...Young Muslims are not however behind when it comes to intolerant positions. Thus, almost half want the cancellation of homosexual marriage and a quarter think that violence against homosexuals is justified. In addition, 21% of young Muslims think the execution of homosexuals is justified in some countries.
As for antisemitism, it is widespread among young Muslims. No less than 45% say they agree with the following stereotypes: “the Jews are dominant” or “the Jews incite war”. The researchers state that “antisemitism seems to be integrating itself progressively into the contemporary identity of young Muslims”.
The researchers note that “the young people of Flanders are not necessarily Flemish. They break down into a mosaic of ethnic groups that maintain a very large mental and social distance between them.”
Of course the moral equivalence here is false. Flemings feeling an antipathy to Muslims is not the moral equivalent of Muslims feeling an antipathy to Jews and gays. Why? Because the first is purely defensive. It amounts to saying that Flanders would be better without Muslims in it, which, based on objective data, it undoubtedly would. The antipathy felt by the Muslims, however, is just one small aspect of the many strands of ugliness they have introduced to that society. It is like making a moral judgement about a fight you see on the street based on how hard the punches thrown by each participant are. Of course that has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of it. Any serious moral judgement about the fight has to be based on who the aggressor is and who is the one defending himself. In the context of Flanders, Muslim prejudice is aggressive, while Fleming hostility to Muslims (which should really be called postjudice since it is a judgement after the fact based on the evidence) is purely defensive.
What’s missing in the conventional moral canons of the world is a sense of place, a sense that people acquire a special moral entitlement to a specific territory by virtue of living there for a long time and building a successful society there. The modern ideology of human rights, with its exaltation of citizenship and birthplace, takes no account of this. For that reason, it is unable to make a distinction between offence and defence and simply lumps them altogether under the rubric of ‘intolerance’.