BRUCE BAWER
339
ish flag flew over the entrance to the neighborhood center. (There was
no Dutch flag.) One day I peered inside. A dozen or so men, middle–
aged and older, scowled back at me . I did not go in.
Curious about my new neighbors, I did some reading. I learned that
upwards of 7 percent of the Netherlands' population-and nearly half
of Amsterdam's-was of non-Dutch origin. The Turkish and Moroccan
communities dated back to the 1970s; immigration from Surinam and
the Dutch Antilles had peaked in the 1980s. Most people of non-Dutch
origin were fundamentalist Muslims, and most, even after years or
decades in the Netherlands, remained largely unintegrated. The atti–
tudes of Dutch officialdom, and of the Dutch generally, hadn't helped:
although in America the U.S.-born children of immigrants are American
citizens, in the Netherlands the Dutch-born children of immigrants are
called "second-generation immigrants." (The same is true in Germany,
where even "third-generation immigrants"-and, yes, they do use that
term-aren't automatically entitled to citizenship.)
To an American, such a generation-by-generation perpetuation of
outsider status can only make one think of the enduring social margin–
ality of many American blacks. Yet at least we Americans have been
taught by our bloody history that "separate but equal" is not a viable
democratic option, but a cruel delusion. This lesson, I soon recognized,
had not yet been learned in the Netherlands. Downtown Amsterdam
and the Oud West felt almost like two different worlds. Moving among
the native Dutch, whose public schools teach children to take for
granted the full equality of men and women and to view sexual orien–
tation as a matter of indifference, I felt safe and accepted . Yet many
Muslim youngsters in the Netherlands attend private Islamic academies
(many of which receive subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from
the governments of one or more Islamic countries). These schools rein–
force the Koran-based sexual morality learned at home-one that
allows polygamy (for men), that prescribes severe penalties for female
adulterers and rape victims (though not necessarily for rapists), and that
(in the fundamentalist reading, anyway) demands that homosexuals be
put to death.
If
fundamenta list Muslims in Europe do not carry out
these punishments, it is not because they've advanced beyond such
thinking, but because they don't have the power. Like Christian Recon–
structionists, a small U.S. sect that wishes to make harsh Old Testament
punishments the law of the land, fundamentalist Muslims-whose num–
bers are, of course, many times larger-believe firmly in the implemen–
tation of scriptural penalties.
