Secularist Nativism: National Identity and the Religious Other in the Netherlands

Abstract

The intensity and political influence of anti-Islamic discourses in Europe have increased the urgency to understand how they operate. Although religion and secularism play an important role in such discourses, they should be understood as components of the underlying, primary concern: the nation’s cultural identity. To account for these relational self-other antagonisms, this chapter employs the notion of what we call secularist nativism: an intense opposition to an internal minority that is seen as a threat to the ‘secular’ nation on the ground of its foreignness. This European phenomenon is illustrated by examples from the Dutch public debate where nativism is rampant. The first section illuminates secularist nativism’s main self-images. Secularist nativism regards progressive gender and sexuality as the defining essence of the secular nation. It also defines the nation in terms of what we call ‘Cultural Christianity’, which functions not as a religious but rather as a cultural marker of the secular nation. The production and effectiveness of these self-images strongly rely on ideas about the nation’s past. In the second section, we analyse four historicizing narratives each invoking different historical trajectories of the nation’s development. The final section deals with the effects of the nativist logic in terms of the solutions proposed by nativist politicians: cultural assimilation and geographical displacement of the Muslim minority.