After a rather long time, I visited my MA supervisor and former tutor, Professor John Keane to discuss a couple of issues. Apart from the usual talks about my dissertation which had apparently been very interesting for the markers, we had a thought provoking discussion about the patterns of civil society and the integration of immigrants in countries such as the Netherlands, where they recently witnessed the murder of Theo van Gogh. The interesting point is that an extremist politician like Pim Fortuyn took advantage of the rhetoric of civil society in an attempt to marginalize and isolate the immigrants. The irony is that they call this society a civil society in which one naturally expects a level of toleration to allow pluralism within the society and yet they are undermining the foundations of it. The amazing point here is that the murderer of Pim Fortuyn is not labeled as a terrorist and later on the murderer of van Gogh who was a close friend of Fortuyn is called a terrorist and even worse than that Islam itself is take hostage in retaliation of his murder!
It is an undeniable fact that Islam consists of an array of various opinions which reflects a dynamic plurality in its texture. Thus, it is both unwise and unrealistic to see Isalm as a monolith of a single view on society, culture and politics. Despite the numerous attempts of many scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, around the world to bring this issue on board in the public knowledge, there is clearly an inclination to depict an image of terror, darkness and obscurantism in Islam. I had earlier written about this imbalance and unfair approach to issues of the society in my Persian weblog. However, it seems that there is very little interest among Iranians outside Iran and even inside Iran to realize the fact that this situation is not in the interest of anyone. The ultimate point of these generalizations would be to abandon any cultural and traditional bonds we have to our historical backgrounds. The same, of course, would occur in the Western context. This path would lead us to nothing but the very denial of democracy and civil society. Recent experiences of the democratic world in the Dutch case very clearly shows how a civil society may easily crumble from within and collapse. Democracies are fragile and the Dutch case is a very good attestation to this fact. Such enthusiastic and vehement attacks on the rights of immigrants shake the foundations of a multi-cultural society. The stability of a civil society depends to a great extent on the wisdom to avoid the outbreak of these contingent violations of the very tenets of civil society. Failing to see the pluralism of a society in these contexts leads to an outbreak of brutal violence.