Original Dutch text found here.
For my non-Dutch friends who hold an interest in these matters: this speech was given by the party leader of the Dutch Greens at Saturday’s conference on religious freedom.
On freedom of conscience
Speech of Femke Halsema, Jacobi church Utrecht, October 9th 2010
I won’t make a secret out of the fact I find this a difficult speech. Speaking of freedom and criticism of religion is treading on a narrow path, bordered with barbed wire.
The sensitivities are great – often, you are speaking of the most closely-held convictions and most personal emotions of people, anger is lurking and grievances are fast to build. Especially as a non-religious politician such as myself, you are prone to being accused of having “insufficient knowledge” and “not understanding” what moves believers.
And yet, speaking of religion is, even for politicians, unavoidable. And, in these days, even necessary. To that, I want to add that these times force progressive politicians especially – among which I count myself – to make statements on the freedom of religion of the limits thereof.
That is the position I want to defend here. To that purpose, I first want to speak a few words on the background of my party and the tradition of criticism of religion I consider myself to be a part of. Then I want to determine my position in the running debates on religion, and Islam in particular.
While I was preparing this speech, someone pointed out to me an interview with Bas de Gaay Fortman from some years ago. In that interview, he looks back upon his decision in the 1970s, as a reformed young man, leave the ARP [reformed political party of the time, now part of the Dutch Christian-Democratic party - ed.] for the PPR [green, progressive and originally Christian party of the time -ed.], one of the predecessors of the Greens.
In this interview, he mentions two deciding reasons to remove himself from the reformed and segregated [Note: Dutch public life was for a very long time segregated not by race but by religious background. Various religious groups had their own parties, their own magazines and papers, their own broadcasting agencies, you name it. -ed.] power politics of the ARP. “First,” he said, “I felt and feel that politics should not be connected to religious creeds. This is bad for politics, because you’re seperating people who could agree with one another. You’re also putting people together who might disagree on social matters.” (For those who doubt the truth of the forced nature of confessional politics, I remind you of the CDA congress last weekend [the CDA had members vote on participation in the upcoming government. After 7 hours of emotional debate, the vote showed a torn party, 32% voting against and 68% in favor of participation in a government supported by Wilders - ed.]).
Second, he says, he rejected the continuous power of the church over personal and social life. In the 1970s, people were stepping out of the bounds of the rules of the church, without wanting to lose their faith. The PPR was one of the most important pillars of this new individual religious freedom. In the words of Bas de Gaay Fortman: ‘the PPR broke through the segregation, it was the first desegregated party. D’66 [Dutch liberal democratic party, founded in 1966 - ed.] was desegregated as well, but was, so to speak, anti-religion. This wasn’t true of the PPR.”
His anecdote shows the strong connection the predecessors of the Greens had with religion. The PSP, CPN and EVP [the Green's other predecessors - ed.] also had a great many people among their members who rejected the lack of freedom of the segregation, who held on to their faith, but also consciously tied themselves to secular politics.
I remember when I, as a new member of parliament went to visit “the left cheek” (the Greens’ platform for religion and politics) to discuss the euthanasia law that I was spokesperson for in parliament. The central, recurring, and new to me term in that conversation was “freedom of conscience”. The could not and cannot, in our free country, be any form of force put upon one’s conscience. This means no one can be kept from their religious convictions. If, for example, your religious convictions mean you are repulsed by euthanasia, you should always be free to act upon this, and should know you are protected from the practice of euthanasia. At the same time, your religious convictions cannot keep others – believers or non-believers – from their wish to recognize euthanasia and allow it in their lives.
I think the members of the Left Cheek, with their idea of religious freedom and freedom of force of conscience, are the main bearers of a concept of religion that – I believe – is central within the Green Party to this day. It is the concept that I am most comfortable with.
Inspired by Bas de Gaay, I believe that freedom of religion is primarily an individual right. Every person in the Netherlands is free to believe as he wishes, to act upon that, it can be a guidance in his or her personal and social actions, he can devote his or her life to it.
The state has an important role in protection this individual freedom. That means the state should protect believers from humiliation. Mind you (and I want to emphasize this), humiliation is not the same thing as insult, as blasphemy or harsh criticism of holy books. In my opinion, the state has no role when it comes to insult.
Humiliation means that people are persecuted or discriminated against, i.e. on the job market or in their education. Simply put, in my opinion people should not be turned down for a job because they are strictly reformed, or maybe wear a cross or a hijab. The should have free access to business life, they should have free access to government functions.
Protection also means the government actively enables people to believe. That means that the state gives (and continues to give) parents the option to start a school for their own religious tradition, to send their children to denominational educations. This also means there is room for religious counselors (preachers or imams) in the Dutch army, who can support soldiers – for example on mission in Afghanistan – when they have need.
The emphasis on religion as an individual right, does not means I underestimate people’s need for a church community. I recognize and respect the meaning of churches and mosques, for people individually and for our society as a means of tying people together and giving direction.
I also respect that communities, in the explanation of their faith, come to rules of conduct and life to which they – freely, I emphasize, wish to adhere. There should be respect and space for people to set standards for the food they eat, to celebrate Ramadan, to honor the Sunday as a day of rest, and to have the need to retreat among their own, for example in Christian, Jewish or Islamic homes for the elderly (without, however, this leading to exclusion).
I feel that I – as a secular and progressive politician – should defend this fundamental freedom of people (as fundamental as, for example, the freedom of speech).
But – there is a but here. I emphasized that I consider freedom of religion to be an individual right. And a referred to force of conscience, the term I learned at the Left Cheek.
Or, as Bas de Gaay put it so well: “The authority of the church so not determine the personal or communal life.” The predecessors of the Greens rejected – rightly – the rules and prescriptions that the church authority put upon the people. For example: “A Christian cannot be gay”, “a Christian does not choose abortion or euthanasia, and disapproves if others do”, “a Christian shall not work on Sunday”.
Freedom of religion means – in my opinion as well – the religion, the appeal to god, cannot lead to the judging or excluding of those who think differently. Nor can it lead to the limiting of believers in their life style or in the personal way of believing. Simply, freedom of religion means that you can be a believer and a practising homosexual teaching at a reformed school. It also means that a young Islamic woman, without hijab, cannot be humiliated or be held at home because Islamic authorities say she is unclean.
Your nature, your gender, your sexuality or your political preferences cannot keep you from a free experience of your faith. Just like your faith cannot be grounds for exclusion, so neither can your gender or sexuality.
In short: free experience of religion deserves active protection. In my opinion: freedom of religion is an individual right. The collective cannot be held over the individual. Neither church nor state can force people to believe, or to abandon their faith.
That’s the theory; now the stubborn reality.
There’s a girl growing up in the Netherlands. She may live near me, or near you. She’s about 13 years old, and raised in the Islamic faith. From a young age, she’s used to her mother bringing her to school veiled, in djellaba and with hijab. She learned that if you eat pork, you’ll go to hell, she’s used to staying in the kitchen with her mother while the men eat. She loves the warmth and the feasts at the end of Ramadan, she loves her parents and feels safe in her environment. Now she’s entering puberty, doubt strikes.
Recently, she started having to wear a hijab when she goes out; her parents told her that if she doesn’t wear one, she’s bad and unclean. She feels torn in school and on the streets. She feels the aggression her appearance calls forth, she’s saddened that there’s so little space for the faith of her parents. But she hesitates. She loves movies, computer games and R&B, and doesn’t understand why those loves would make her a bad muslim. She wonders if she’s a muslim at all, and feels too young for a veil. She wants to be like the others, but every day, she defends herself against judgements from those others about her parents, about her and about her faith.
I think there are thousands of young girls like her in this country. I did not randomly choose the example.
While I was holding a theoretic treatise, there’s a harsh debate raging around us about the being and the position of the Islam. this debate doesn’t care about abstract principles on freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, but goes back and forth between the daily annoyance of a visible Islam in the Netherlands, and the fear for political jihadism in the West.
This debate, encouraged by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, gives many progressive and left-leaning politics a deep feeling of unease. This often leads to paralysis.
There only seem to be two flavors. Either you’re anti-religion and you want religion – and with religion I of course mean Islam – to be banned from the public arena, and preferably from the country. Or you’re pro-religion and that means, in this polarized debate, that you’re a muslim hugger, and a relativist wanting to introduce sharia law (this is a loose translation of the work of Wilders.)
This debate leave little room for a progressive politicians who is not willing to relativize the fundamental freedoms (and with those I mean both freedom of religion and freedom of expression). No, I should put that differently. Progressive politicians don’t take enough room. They allow themselves to be put on the defensive by the harsh, often discriminatory tone of Wilders. They let themselves be torn between the wish for solidarity with an Islamic minority that feels oppressed, and the realization that within many Islamic communities, the position of minorities (like women and homosexuals) is saddening. They allow themselves, in other words, to be pushed into one of the two positions; pro- or anti-religion.
There is a third way. I am neither pro- nor anti-religion. I accept and respect religion in her societal appearance. I respect the need of people to believe, to have the Qur’an on their night stand – as Tofik [Dibi, MP for the Greens - ed.] once told Wilders -, and I feel called to protect people in those needs. But because I take freedom of religion seriously, I cannot and will not back away from the intolerance that is held within especially the more orthodox forms of Islam.
Let me be exact. A while ago research was published on salafism in the Netherlands. This research showed that the following was smaller than expected, and there was no direct threat from salafism to the democratic rule of law. Everyone sighed in relief, and went on with their business. We shouldn’t.
Although the hard core is small, many salafistic, orthodox ideas have far broader support in the Dutch Islamic community. Those are ideas about theocracy, about the equality of men and women and hetero- and homosexuals. These ideas are enforced from the top down, and have great consequences for the freedom of women and homosexuals especially.
I am convinced that there are thousands of muslim women in the Netherlands who know too little freedom of movement – prescribed by the Islamic authorities and dutifully enforced by fathers, uncles and sons. It doesn’t help that few of these women are financially independent (only 7% of women in immigrant families in the Netherlands are financially independent) and most have little education. For these women an honorable life is lived between the four walls of their homes, in subservience to their husbands, with little say in the upbringing of their children and strict rules for their dress and behavior. the same too often goes for their daughters.
Of course I recognize that there are many Islamic women who come to this choice in full conviction and freedom, but I will not close my eyes to the many women who live this way because there is no alternative. For my, as a politician who feels connected to Bas de Gaay Fortman and the tradition of the Left Cheek, this is not acceptable. Religion isn’t free when it comes with forcing of conscience and a great number of living rules and prescriptions that are to be followed to gain the respect of co-religionists.
The Islam is part of the Netherlands, she is entitles to her place in public. Muslims have to be able to feel certain they won’t be humiliated. Suggestions of a hijab ban in public functions, or, worse yet, banning of the Qur’an, are unacceptable forms of humiliation of religion.
But it is just as unacceptable when women (and men) are forced by their faith to lead a life that is contrary to other freedoms and rights we consider important; the equal rules for men and women, freedom of expression, freedom to abandon one’s faith.
Progressive parties have a role in the current polarized debate to defend the freedom of religion. That means the freedom to believe as you want, without limitations enforced by the state. We also have the task to face the confrontation with those believers, with those Islamic leaders, who would force the conscience of minorities in their communities. I feel we should do that more than we have over the last years.
The passion we – justifiedly – show when it comes to giving practising homosexuals access to reformed schools, and women in the SGP [reformed political party renowned for not allowing women from their party to be elected to represent the party - ed.] access to parliament, we should also show to gain Islamic homosexuals and women the right to make free choices. That means the use of political means, and the making of public alliances. That means support to the Belgian schoolprincipal who announces a hijab ban for young pupils, because she notices that the dominance of the practice leads to less freedom and the departure of those who disagree. It also means support for the female police officer who is proud, independent, and veiled.
In the end, my solidarity as a progressive politician isn’t with believers or non-believers. It is with the 13-year-old girl living near me. Whichever choices she may make in her life – whether she chooses to be a convinced and maybe veiled muslim, or chooses the abandon her faith, or chooses a different path between the extremes -, it doesn’t matter. As long as she makes those choices in freedom. As long as society offers her opportunities and alternatives.
If her parents force her to stay at home, and not to pursue a career, they can expect harsh criticism from me. If Geert Wilders c.s. want to forbid her to believe, to forbid her to wear the hijab, my criticism will be equally harsh.
Thank you.
