I clicked on the Discussion site to give a big thank you to Rosemary Bechler for this interview, and to Abou Jahjah for speaking at such length with her - a testament to openDemocracy's reputation for fairness. I am no expert, but I haven't seen anything like this interview elsewhere. To the first writer here, I would suggest you take a step back and think what this approach by Abou Jahjah means. The entire history of democracy has been created by people who were excluded in one way or another getting together to argue and push their way in. A great deal of that pushing was hugely violent - in the Anglo/American tradition think of the English and US Civil Wars, the American revolution. A great deal of it was successful in large part because of the threat of violence: the street demonstrations of the Chartists that led to advances like the secret ballot and wdiening the list of people allowed to vote, the threat of revolution in the Depression that spurred FDR to pass the New Deal, etc. And much was more a question of making mass organizations, breaking the law when necessary (e.g. the first trade unions were illegal), but mostly showing that this group had muscle: e.g. the religious groups who were excluded from the vote and from various civil rights, and who one by one got those rights - in England, the Christians who were not Church of England, and then Jews; or the struggle for women's right to vote, own property etc. The whole breadth and quality of modern democracy has been created by these groups. Abou Jajah's group appears to be centrally in this tradition. He combines argument with mass organization. One of his best lines is "you cannot be liberated - you liberate yourself." This is true for every major group that has come to political equality. Abou Jahjah's determination to stay within the law is firmly stated, along with the warning that this may not hold true if the state abuses its powers against his group - that could have been said by any number of democrats in history who were starting their struggle towards their fair share in the political universe. So he is highly critical of Europe - that's his right, (you should read what other groups at the bottom of European society have said about it in the past - Abou Jahjah is mild by comparison) and one of his best points is that his people can give to Europe a little sense of other people's perspectives. At the same time, he was clearly struggling for democracy in the Arab world as well. In his organization, there is a lot of diversity - he is not one of those people he calls extremists and are often called fundamentalists who criticise democracy itself, and want a theocracy - those are the dangerous people. I'd better stop before I write a column's worth of opinons! But I was happy to see that my own rejection of the French anti-headscarf law as expressed in a column here (at www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-5-1707.jsp) was rejected by Abou Jahjah for the same reasons. I have seen so much defence of that law by liberals I was beginning to think I was in a very small minority about it.

Julien's comments are so interesting - they make me wonder if people who have experience of identity politics don't have more in common - despite everything we might imagine that divides them - than more traditional allies - for example, the people living in white ghetto estates in Belgium who see nothing in common at all with their Moroccan neighbours... But really I just want to thank you for telling us about your experience of living in Antwerp and rising to Dyab Abou Jahjah's challenge.

... Abou Jahjah is > promoting yet more regressive nationalism in a > society already (by his own vivid descriptions) > riddled with it. This can only encourage people to > continue to focus on the arbritary, relatively > trivial cultural differences between them rather than > the much greater body of commonality that exists. > > Paul, I generally agree with you not relating to AJ's philosophy. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that - (minus) and - (minus) don't make a + (plus). Nationalism and anti-Nationalist Exclusivism (is this even possible? And maybe that's your point, that it isn't!) don't make for tolerance when taken together. I don't relate to AJ's position either, that is to say his political message, but that is not foremostly because I am a multiculturalist, but because I am not Arab. At least, that is the way I have decided to approach him (nb: I have taken the interview at face value; I have checked him out on the web and spoken to friends in Belgium, and after getting contradictory views I think it best for the purposes of this post to stick to the interview, although please tell me if you have found other interesting material, I am all ears!). The reason I approach him from that angle is because of what I alluded to in my post above as "the Flemish Connection". Notwithstanding the feeble pun on the gangster film with the great chase sequence, which is the first thing that came to mind at the time, it remains imperative to me to single out Flanders, and particularly Antwerp (as has been done on this site in an article in May) as a hotbed of old-style fascism and racist hullabaloo. One response to this Flemish-disease (ah, new pun!) would be to denounce both the Vlaams Blok and AJ, ie not to use AJ as a relative cushion against the VB. This is certainly defensible from a multiculturalist perspective and one which I would emphatically endorse. However, because of the specific pervasiveness of xenophobia in Antwerp, I would not slam the door in the face of those who feel isolated to the point of not trusting the mainstream political parties to take up the cause of multiculturalism. And that is the point! The fact that the SP (Socialists), VLD (LibDems) and the CVP (Christian-Democrats), as well as other smaller parties such as Groen! (Greens) and VU ("Flemish Union", not even sure they exist anymore!) have been unable to combat the VB in Antwerp, makes it understandable to the point of necessary that alternative voices speak out. Voices that will be in no doubt that the VB has no place in Flanders! However, the VB has now unfortunately become part of the political landscape, and yes, mainstream for many... I remember going on marches with school (during schooltime) after the VB made its "great leap" in the elections of 1994 (some would say the great leap happened in the previous election, enfin soit). It seemed at the time that the election was all a great abheration (spelling?), a mistake, a lapse. The fact that the VB is now as everyday as Belgian(!) Fries with hot peanut-butter-sauce (yes, we eat that over there!) makes it more understandable that other parties like AJ's will pop up. Again, it's not as much that I agree with the demands, but I find it necessary, considering the recent political history, that alternative voices rise up. I would of course also back the rise of other identity-kit-political groups if they also helped the debate along. It is possible, I believe, that minority voices which sound exclusivist are ultimately there to move the debate along back towards multiculturalism, and are thus not exclusive or divisive after all (if they ever were to begin with). What do you think? JD > > Message was edited by: Paul Wilson - make it clear > that the comments were aimed at Abou Jahjah not > Julien... > > Thanks for this last bit. Wasn't sure for a minute...

I detected a distinct whiff of misty-eyed wistfulness > in the interviewers tone, and despaired at the > recurring power of powerful political motivators to > seduce commentators into rose-tinted tolerance. If so, I think it might have at least something to do with the nature of this site: OPEN Democracy. Commentators/interviewers here must follow that line I suppose. Sometimes it works, other times it might not. Actually, have a look at the interview of Tariq Ramadan - are there parallels with the interview of AJ? He is of course coming from a different prespective than Jajah so I suppose the outcome, the interview, might appear different to the reader as well. When I read the introduction to Ramadan, which is not the interview but the accompanying short profile, I did get the funny feeling that the interviewer had more than a small crush on her subject. She met him in a "decorous hotel near Victoria" (her words) and goes on to describe him... From the start, I felt in the presence of leadership: but of the style of an exiled prince, a king over the water, a president in exile, an errant soul. This is how the wildly flattering articles in Vanity Fair usually start (or so I am told :-) ). Anyway, made me laugh. > At least the activism seems relatively non-violent > and inclusive - is this an accurate reading from your > perspective? > Yes. But my perspective now comes from the UK. So am unable to give any on-the-ground-accounts. A couple of weeks ago a Jewish student was stabbed in Wilrijk, a suburb of Antwerp. He survived to tell the tale of a group of "Moroccans" (read: Young men of North African origin) that attacked him. When I asked a friend in Belgium for more details, I got the response :"Abhou Jaja's work is obviously bearing fruit". Whether or not he is directly linked to such attacks, and I doubt it, people decide to make certain connections; so on it goes, as you can imagine.