"Stadig flere terrorister lever i vores midte" (Politiken 11-08-2006) 

When you are living in another country (in my case: a Dutchman living in Denmark) you get experienced in noticing the name of your home country everywhere. Even though I am not paying attention to it, I hear or see ‘Holland’ in many places. Last Friday I was reading Politiken and I noticed ‘den hollandske politiker Pim Fortuyn’ in the above-mentioned article. As a cultural consultant working for Lingtech in Copenhagen I was especially interested to read more after seeing a heading called: vrede muslimer (angry muslims) in that same article.

Just after I arrived in Denmark, the by now 12 world famous drawings of the prophet Mohammed were published. Perhaps because of my anthropological background or because of coming from a multicultural city in Holland, I realised immediately that these drawings could create unrest. Denmark suddenly saw its ‘Danebrog’ burned and its embassies ruined. In my Danish language classes I realised that I couldn’t directly translate the name which was given for this phenomenon in Denmark. On the BBC I heard about the ‘cartoon controversy’ and on DR2 I heard about the ‘Mohammed krisen’. I decide to stick with the BBC definition, since I don’t believe that Mohammed himself is in a crisis. Newspapers all over the world decided to print the pictures again or on the other hand to condemn the ones who actually printed them. The discussion ‘freedom of speech’ versus respect for other peoples feelings is still going on everywhere in the world. No matter on which side of the spectrum you are, if something is written in a newspaper everybody agrees that facts should be thoroughly checked to prevent more misunderstanding. This is exactly the point I would like to make.

When the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered in Holland in 2002 (and not in 2004 as mentioned in the article) many people were relieved that the killer didn’t have a foreign background. Pim Fortuyns party was famous for having a restrictive policy towards foreigners. People were sad and shocked that a political murder took place in liberal thinking Holland, but if the murderer would for example be a Muslim, than tensions were expected in the Netherlands (around 5.5% of the Dutch population and 2% of the Danish population is Muslim). Immediately after the assassination, the government made clear that the murderer was from Dutch descent (his name: Volkert van der Graaf also made that very clear). To my surprise I suddenly read the following in last Fridays Politiken: ‘det er terrorister som Muhammed Bouyeri, der I 2004 myrdede den hollandske politiker Pim Fortuyn. Han voksede op I Holland som søn af marokkanske indvandrere…’. As cultural consultant working in Denmark, I am trying to create ’cultural understanding’ between people and organisations. It seems almost impossible trying to create understanding between Muslims and Christians when most of the news about Muslims in the media is negative (or wrong!). In this case it could be more interesting (and useful) to have a closer look at the Dutch society in where Volkert van der Graaf and Muhammed Bouyeri (who killed moviemaker Theo van Gogh in 2004) grew up, instead of only focussing on their religious background.

Mark de Vos

Cultural Consultant Lingtech