THE POLITICS OF TOLERANCEway of life. The government has recently proposed exams for prospective citizens that use
pictures of topless women and gay marriages to determine whether the applicants are
comfortable with the ‘‘Dutch way of life.’’ While much of public debate is focused on the
integration of Muslims into Dutch society, few Dutch would declare openly that they
consider Muslim views of sexuality to be a rejection of integration. Sexuality is subsumed
under the rubric of female liberation, and feminists have led the attacks on Muslims in
the Netherlands. One leading feminist in the Netherlands recently declared that she would
not allow a woman with a headscarf to become a member of the editorial board of a
feminist magazine. In response, it was pointed out that immigrant women with head-
scarves surely cleaned the offices of that magazine. This fine observation of the relation
between class, gender, and race was only marginally taken up in the Dutch debate. The
relation between Islam and homosexuality has also received public attention: quotes from
the Koran about the punishment of unnatural sex, as well as statements by Moroccan
imams about homosexuality, are taken as a sign of the backwardness of Islam and the
need for Muslims to catch up with the times. This is seen as related to similar condemna-
tions of homosexuality found in the Bible and articulated by conservative Christian
preachers. In short, the Dutch feel that they have just recently freed themselves from
Christian conservatism, only to be confronted by Islamic injunctions. Precisely this fueled
Pim Fortuyn, but with a twist. He declared that he liked fucking young Moroccan boys
but did not want to be restrained by backward imams. This pointedly recalled homosexual
desires and Orientalist fantasies about Morocco that had been part of the Dutch imagina-
tion for a century. Something here goes beyond the public discussion of the position of
women and homosexuals, and this is the contradictory politics of desire.
Liberated Muslim immigrants, especially the Somalian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, play a special
role in the debate about liberty and Islam. According to her own account, Hirsi Ali fled
Somalia when her father wanted to arrange a marriage for her. She received asylum in the
Netherlands and studied political science, after which she worked for a think tank of the
Labor Party and became involved in fighting the abuse of women in the Muslim commu-
nity. Her work focused on the issue of clitoridectomy, which is prevalent among Soma-
lians but not among the vast majority of Muslim women in the Netherlands, who are of
Turkish and Moroccan descent. Hirsi Ali’s struggle for the liberation of Muslim women
was felt to be authentic by Dutch feminists in all parties and politically correct, since
she belonged to the attacked community. In the Liberal Party, she was nominated to a
parliamentary seat with the objective of making anti-Islamic, pro-women issues a major
plank in election campaigns. In this sense, her emancipatory campaign was directed pri-
marily toward gaining votes from the majority community rather than transforming the
Muslim community. The subaltern can speak, but in order to be heard she has to express
the feelings of the dominant community. Refugees from Islamic countries, such as Soma-
lia and Iran, have gained special prominence in the attack on Islam, since they can mani-
fest authenticity. They tend to be more strident in their tone either because of personal
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