A Continent-Wide Debate
Europe's Multiculturalism Discussionby Paul Grant
It all started with a French philosopher’s verbal attack on a Dutch author, published in an English-language German website. When the dust cleared months later, an incredible amount of new knowledge had been created. It was a conversation, above all else, about immigration and Islam.
This week’s book of the week, Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, was initially reviewed by English professor Timothy Garton Ash in the New York Review of Books. French scholar Pascal Bruckner then published a rebuttal in a different publication. Most academic fights would have ended there. Language and culture barriers keep people from reading to widely, and the web had yet to show itself capable of sustained academic thought.
But Bruckner was writing in a new kind of journal, one perfectly suited for such a time as this. Signandsight.com is a German website—published in English—dedicated to disseminating cultural and artistic thought from around Europe, into the common language of the continent.
The key media here are the internet, and the English language. The former is more than a technological step. Signandsight.com, along with its German-language sister site Perlentaucher (“Pearl Diver”), has used the internet’s inherent strength—that of parallel streams—to maintain a complex and wide-ranging conversation.
Meanwhile, the English language is the common denominator, allowing equal participation by French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Polish, and English writers. Swiss newspaper NZZ comments:
One of the core ideas of the Enlightenment is the belief in a universal public sphere, accessible to all reason-endowed people at all times and all places. The Perlentaucher site demonstrates that this utopian idea can be realized, at least in principle.
The content of this debate could indeed be found on the pages of newspapers, but web communication is qualitatively different … With a few clicks of the mouse, the reader can put all the arguments advanced to date side by side, and even check an author’s assertions—to see for oneself, for instance, what Ian Buruma and Timothy G. Ash actually said, that Pascal Bruckner so aggressively attacked.
So, then, what took place in this debate? A chronology:
Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists? (January 21, 2007)
Bruckner rebuts Buruma’s book and Garton Ash’s review. Buruma had called Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “Enlightenment Fundamentalist” for her unwavering anti-Muslim stance in the public sphere; Bruckner claims the multiculturalism advocated by the two amounts to a European crisis of conscience:
A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!
Ian Buruma replied a few days later: Freedom cannot be decreed (January 29)
"To be tolerant is not to be indiscriminate. I would not dream of defending dictatorship in the name of tolerance for other cultures. … Mr Bruckner is an important French intellectual, so I'm sure he doesn't have to be told this, just as I don't need to be lectured by him on the perils of cultural relativism. … Bruckner mentions the opening of an Islamic hospital in Rotterdam and reserved beaches for Muslim women in Italy. I fail to see why this is so much more terrible than opening kosher restaurants, Catholic hospitals, or reserved beaches for nudists, but to Bruckner these concessions are akin to segregation in the southern states of America, and even Apartheid in South Africa."
Timothy Garton Ash added his reply: Better Pascal than Pascal Bruckner (February 1)
"I wonder how much time Pascal Bruckner has spent in the unhappy outskirts of his own city? Or does he merely deduce what he calls 'the superiority of the French model' from first principles? It may not work in practice, but it works in theory, so that's alright."
At this point signandsight threw the doors wide open, sat back and watched what came in: eleven more papers, from a fully multi-national and multi-religion set.
Meanwhile, newspapers from Hungary to Norway were covering the discussion, in their local languages. This had become a debate conducted at a universal (continent-wide and in English) and contextual (local) level. The word "immigrant" carries different ethnic and religious meanings in France, Germany, and Poland. Europe's greatest asset and handicap alike is its dense diversity of languages and ethnicities, and this colorful online parlour debate reflects that diversity.
Urbana.org’s core readership is North American; the immigration issue is quite hot over here as well, but looks quite different in Canada and the United States than in Europe. As you look over these debates, what strikes you? What can we Christians learn from, and contribute to, this issue? Add your voice, in the Urbana.org Discussion area.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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