MARKHA G. VALENTAFJ: So that means government intervention. I exaggerate now in the interests of the con-
versation: while appealing to the principles of liberalism, there has never been so much
state intervention propagated as at this moment, with regard to this subject.
RV: Look, as minister, I stick to the Basic Agreement [of the coalition government]. A liberal
vision allows the government to set limits. It’s not just about individual freedom.
FJ: [(Jewish) Amsterdam mayor Job] Cohen says that integration through the mosques is
a good possibility. Then it’s held against him that he’s being naı ̈ve.
RV: If all kinds of things are being said in those mosques that go against our constitutional
rights, then we have to do something about it. But say that the mosque has an open-
house day in order to show that a religion is being preached there, just like any other
religion in the Netherlands, then I think that’s excellent.
FJ: That’s how I think too, gladly. But then you and I are typically Dutch consensus-think-
ers, not used to battle, to polarizing orthodox Muslims—it’s exactly us they want to
challenge.
RV: If it’s really the case—we’re now right on top of all the radical mosques—that things
happen there that don’t fit into our system of norms and values, then you have to
intervene. There are all kinds of possibilities for that. Mosques are sometimes orga-
nized as a foundation. You can dissolve those if you see a reason for doing that.
FJ: It’s struck me that integration is now a matter of judiciary policy, as if it’s a crime, a
question of the public order. There are also countries that consider integration and
[maintaining one’s] own identity a positive value that benefits the country. This is of
course old-fashioned multicultural thought, but I still put it to you.
RV: I don’t find it defensive. We don’t want to write off disadvantagedallochtonen[‘‘for-
eign-born,’’ i.e., minorities of non-Western descent], but to take them by the hand. We
want to teach them about our norms and values. It’s very good that integration is the
task of the Ministry of Justice. Aliens policy plus integration forms a whole.The debate’s dominant terms are those of modernism, secularism, and the European
nation (this nation, that nation, or ‘‘Europe’’ as a whole), concepts equated and ex-
changed regularly and unself-consciously with those of democracy and tolerance. So natu-
ralized is this equation that its politics—the ways in which it enables very particular
relations and authorizations of power processes—all too often remain invisible. In other
words, we have forgotten both their contingency and their historicity. Indeed, the margin-
alization of other voices in debates concerning Islam and the veil results not only from
the persistent vigor of Eurocentrism but—at the very same time and in the same place—
from the fact that the object of the West’s discussion is not only the veil or Islam but,
simultaneously, the West’s own current crisis of identity and historical destiny. The im-
mense energy and affect invested by Western Europeans in discussions of the veil can be
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