“Harry” de Winter was not a mistake by Jakarta Post

The item posted last evening at 8 p.m., “Leon de Winter’s previous statements aimed at silencing truthful criticism of Islam,” was based on a 2008 article in the Jakarta Post. In that article de Winter was referred to in the lead paragraph as “Harry” de Winter, and, partly because of the sloppy way the article was written in general, both the reader who sent the item and I assumed that the first name was a mistake by the reporter. It was not a mistake. There is a Dutch Harry de Winter, five years older than Leon de Winter. I regret attributing Harry’s words to Leon and I’ve deleted the item.

As the Dutch blogger “Snouck Hurgronje” explains below, Leon is a typical neocon who believes that only “radical” Islam is the problem, while Harry is a typical left-liberal who thinks that Islam is not a problem at all. Below his comment I’ve re-posted my commentary from last night on Harry’s, not Leon’s, statement that the Torah is violent too and therefore we shouldn’t judge the Koran.

Snouck writes:

Harry is not Leon. I guess the Harry quoted in the Jakarta Post is the prominent Dutch producer and multimillionaire Harry de Winter, born in Oss, the Netherlands in 1949. Leon de Winter is born in den Bosch in 1954. He is a prominent author and collumnist. Both are Dutch Jews.

Harry can best be described as a Liberal. He has lived in Israel for more than a year, speaks Hebrew and is one of the founders of “Een ander Joods geluid” (a different Jewish tune), a organisation which wants Israel to abandon the settlements and withdraw behind the 1948-1967 border in order to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Leon is another variant of Liberal. He is a Dutch Neo-Conservative. He supports the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and wants The Netherlands to support the U.S. efforts militarily and politically. He is critical of “radical Muslims” in The West in that typically confused neo-con way. He wrings his hands over the advances of Islam in The Netherlands and elsewhere, but never advocates doing something about the causes of these advances, i.e. immigration. Still there is a subtle difference between the positions of the two.

Harry de Winter argument was famously ripped apart on TV by Orientalist Hans Jansen. Professor Hans Jansen is one of the three witnesses allowed in the Geert Wilders Hate Speech trial. On the prominent and red-as-a-beet Dutch TV show P&W on 17 March 2008. Mr. Hans Jansen insisted that the calls to violence in the Koran are general calls to violence which are still in effect. Harry said that the Old Testament contains the same violence, quoting a text from Joshua. Mr. Jansen pointed out the difference between the Bible which contains a set of chronological stories. And the Quran which contains general calls to violence against unbelievers in all times. Moreover there is the the fact that the Koran is overruled by Sharia legal system and what really matters is how Sharia binds Muslims to fight the Kufar to cause them to submit to Sharia. A part of the broadcast in Dutch is here and the full broadcast is here. Also GoV had an article on the debate here.

In short, Leon sees some Muslims as problematic and wants to do something about it while Harry does not see any Muslims as problematic at all and has a problem with people like Leon, Mr. Jansen and Geert Wilders who point out that Islam or at least some Muslims exist. Naturally many people who read Leon’s articles are confused into believing that Leon is very right-wing and that his kind of criticisms are what is needed to defend the West.

[end of Snouk’s comment]

I wrote to Snouck Hurgronje:

Snouck,

Thanks a million for this. I’ve posted a new item in place of the old, using your comment. I love the way you’ve laid out and explained the typical neocon/liberal differences between Leon and Harry.

Snouck replies:

Mr. Auster,

You are welcome. I learned to articulate the Lib/Neo-Con difference from you, o sensei. ;-)

However, since my analysis of Harry (not Leon) de Winter’s words that I posted last night is still correct, here is most of my deleted comment about his statement as quoted in the Jakarta Post article, followed by the article itself. I’ve only left out the part of my comment where I described Harry’s words as Leon’s.

LA replies:

Here is the opening of the article Leonard sent, from the Jakarta Post, March 27, 2008:

The debate on whether or not right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders should release the anti-Koran movie has taken a new twist recently, as a prominent Dutch Jewish figure, Harry de Winter [sic], says Wilders’ statements are on the same level as anti-Semitism.

Wilders had earlier suggested Muslims should “tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands” because it contained “terrible things”.

But de Winter said, “If you read the Old Testament (the Jewish Thora) [sic] then you also find texts about hatred of homosexuals, hatred of women and the murdering of non-Jewish preachers.”

So our friend de Winter [meaning Harry, not Leon] is the type of intellectual who, if anyone speaks about Islam’s divinely commanded Holy War program to Islamize the world, instantly and in knee jerk fashion refers to the Jewish Bible in order to relativize the truth about Islam. Think of it: at this moment Islam is spreading its people, spreading its power, spreading its sharia law throughout the Western world, waging jihad against us infidels by every method ranging from organized mass terror attacks to individual “sudden jihad syndrome” to the use of student mobs to silence speakers at colleges, and all of this behavior is based directly on the Koran and the Hadiths. Yet, according to de Winter, we’re not supposed to notice the Islamic jihad or form conclusions about it. Why? Because in the Jewish Bible God condemns homosexuality and commands the Israelites to kill the Canaanites, who by the way haven’t been around for 3,200 years. This is liberals’ so-far very effective method (“The Bible is bad too, so you can’t criticize Islam!”), of making the plain truth about Islam invisible, unspeakable, and unthinkable. Amazing, isn’t it, how an entire civilization can be rendered helpless against its declared enemies by a single, mindless catch phrase!

[end of my comment from last night]

Here is the Jakarta Post article:

Wilders’ movie all about Dutch politics
Alpha Amirrachman, Amsterdam | Thu, 03/27/2008 12:07 PM | Opinion

The debate on whether or not right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders should release the anti-Koran movie has taken a new twist recently, as a prominent Dutch Jewish figure, Harry de Winter, says Wilders’ statements are on the same level as anti-Semitism.

Wilders had earlier suggested Muslims should “tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands” because it contained “terrible things”.

But de Winter said, “If you read the Old Testament (the Jewish Thora) then you also find texts about hatred of homosexuals, hatred of women and the murdering of non-Jewish preachers.”

Moroccan Muslims strongly felt there were double standards in Wilders’ stand, Fouad Sidali of the Cooperative Organization of Moroccans in the Netherlands told Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Sidali also said he was relieved to hear de Winter’s statement.

As many as 6,800 Dutch people have signed a petition to show the world that Wilders and his forthcoming film Fitna do not express the views of everyone in Holland (http://www.wildersitnotholland.com).

The debate, which has enormously polarized Dutch society, provides us with some appealing lessons.

First, this is an issue of Dutch multiculturalism and is really a Dutch thing where local social, economic and political crises and subsequent intrigues were pulled beyond the boundary, becoming an unnecessary but inevitably international issue.

There is a popular perception that the large incursion of Muslim migrants, mostly from Morocco, have caused serious social and economic problems for the broader Dutch community.

The migrants are perceived to be unable to assimilate into Dutch society.

Some sections within indigenous Dutch society fear the presence of these one million Muslims may endanger the very core of their liberal democratic tradition, particularly amid the rise of Islamic terrorism.

Second, this relates to the issue of freedom of expression. In Dutch history the freedom of expression extends back to the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ where after the Union of Utrecht in 1579, the freedom of conscience (a principle that no one can be persecuted for his reasons of religion) was officially assured by the United Provinces of Netherlands.

Dutch society seems to have become obsessed with the freedom of expression, and the always blurred limit of this freedom has been delicately tested. The recent brouhaha over the Wilders’ movie-to-be proves this fragility.

In a multicultural society where norms vary, the limits of freedom become very subtle because the freedom is relatively limited by the freedom of others; shared wisdom, through an unremitting and civilized dialog are thus needed for the sake of the freedom itself.

Such dialog is required where one narrow-minded Dutch politician tries to internationalize a local crisis (which seems to be cracking the Dutch multicultural society) and plays the card that the Netherlands’ long-cherished freedom is under threat from “uncivilized” Muslim immigrants.

For the Dutch multicultural society, the crisis seems to have spiraled out of control, with migrants suffering the entire blame. Some even say it has (even) gone beyond the issue of multiculturalism and has become an issue of “political correctness”.

Wilders is just a politician of the day who wants others to fall into his short-lived political game.

So, if there is any violent verbal reaction from Indonesian Muslims as to whether the movie should be released, this would only strengthen Wilders’ belief that Muslims are unable to articulate their cause in a cultured manner.

Freedom of expression (which Indonesia also values highly) would just be wasted if it is filled with mere empty condemnations and self-denial slogans or statement. It should be used in the way the Jewish Dutch leader de Winter did.

The fact that de Winter jumped into the crowd, criticizing Wilders by revealing the perceived weaknesses of his own holy book, shows that in a democracy even Jews can show solidarity in defense of Dutch Muslims.

It is, therefore, an opportunity and moral obligation for Indonesian Muslims to articulate to the world that the perceived intolerant elements of the Koran should be understood using a historical and contextual prism.

In a nutshell, the contextual interpretation of the Koran should be well expressed to the world and, equally importantly, the peaceful paradigm must be realized in Muslim deeds in tandem with inter-cultural and inter-religious dialog.

Only then will Muslims secure a place in this increasingly crowded world, without having to fall into the wild game of a local opportunistic politician in one particular country.

The writer now is pursuing a PhD in policy and sociology of education at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, Amsterdam University.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 09, 2010 10:00 AM | Send