I was a TV boss, I would also know: all the attention for Ramadan, the Islamic monthly month, which lasts this year until the evening of March 30. Around a million Muslims live in the Netherlands, and most of them strictly adhere to fasting, from the dawn to sunset. After that there are the common meals and at the end of that period, Eid Al-Fitr is celebrated, thoroughly renamed Sugar Festival by Dutch people.
Compare that with the Catholic fast, officially started on March 5 (Ash Wednesday), continuously until Easter, this year on 20 and 21 April.
The number of ecclesiastical Catholics is still shrinking, and it is also not a foregone conclusion that Catholics who do go to church keep that fasting. Moreover, that ‘forty day’, as the period up to Easter is officially called, is much less strict than Ramadan. The professing Catholic will remedy his eating regime, for example, two light meals a day, but there is no neighbor, friend or priest who watches it. No ‘fasting feeling’ on TV: that Catholic sort it out for himself – and that happens. No alcohol, less alcohol, more prayer, less telephone, no porn. It is primarily an individual choice, and whoever skips it all is not deported from the church, because every visitor counts.
Would an outsider visit our country for the first time during this period: such a person would think that there are deep-Islamic roots on this nation. Ramadan toothin the media and in public life; The Christian fasting period is hardly involved. Again: as a program maker I would also opt for the massive, ostentative Ramadan, despite the Jewish-Christian foundations that are said to have our country resting on it. Resting is the word.
What is the opposite of Islamophobia: Islam catering? At first glance that seems to be the case, but it is more ambiguous. The Dutch Ramadang feeling is primarily an employer’s feeling. Employers’ Association AWVN gives numerous tips How employees who can be supported can be supported. Enter ‘Catholics’ here and it becomes ridiculous. The concern is top-down, from employer to employee: benevolent paternalism.
I myself belong to that much smaller group of professing, church-going Catholics: I probably ‘in my way’, a little D66-like. At most I talk about it with other churchgoers: what are you going to do this year?
There are acquaintances who know that I am going to church, especially because I regularly write about it in Dagblad Fidelity. People usually keep a suitable, friendly silence about this. But for the first time I received all kinds of messages from the agnostic circle of acquaintances this month. Reason: the St. Nicolaas Basilica in Amsterdam (‘My Church’), which is somewhat dark, brick colossus opposite Central Station, elevated to cathedral.
Until recently, Amsterdam was one of the few European capitals that had to do without a bishop’s seat. Gift from the pope, for the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam. I received hearts and thumbs. Apparently I kept something high, which many of my friends have already dropped. The adhesion tests said: we are behind you, with the emphasis on ‘rear’. That means as much as: we walk ahead of you.
Two things happened at the same time: from the 1960s many Muslims settled in the Netherlands, while the Christian faith began to crush. Religion as such became something exotic, exotic. ‘Othing‘This is called in fashionable and bad Dutch.
It has something Kolderie’s, the memory loss of this country that was once so Christian. Am I complaining now? No, I am surprised. Christianity met collective amnesia and believing became something for Muslims.
The Dutch are masters in it.
Stephan Sanders is an essayist.