Muslims are nice people? Surprised commentators noted praise for Islam of the leader of Forum for Democracy. In a interview on YouTube the anti-oikophobe still saw problems, but the long-cherished image of the enemy was misplaced. “Those people are here. Let them.”
It shouldn’t be surprising, and it’s not just another happy round in the fuss carousel. Yes, the leader in question has previously expressed suspicion about the “loyalty” of Muslims (2010) and championed manly “generalizing about Islam” (2012). And then there was the ‘dilution’ of the population, at the expense of white Europe. Yet, hardcore Islam-bludgeoning (‘kopvoddentaks’, ‘hate palaces’) was rather left to the freedom party of the friendly, but somewhat vulgar downstairs neighbours.
Logical, because the real public enemy for the anti-oikophobe are not Muslims in the first place – at least they still believe in something – but that is the soft, effeminate (or non-binary) elite that the country has delivered to postmodern suckers. Muslims are at most poor pawns in that cosmopolitan board game. Young right-wing fraternity revolutionaries daydream about a traditional social order (with themselves at the top), in which religion also has a place.
In reactionary or far-right circles, Islam has also always had double papers. On the one hand hated as an aggressive enemy that threatens to overrun Europe. On the other hand – and for the same reason – admired and compared favorably with the flabby other-cheek Christianity. At least Islam is still a living community, which properly assigns women and men their place.
That says more about reactionary preoccupations than about Islam, but it has a history. The party of that former leader, the man from Braunau am Inn, saw in the Islamic world a strategic ally against British imperialism. The sympathy was ideologically based. Race thinkers bent over backwards to find Arabs, also Semites, slightly less inferior than Jews. The Ministry of Propaganda ordered media to stop using ‘anti-Semitic’ and use ‘anti-Jewish’. The leader himself, in addition to Karl May’s books, admired Islam as a combative religion of the here and now.
Such opportunistic Islamophilia is not reserved for the extreme right either. The religion has always been a popular hangout for disillusioned minds yearning for the demise of the decadent, liberal West.
In the meantime, it is mainly cynical. First sowing fear for years and approvingly watching Muslims be portrayed as barbarians, and now baking sweet rolls.
You need it from your friends.
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 17, 2022