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THE POLITICS OF TOLERANCE

this respect, the Netherlands bears particular comparison with Scandinavian countries.
The anthropologist Unni Wikan has recently published a passionate critique of Norwe-
gian policies toward immigrants in a book with the telling titleGenerous Betrayal: Politics
of Culture in the New Europe.^6 Her main argument is that excessive respect for the ‘‘cul-
ture’’ of immigrants has subverted human rights, especially for women and children. A
subsidiary argument is that the welfare society has segregated immigrants into an under-
class. Much of this discussion is immediately recognizable in the Dutch case. It is now
generally accepted in Dutch public opinion that the 1980s and 1990s suffered from an
excessive ‘‘political correctness’’ that has made an open discussion of immigrant criminal-
ity or practices such as clitoridectomy among Somalian women impossible. The public
attacks on immigrant culture, and especially Islam, by Theo van Gogh are thus accounted
for as a backlash against the political correctness of the past.
While Wikan provides an interesting analysis of how the culture of immigrants is
reified in Norway and of the effects of such reification on the production of ethnic en-
claves, she gives us hardly any critical analysis of Norwegian culture, which is essentialized
as one of humanitarian values of equality and human rights. In such an analysis, minori-
ties tend to have cultures that can be deconstructed, while majorities have cultures that
are taken for granted. The historical development of Norwegian egalitarianism and secu-
larism and their precise natures are not taken into account at all.
In a recent work, the social philosopher Nancy Fraser has highlighted the complica-
tions of an ethos of equality confronted with multiculturalism.^7 In a discussion of notions
of redistribution and recognition in contemporary philosophy, she argues that these two
notions should be seen in connection if one wants to enhance justice in the age of identity
politics. This would be an appropriate response to Wikan’s argument, but, like Wikan,
Fraser does not question the basic assumptions of liberalism. The key term in Fraser’s
discussion isparity, according to which justice requires social arrangements that permit
all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. While she wants to
create a space for the recognition of difference, this can be done only within a secularist
perspective, as is made clear by her discussion of the debate over headscarves in France.
According to Fraser, those who protest the prohibition of the headscarf in state schools
must show, first, that the ban denies educational parity to Muslim girls and, second, that
permitting the scarf would not exacerbate female subordination. The ban on headscarves
would be unjust if Christian crosses and Jewish yarmulkes were allowed in school. For
Fraser, then, the issue is whether the school treats everyone equally and is, in this case,
sufficiently laic, secular. But if we recognize Islam as a tradition different from the liberal
tradition, and Muslims as a community informed by that tradition in their engagement
with modern conditions, it is clear that Fraser’s notion of parity is irrelevant to many
Muslims. For them (as for some Jewish and Christian groups), the issue may be that
because hair has sexual potency, covering it is a sign of female modesty and, as such, a
disciplining of the body that is central to being a devout Muslim woman. As in every

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