allow participation in the general Dutch society, and on the other hand secure the religious and cultural identity of Muslims.

But it does not seem to work that way. In some places Islamic schools have closed their doors, the establishment of a Muslim broadcasting company is difficult, and Islamic political parties are scarse.

The question is why the establishment of an Islamic pillar is so difficult. Especially since at first glance there is much similarity to the position of the major drivers of compartmentalism in the nineteenth century: the Reformed ‘little people’ and the Catholics. Both groups were somewhat socially disadvantaged, derived their identity largely to a (sometimes very) orthodox faith, and lived quite segregated. Compartmentalization offered them opportunities to gain social influence and thus promote their emancipation in society.

The similarity between those (former) groups and current Muslims is certainly situated in the disadvanced condition, and in the orthodox character of the group faith. But perhaps less in the desire for emancipation, and the absence of that desire could explain why an Islamic pillar is not going to emerge.

Because emancipation can also mean dilution of the original group identity. In any case, that dilution has clearly struck the Christian groups. In parliament, for example, Christian parties around 1960 had 80 of the 150 seats, now only 21. Schools which are still Catholic in name often often are not very conscioius about their identity, and originally Christian broadcasters are now having hard times.

My point is that this dilution was perhaps not very threatening for the respective groups of Christians, because many of the professed Christian values, such as equality of people and justice, had already found their place in the secular environment. Maybe that emancipation and the associated dilution of faith traditions coúld only take place because similar values remained intact. Namely, embodied in the liberal-democratic state which you can safely say  is a product of the Western-Christian tradition.

It is exactly that reassurance that may well be missing for Muslims. Emancipation, namely within the frame of the Western rule of law, and the associated dilution of traditions could give them the feeling of keeping nothing to hold on. Because the liberal-democratic state has not grown out of their tradition, so inner kinship therewith is missing. Dilution then really feels threatening, because being bereft of one’s identity is not an option.

Meanwhile emancipation and ingrowth into the Dutch law nevertheless find place. But now on the basis of personal choices of individuals, not of a collective arrangement. Integration expert Frank Tubergen notes that religious involvement decreases among Muslims, and that (therefore?) integration is going all right.

Are (therefore) also Muslims going all right?

Also see Alcohol

Another Judaïsm?

I’m Jewish, but often I wonder whether I belong to the same tradition as those who emphasize they are the chosen people and therefore claim the West Bank; or who dream of a Greater Israel; or who want to ban Muslims from the Temple Mount and, says former Mossad chief Shavit, in order to achieve that even want to risk a new destruction of Jerusalem and a new exile.

Anyway, I strongly disagree with these positions, and I’m inclined to see emerge in them the worst of what religion can be. In contrast, I would like to emphasize the good of the tradition to which I belong.

For me, the core of its focus is on learning. But saying this is not precise enough because, precisely in view of the excesses that I note, it appears that some forms of learning can be oppressive and meaningless. The good form of learning that I have in mind is contemporary learning that has a life-giving impact.

In the formative years of the rabbinical tradition (say, from the second to the eighth century CE) learning did have that constructive character. Such learning took the form of study of the traditional oral and written texts, with the intention to derive direction for the way the Jewish people could exist in those days. And that worked extremely powerful, thanks to the passion and intellectual ingenuity that were invested by the then rabbis.

Learning had impact. That’s in my view hardly the case with the descendants of those rabbis who ruminate their texts in jesjiwot. For them, it’s less about the struggle to obtain new answers – so about a creative, life-giving process – but rather about honoring the founders of the tradition. Therefore in my eyes they are victims of their own sacred cows, and not much inspiration radiates from that.

If we want Jewish learning in our time to have the same impact as the former rabbinic text analysis and discussion in their time, we will therefore have to find and deploy our contemporary forms. But if learning can no longer rely on text study and interpretation, what does contemporary, creative Jewish learning look like?

I believe that will be about our history. In the way Simon Schama learns and tells of the exile and Zionism. Or Bart Wallet about Dutch Jewry, or Leo Mock about the Jewish Middle Ages. Or, indeed, Josephus about the destruction of the Second Temple.

I search into that direction because of the effect I notice emanating from historians who manage to place all existing stories in a broad, nuanced perspective. That is beneficent and  space-creating, and thus guiding in a way that is similar to the learning of the rabbis.

Besides, I think the a-historical, classic study of fundamental texts not only for the Jewish tradition has had its day. That certainly applies also to Islam and Christianity. A-historical thinking is no option any longer, the turn is to multidimensional historical thinking.

That requires learning a lot indeed. But has Jewish tradition not always been good at that?

David Pinto

If I were David Pinto I would have turned it around. Pinto wrote last week in Trouw: “Islam can learn something from Judaism”, and then wonders whether presenting the Jewish tradition as an example to Muslims would not easily go the wrong way.

It’s true: there are many punishments in the Torah which can be described as barbaric and which were abolished as a prescription. For example, the punishment of stoning of a Jew who does not respect the Sabbath, no Jew would get it into his head to apply that. Unlike the gruesome punishments that are actually executed by Muslims today, to fellow Muslims and others.

But a lot of the other things that Pinto designates as negative in Muslims are indeed also to be found in (ultra-)orthodox Jews. Think of gay hate, misogyny, or hatred of everything non-Jewish.

This makes Pinto's argument a bit weak. Apart from that, in fact it sounds rather pedantic to set your own tradition as an example to others, even though he’s partly right.

Therefore, I am inclined to turn it around. By this I mean that I would not in an offensive manner shout “Look at me!”. But instead I would keep ready the argument of the de facto abolition of barbaric punishments for the situation that bystanders put away the Jewish tradition as primitive and barbaric, for example, with reference to “all the violence and primitive laws in the Torah”. At such time, the answer is in place that Pinto gives: look how is dealt with it, that no longer exists in practice.

And if then someone says “But what about all the violence in Israel?” Then it is sufficient to let the Torah out because there are already enough ‘normal’ historical explanations for the tragic situation: two traumatized peoples colliding in the same region, an unequal balance of power, geopolitical interests.

But unfortunately – also for Pinto – we will also have to admit that unnecessary, additional hardening of the conflict is caused by a hard core of settlers who actually take their inspiration from the Torah.

Also see ‘Moderate’ is abusive language

'Moderate' is abusive language

Whoever tries, amidst gruesome images from the Middle East and Islam debates in ones own country, to get some grip on the phenomenon of ‘Islam’, may easily get discouraged. Because the conclusion is swiftly made that Islam is what ones interlocutor from that moment wants it to mean.

Do you speak with IS-supporters, or read their statements in the newspaper, then you hear that ‘Islam’ means Sharia in its most severe form, slavery and death to infidels. Do you speak with indigenous Muslims, you hear that ‘Islam’ means peace. And then you hear all the variations somewhere in between.

So, in the end you don’t get a fixed story, no clear picture of this religious tradition, but perhaps that’s too much to ask. Probably people like Nuweira Youskine are right, who say the Quran is not an Ikea instruction. There is no single interpretation of Islam which is thé right one, just as there are different views on Judaism and Christianity.

On the other hand, in the images that Muslims sketch of their tradition is quite a number of elements that keep returning. So that one could decide that these things belong inseparably together. Two of them I pick out here: first the idea that the Quran is the literal text of God and, secondly, that the word ‘moderate’ in broad Islamic circles seems to have a negative connotation.

According to tradition, the Quran came word by word and letter by letter directly from Allah and has been recorded by Muhammed without any modification or addition. That makes the idea unthinkable for Muslims that there could be several different versions of one described event comparable to the four Gospels in Christianity or the two creation stories in Judaism. It also makes, in Muslim eyes, the Quran superior to those other texts and explains why the Jewish and Christian traditions are burdened by revisions, reforms and dilution of their own doctrines. In them there’s noise on the line because of the ambiguity of their texts, and the Quran is free from them.

The second observation refers to the word ‘moderate’. Remarkably often I hear that word, which to me is known as having a fairly positive connotation, be used by Muslims in a negative sense. For example, in a letter to the editor in which Nabeel Siddiqie discusses the usual rejection by correct newsmedia of fundamentalists, extremists and jihadists. “Conversely”, he says, “ordinary, in my eyes real, Muslims are dismissed as moderate Muslims. As if you need to be moderate in your faith in order to fit into Dutch society. I cannot but conclude, given the definition of the word Islam, the conduct of the Prophet Muhammed and the teachings in the Quran, that I belong to the group of fundamentalists, extremists and jihadists”.

Another example is provided by the The Hague shop assistant Jamal Saïdi who puts his biggest complaint as follows: “They want everyone to be moderate”. Or Montasser al De’emeh of the Research Group Middle East from the University of Antwerp, who twitters about someone accused of crimping for the Jihad: “He interprets his religion in a radical way. That’s it!”. So, nothing special. Finally there is the response to the Dutch version of my blog post Alcoholism and Jihad: “There is only one Islam and that is Islam as stated in the Quran, hadiths and sirat. There are no muslims who call themselves “MODERATE”, this is an invention of Western politics. If moderate Muslims would exist there should also be something to MODERATE. What could that be?”

Frankly, I think the negative load of the word ‘moderate’ in Muslim circles is problematic. If only notions like ‘purity’, ‘absolute surrender’ and ‘complete submission’ may indicate the orientation of a Muslim, what to do then with the grubbiness and compromises out of which a free society is built?

Also see Alcohol

Reluctance against the West

A common factor in many of today’s trouble spots is the resentment of some of the combatants against the West. Whether it comes to IS in the Middle East, the Russians in Ukraine or Boko Haram in Africa, they are all filled with a deep distrust, if not hatred of the West. Like their kindred spirits in our own Western countries. And according to Abdou Bouzerda the disproportionate attention to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is also traceable to that factor.

What to do about that?

You can go along with it because, you say, there’s some sense in it. We simply played the boss for too long. The certainty with which the West once thought itself to be in the position to decide about good and bad for the whole world has severely become unserviceable. Guiltfeelings about that colonialism are more appropriate, it is now up to the West to remain silent.

This response sounds to me a bit outdated, reminescent of illusions about non-partisan pacifism, or about being above partisanship. As if you yourself do not have your own point of view or even nothing to defend. The renewed Western focus on defense shows in my view that we definitely dó have something to defend in the West.

Another possible response to the resentment against the West is to go against it because, as you believe, many of our values such as human rights and democracy are actually universal. “Actually”, according to this view, all nations would want them, even if they don’t realize it yet. We must therefore continue to propagate these values’s universal validity. A bit like the Dutch theologian Erik Borgman did recently in an article on religious freedom in which he declared that religious freedom belongs in every constitution.

A problem for supporters of this second position is that the resentment against the West makes a lot of groups and people allergic to that kind of messages. A frequently heard Western solution for that objection is that we do not call these values ‘Western’, but ‘universal’. The danger of this tactical approach is that it (understandably) reinforces the revulsion. After all, even if it were true that those values are universal, people still want to find out themselves. They don’t want to get those values carried over from former imperialists.

One can also, with Amsterdam Mayor Van der Laan in his Abel Herzberg Lecture, opt for a third position, and say maybe there be several moral compasses next to each other. “We live with different moral compasses, in a world of trouble spots. We will have to get to know each other’s moral compasses and recognize these compasses often originate from suffering. There is no ‘patent’ in the world of suffering, according to Van der Laan.

This third option resembles the first, except that Van der Laan links this position to great alertness and willingness to actually physically intervene. I think that is also the beauty of the Mayor’s position: his criteria for whether or not to intervene are of a very practical nature. He looks at human behavior, thus reducing a complicated ideological debate to a, at least for his own feeling, practically performable assessment of behavior. Does someone sow hate, does someone call to violence, does somebody use violence? Then that is a border crossing and there will be no millimeter tolerance.

What appeals to me is that Van der Laan actually lets go the always so pretentious universalism. The first option doesn’t do so because, following a statement by Alain Finkielkraut, it remains trapped in the adoration of the other, or of all others, and from there in a kind of sterile above-partisanship. The second option obviously does not do so, because it precisely believes in the universality of certain values.

The Van der Laan-option eliminates this universalism because the connected action perspective is essentially of a local nature. Indeed, its effectiveness reaches to the boundaries of the Amsterdam municipality, or in the case of the presence of more like-minded Mayors to the country’s borders, and not beyond. Within these boundaries Van der Laan’s compass, with its own criteria for inadmissibility, is valid; outside it is not.

That may be reassuring for those Muslims whose compass indicates –  for example – female loose flyaway hair as absolutely unacceptable. In places other than Amsterdam or the Netherlands, for example, in Saudi Arabia or Iran, repressive action will, completely according to the Van der Laan position, indeed be an option. There they can have it their way.

And for me it’s reassuring because the local Amsterdam compass, with the above Van der Laan-criteria for impermissibility, is fortunately also mine.

Also see The heroic cosmopolitical individual

Alcoholism and Jihad

It’s bold what Lamyae Aharouay did in her column lately, but I can appreciate it. There she draws a parallel between Isis supporters and alcoholics. This is in the context of her argument that it is not appropriate to reproach moderate muslims for the behavior of fanatical jihadists. She had recently heard one of our politicians do so, and also another columnist who had said: “If Muslims slaughter Muslims on a grand scale it remains virtually silent”.

The comparison consists in the observation that alcohol abuse and jihadism are both problematic. And that, a little as you can blame moderate Muslims for the danger of  problematic drinkers, just as little you can hold moderate Muslims accountable for the danger of the extremists.

This statement by Aharouay is right, I think. At one point, however, the comparison is wanting, and I would like to see the parallels extended, precisely on that point.

The point I have in mind is the extent to which the problem is recognized as a serious threat and the extent to which the problem is being actively combated. As Aharouay indicates, alcohol addiction is explicitly mentioned by the World Health Organization as a serious threat to public health. The organization reports on it, so we know that alcohol makes for one of the 20 deaths per year, which is 3.3 million people worldwide.

Apparently our society is quite aware of the danger of addiction, and has established an organization to analyse the connecting problems and to encourage further awareness. This includes for example asking questions such as: to what extent is alcohol abuse encouraged by our individualistic lifestyles and widespread loneliness? What is the role of the intrusive adverts?

Elaborating on the comparison, something like that would seem to me desirable with respect to the addiction danger of Islam. Here too, analysis and reflection are needed that  penetrate to the heart of the matter. Where that addiction danger could be located? Could there possibly be something intoxicating in the central doctrine of complete surrender to Allah? And could the absence of the relativistic effect of (moderate) use of alcohol possibly stimulate religious radicalization?

Asking these questions and reflecting on them seems to me to be very urgent. Again, and in accordance with what Aharouay says about that, not in order to harass moderate Muslims  with it. But, as with alcohol, to discover the mechanisms that in interaction with social conditions lead to death and destruction.

Also see Alcohol

What would YOU do in the ultimate situation?

The fascination with the ultimate situation is big. That will always have been the case, but at this remembrance-and-freedom-celebrating time of the year our thoughts tend to dwell at the ultimate situations that the Second World War presented to people. And at the questions that since then have been the moral benchmarks of our culture such as: Would you have put your life at risk to save others lives? Would you at the right time have made the right choice? Would you have recognized the ultimate situation anyway?

I hear that fascination reflected in the responses to the violent death in Syria of the nice Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt. For example when the Dutch vicar Leegte believes that Van der Lugt is rightfully placed on a pedestal. Especially his willingness to remain faithful to his convictions, up to the ultimate consequence of death, commands respect. It reminds him, Leegte says, to previous martyrs in history who by their own death “had the intention to be present to Jesus’ death”.

nd I recognize that fascination with writer Willem Jan Otten in his discussion following the film 12 Years a Slave . He believes that the film has an essential idea in common with the Christian Easter story. Namely that ‘surviving’ is inferior compared to ‘living’, and always implies guilt and shame, and that therefore ‘giving your life’, may be preferable. “Something is put upside down in a terrible way, and yet it is just right”, thus he then cites what G.K. Chesterton defined as the essence of the Easter story. Whereby the ‘terrible’ again refers to the ultimate situation, with – apparently – a special appeal.

It is true, Christianity does not seek death as a Japanese kamikaze pilot does or an Islamic suicide bomber. And the bloody Filipino and Spanish passion rituals can be seen as an aberration, and not as representative of Christianity.

But those blood-processions do not completely fall out of the blue, the fascination with the ultimate situation has a lot to do with it. This is also evident from the pedagogical questions that, in line with the scheme of the imitatio Christi, are directly linked to it in the comments on Van der Lugt’s death. “Is his example applicable in the Netherlands?” Leegte asks, “He has given an example to follow”, clergyman Peter Nissen says.

But precisely from a pedagogical point of view I think the fascination with the ultimate situation is not a good idea. First, because that orientation discourages people. Peter Nissen rightly argues that the greatness of stories of sacrifice and holiness can block the listener. “Then the feeling gets you that you do not even need to start” And how stimulating is Leegte’s statement that the ultimate martyr’s act makes us aware of “our own shortcomings, our cowardice”? To me all this seems to lead up to disengagement rather than engagement. Anyway, I feel myself collaps already from cowardice.

But secondly – and most importantly – because that fascination blocks a clear view on ordinary, everyday situations of reversal and modesty. Rightly Nissen says in his commentary: “What matters is that there are things that can weigh heavier than self-interest”,  and those things do not necessarily have to have ultimate consequences. When subsequently Nissen adds: “…even if they weigh more than their own lives”, then I also know understand what he means. But I want to emphasize that, if you actually want to experience the described reversals and want to practice them, then you better focus on everyday situations rather than - what happens collectively – on ultimate situations.

To get back to Chesterton: “Something is put upside down in a terrible way, and yet it is just right”, this can also be said without using the word ‘terrible’.

Indeed, that’s what Levinas designates in completely everyday situations as moments of reversal in which suddenly other things can weigh heavier than self-interest. Because that’s what happens if, in the middle of an impassioned self-complacent argument, I let myself be commanded by the regard of another who feels overrun by my complacency. That command feels like absurd and like a complete reversal of values. In a penetrating way something is put on its head, and yet it stands just right. But now without the word ‘terrible’ added.

In this non-ultimate way, the reversal of values may become somewhat more real and better to swallow.

Also see Badiou, Levinas and Differences

Holy

To call something ‘holy’ is one thing. To call two rather different things ‘holy’ is something else. One may wonder whether the latter is possible at all.

If someone says: “My car is sacred to me”, and two sentences later: “My family is sacred to me”, don’t we want to know what is really most sacred to him, for example, if he has to choose between his car and his family?

Curiously, there seems to exist in Jewish culture something like a double sanctity. On the one hand, the traditional texts are clear: the commandments of Sinai are sacred, the people must be a holy people.

On the other hand, there is no other non-Christian ethnic group or religion that with such fervor has welcomed the breakthrough of the equality of people and peoples and human rights. Indeed, precisely as ethnic group the majority of Jews, since the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, closed the ideas of universal liberty, equality and fraternity in their hearts.

Christians did so as well. Indeed, those ideas came up in a Christian society. But the dominant trend within that group turned out to be that one form of holiness (the Christian) was exchanged for the other (the humanist or Enlightenment ideology). Large-scale secularization was the result, without the problem of the double holiness.

For most Muslims double holiness is also not an issue. Enlightenment ideas appear not to be particularly appealing to them. Certainly not to the extent to which Jews were and are enthousiastic for them.

You can say, the reason why Jews were so enthousiastic is because those ideas helped to end their actual subordination in society and made possible their emancipation. I think that factor has indeed importantly contributed to the Jewish sympathy for the Enlightenment ideas.

But I am convinced that Jews embraced universal enlightened ideas also because they recognized a type of holiness that reminded them of the sanctity of their own particularistic Jewish tradition. Consider the task of improving the world (tikkun olam) or the high value assigned to a person’s life in that tradition.

Which is not to say that these two types of sacred things – the universalist and particularist – pass seamlessly into one another. Therefore, the question remains : Can two things be called holy at one and the same time?

Also see Mission Completed and Holy Fire

Unworldly

I do not know if it is true: that the Christian West has always opposed unworldliness and ethereal tendencies that can easily make a religion a bit vague or woolly.

This suggestion is presented in an article by the philosopher Ger Groot when he says that hostility to the world for Christian orthodoxy has always been a form of heresy. But in my opinion in the same article he provides examples to the contrary, such as the deep-rooted conception of truth as eternal and incorporeal, the love of theory, and the Christian hope of the final victory of mind over matter. Which last hope even in secularized form lives on in the pursuit of Stephen Hawking and other leading physicists to achieve a transcendent theory of everything.

One may wonder whether it is not rather the Jewish tradition that represents the resistance against that all-equalizing tendency which missionary religions like Christianity and Islam, but also the Enlightenment, incline to. It is quite a proposition which I formulate here, I realize, but it helps me to better understand a number of historical and social phenomena.

For instance, the centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. It owed its genesis partly to the refusal of the Rabbinical Jewish leaders to accept the – in their eyes bizarre – Christian claims about a cosmic redemption. A bit more supportive evidence should be added to these claims, they reasoned. They were reproached for this sober rejection of lofty heavenly speculations, all through Western history.

From this perspective the earthly, rooted character of Judaism could, at that metaphysical level, at times also be a stumbling block to the secular successors to the lofty-theory-seeking Christianity – precisely because of its earthliness. That might explain why Hawking refuses to participate in the Israeli Presidential Conference of scholars. This refusal goes beyond a boycott of the settlements, which I could understand quite well. Rather, the absoluteness of Hawking’s total boycott demonstrates a metaphysical kind of discomfort with what Judaism stands for.

Then there is in somewhat obscure Western art circles the tendency to associate the Jewish people with the moon – and from there with night and materialism – and Christianity with the sun – and thus with celestial spheres and profundity. Now there’s possibly something right with that, because the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle, and the Christian on the solar cycle. But still, such a theme and the unnecessary associations that go with it, are mainly a manifestation of the Western tendency to look to the skies.

Finally, when the current Pope as he took office warned that “the Church must keep far from worldliness, as worldliness is the devil”, that connects with foundational Christian texts like “You will be in the world but not of the world”. And then I am not sure whether Groots suggestion is tenable, and I feel confirmed in my view that appreciation of the physical and material world is rather a Jewish hobby.

I am sure, however, that my contention is not for  hundred percent true because in the Jewish tradition a certain kind of idealism thrives eminently well. Namely messianism, ie the expectation of a golden future for the world, not least in a moral sense. And not necessarily only reserved for the Jews but as a destination for all humanity.

Also see The Green Line and the Red Line

Church and State

It is, apart from the hostilities that there may be between Muslims and Jews, remarkable how much these two cultural-religious groups have in common. This can appear when it comes to parallel rituals and customs such as circumcision and dietary laws. It also appears to apply to a completely different field, that of the constitutional question of the extent to which it is desirable to separate religion and state. Anyway, neither Islamic States nor Israel just let themselves be squeezed into the straitjacket of an absolute separation of church and state.

I arrive at this parallel after hearing a lecture by Joseph Weiler, an expert on constitutions of countries around the world. His lecture starts from the question whether, if Israel wants emphatically to be a Jewish state, the separation of church and state would be jeopardized. And if so, whether that would be bad.

It actually looks like being bad. Because at first sight, says Weiler, there seems to exist but one proper view on the relationship between church and state. Namely, the one according to the French and American constitutions. In them religion and state are considered to be fully detached from each other, so to be things which can very well be absolutely separated and should be so. France and America don’t want to be nation states, but rather states of their citizens regardless of their faith or group identity.

That paradigma served as an example and has become normative for much thinking about the separation between church and state. And that's weird, Weiler thinks, because except for France and the U.S., there are in fact no other countries in the world with such absolute separation. For most of the cultures, there are not only the state on the one side, and the individual on the other side. If that’s the case, religion and group identity could indeed very well disappear behind the frontdoor and the state would be absolutely religionfree.

But for most countries, there is also such a thing as a national sentiment, a collective identity. Coupled with the belief that this identity should take shape in the establishment of a collective fundamental right. This is for example what the Egyptians want at this time, by adopting a constitution with references to Sharia. This is what Italy wants when it comes to crucifixes on the walls in classrooms. And it is what the Israeli people want by emphatically stating that Israel should not only democratic but also Jewish in character.

Besides these empirical observations Weiler suggests that a neutral position in these matters is, even from a theoretical point of view, an impossibility: those who want neutrality, form an ideological group alongside other ideologies or religions. So opting for neutrality is not neutral, but is favoring that particular group. In a society where the main dividing line is not between religious groups such as Christians, Jews or Muslims, “but between religious people and irreligious people, there is no luxury of neutrality. Laïcité is not a neutral position”.

It should be taken for granted, he adds, that there must be religious freedom, “freedom of religion and freedom from religion”. But actually, a country with a fully-fledged parliamentary democracy and respect for personal freedom may very well have a religious identity. For that reason Weiler fought before the European Court of Human Rights for Italy's right to hang crucifixes in the classrooms.

By the way, in this identity struggle Israel does not only resemble Egypt and some other Islamic countries. It runs, except with Italy, also in line with most other European countries, says Weiler. Look at England, where the Queen is head of the church, or to Greece where a government is ordained by the Orthodox Church.

And conversely: France, although striving to strict neutrality, is not always successful in curbing French chauvinism. As Geert van Istendael wrote: the gift of Fraternite was only granted to those who spoke French.

Also see Progress after all

Levinas and Rousseau

Sometimes it may seem like Jean-Jeacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) is still alive and perhaps the most timely philosopher we ‘ve got. “Be yourself”, or “back to nature” are slogans that are doing well and that could easily be led back to Rousseau. And something more serious but no less fashionable: the desire to get behind the appearance of things in order to discover the authentic core of one’s true identity, whether  rooted in a tradition or not. With his emphasis on the True Self, Rousseau may be called paradigmatic for a distinctly Western preoccupation with the Self, also in newborn Jews or Christians and nowadays in Muslims as well.

But contemporary commentators make it clear that this actuality of Rousseau is for the most part illusory. Because the collective pursuit of authenticity empties that aspiration of meaning to the degree that inauthenticity remains. “Once you try to be authentic you start playing authenticity, and you are no longer yourself in a relaxed way” says Wilfred van de Poll.

After God and religious traditions had disappeared already as absolute values, it is now the turn to the belief in an authentic self à la Rousseau to disappear. This removes our last beacon of absoluteness, after postmodernism ‘pretending’ is the only thing we have got left. Actually, no contemporary philosopher yet believes in the absoluteness of anything.

No one? Well, one - yet very French - philosopher tries hard to uphold, in the midst of postmodernist violence, at least something of an absolute value. But in order to do so he has to give a radical twist to that absoluteness. That is no longer – as was the case for centuries with Rousseau as a highlight – the Self,  but the Other. Because according to him, the other sometimes appears to us in a way that can not be contradicted, that is to say: absolutely.

The philosopher who makes this turn is Levinas, and the radical nature of his orientation becomes visible as Levinas with regard to various themes ends up at positions that are contrary to those of Rousseau. For example when it comes to the valuation of reason and the appreciation of technology.

Rousseau , although he was a philosopher, manages to embrace a romantic anti-intellectualism. He may even seduce us to stop thinking. He does so through his emphasis on authenticity and on the idea that reason robs us of an originally given innate purity.

This idea is entirely foreign to Levinas. Indeed, Levinas formulates important objections against reason, but the last thing he propagates is to stop thinking. On the contrary, we should strengthen our thoughts, and let them be corrected through confrontations with the other.

In line with that position Levinas has an optimistic view of technology and science, unlike Rousseau who accuses science and technology of alienating man from his original self, the reflection of which he believes to find in primitive peoples and noble savages.

Really, nothing could be further from Levinas than that. And actually nothing is further from  Jewish tradition than that idea of Rousseau.

Also see Harder than postmodern and Levinas and Derrida

Levinas and Egoism

Egoism is bad. That's what we learned and the idea is deeply embedded in the surrounding Christian culture. But the idea is definitely not limited to Christians. The well known British Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman for example propagates the same idea in his numerous books. He opposes to the strivings of the ego selfless devotion to the Other and thereby confirms a mindset that is deeply rooted in the West.

Many people who think this way believe their views about the badness of the ego and selfishness to be confirmed in the writings of Levinas. By his emphasis on the ‘Face of the Other’ and on the inroad the Other makes on the I, Levinas seems perfectly ready for annexation into the originally Christian ideas about original sin, the wickedness of man and his selfishness. That could also explain why, precisely in the Calvinist Netherlands, Levinas relatively early became popular. Levinas is thus placed in line with the Christian denouncers of human selfishness and messengers of neighbourly love. According to this view he is, in short, an outstanding example of a moralist.

I have always objected against this view and fortunately recently a thesis has been published which goes into this matter more deeply. The thesis has been written by Henk den Uijl, who graduated in Philosophy of Management and Organization at the Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit, and is entitled Beyond Egoism and Altruism. A Levinasian Approach. In it Den Uijl calls, using the work of Levinas, for considering egoism as morally neutral.

That’s quite something, precisely because this call conflicts with the prevailing thought which by Den Uijl is characterized as a form of dualistic thinking. With dualism he means a polarized system of two opposing poles, of which one pole is good and the other bad. In this case, altruism is good, egoism is bad.

According to Den Uijl the prevalence of this dualism comes to the fore in the observation that “when theorized about it, people will say that altruism is better than egoism”. To this Den Uijl opposes that, “to say this (the ego) is wrong or good is a categorical mistake, the egoism is the (not yet) about ethics or morals”. Egoism has its own area where it is in place and should not be seen in a hierarchical relation to altruism. “Egoism is ethically neutral, and is good in the sense of enjoying life, yet not in an ethical sense. There is no definite hierarchy between egoism and altruism. Egoism is not something condemnable; it is no normative notion at all”.

How for this position Den Uijl harks back to Levinas becomes clear in his presentation of Levinas’ assessment of egoism. From that presentation I will present a few sentences that together summarize Den Uijl’s argument and which for the occasion I cite one after another. “He (Levinas) does not see egoism as a vice, rather, it is the very way a subject in solitude behaves through intentionality; the ego wants to understand, or better, grasp the world so to suspense anonymous being”. “Egoism is the very way an ego stands in the world. It is strange to say that the ego perceives the world wrong, for who else should perceive the world than the ego?”

Den Uijl tells us that when he talks about egoism in these terms to managers and economists, they sometimes find this very hard to swallow. Their reactions are often defensive. Den Uijl explains this because of the negative load the word egoism got under the influence of Christianity.

Apart from that, in those very circles of managers and economists, he also encounters the exact opposite. In those cases altruism is seen as naive and therefore bad, and egoism is hailed because individual ambitions and covetousness could engender the collective’s prosperity. Here dualism appears again, says Den Uijl, with its associated but now inverted hierarchy.

Apparently it’s hard to stay calm when it comes to egoism and quickly ideological terms slip into our discourses : there is either total rejection (as in Christianity) or total embrace (as in the extreme market-ideology). To these extremes Den Uijl (in line with Levinas) rightly opposes the idea that there is no hierarchy between egoism and altruism, and that they constantly alternate.

Once one realizes this, it starts sounding quite outdatedly dualistic to hear philosophers say that in our time the Christian emphasis on charity is crucial. As for example the Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging did when he said that “Christianity, based on neighbourly love, makes people less selfish and makes them more focused on the community and the other”. For this reason, according to Kinneging, Christianity coexists better with democracy than Judaism and Islam do.

Kinneging says so despite the fact that by now the Christian dualism and the privileging of altruism are experienced by many people as an overstrained ideology and have lost much of their credibility. It is no coincidence that Alexis De Tocqueville, whom Kinneging holds in high esteem, could define himself as still only a ”Christian by culture”, not by faith. He could not really believe all that anymore.

Also see A Real Shame and Emergency Shelter

Reversal of values

Recently Naima El Bezaz beautifully described her experience of seeing the film Des Hommes et des Dieux by Xavier Beauvois. Her style of description is completely original and authentic but of such a character that I think many Jews can identify with what she writes.

The movie is set in the nineties of the last century and is about a group of French monks who inhabit a monastery in the Algerian mountains. It is the time when Islamist terror groups step up their fight against the secular Algerian regime. They sweep the country, devastating and murdering anyone they regard as enemies: Westerners, Muslims who don’t take Islam seriously enough, Christians. It is soon clear that the monks are going to be a target for the terrorists and that actually it is the best for them to leave the country as soon as possible. Indeed, the Algerian government demands the monks to leave, if only to later have no diplomatic row with France.

But the monks refuse to leave. They continue to do what they have always done: live with the poor local people, supporting them with equipment and medical assistance. The people of the village feel at home in the monastery and the monks take care of them as if they were their children. Leaving the monastery would be tantamount to treason, the monks have to continue their mission of mercy and protection. There will be no happy end.

As this story unfolds in the cinema, El Bezaz describes herself and her feelings while she consumes the film. And then it appears she experiences a reversal of values. At the beginning of the film she is full of sympathy about so much love and selflessness on the part of the monks. She even feels a twinge of envy for those men who manage to generate such warmth and affection for the poor villagers. In the mosque things sometimes may be quite different!

At this point in the film she is still neatly in line with the journalists on the chairs beside and in front of her, who above all seem to be deeply impressed by such amounts of selflessness and charity. They are likely to join the chorus of invariably enthusiastic critics who already made the film receive the Grand Prix at Cannes.

But suddenly she feels a deep anger welling up inside. This happens when the monks after long deliberation decide to stay. But why? Where does that anger come from? It’s all about pure love and selflessness, what objection could one possibly have against that?

Apparently there is a lot to object against that, such is what El Bezaz shows us. The ordinary Algerians, at least the villagers, are living in a crippling fear. They would pay a fortune if only they could leave. “And then there are those French monks who do have the chance to leave and so save their lives, yet choose to stay where they are”. This triggers the anger and disgust of El Bezaz. It is the combination of the naive dog eyes of the monks and their patronizing superior sacrificing themselves for that pitiful mountain folk which she experiences as an example of imperialist thinking.

This description can be read as a debunking of something which is pretty hard to uncover: the violence that lies behind the superiority of complete self-sacrifice. And which is particularly noticeable for those who simply want to bear and continue their own existence. About the vilification of these pursuits by the ‘superior and noble Christianity’ Jews and Israel can have their say.

This has got much to do with Thinking for someone else.