Geneva
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the Protestant reformer. The occasion will be celebrated with enthusiasm here in his adopted home of Geneva, which calls itself "Calvin's city" to this day, and where municipal monuments identify it as "the city of refuge." It was the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and welcomed him back at one point in his turbulent life.
Calvin's life and works are debated among Christians, since his influence produced repression in Geneva for no less than criticism of established religion. But the Genevois seem united in their affection for him, and hold him out as a model for others. A special issue of L'Hebdo, a local weekly, titled "A Man Named Calvin" and sold as a souvenir of the quincentenary, includes an introductory comment by its editor, Isabelle Falconnier: "To combat one's enemies is one thing--it is another to rise up against one's peers. There is no greater courage. When 1,500 Catholics march in Central Switzerland to protest against a decision of the Pope, that is what we see." The latter comment referred to a March 2009 demonstration in Lucerne against the papal rehabilitation of four traditionalists, including a Holocaust denier. Falconnier continued, "When Muslims raise their voices against Islamist extremists, the same courage is present."
Fine words, but at the Durban Review conference held in Geneva in April, sympathy for anti-radical Muslims was absent. This outcome was by no means predetermined. Geneva is infamous in moderate Muslim circles as the home of Hani Ramadan, brother of the Islamist "rock star" academic Tariq Ramadan. Hani Ramadan came forward in 2002 with an article in the Paris daily Le Monde defending the stoning of adulterous women. In the uproar produced by that indiscreet exercise, Hani Ramadan lost his job as an imam at a Geneva mosque as well as a post teaching in a Swiss high school.
But the United Nations, not the Genevan authorities, controls what goes on inside the Palais des Nations, where the Durban Review conference was held. The "U.N. state" on Geneva's territory is reminiscent of any totalitarian dictatorship, with its armed police, denial of credentials to and expulsions from the proceedings without appeal, and general atmosphere of conformist opinion. In the Palais des Nations, "the public" is defined not as ordinary people to whom the doors are open, but as members of accredited non-governmental organizations providing an audience while the heads of U.N. member governments deliver their opinions.
And on U.N. territory, fanatical support for Islamist ideology, hatred, and totalitarianism trumped Geneva's traditions. While the world watched, the Durban Review was dominated by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, railing against Israel, as one component in a pseudo-historical lecture that should have been embarrassing to the people of his country, which has a high level of education and, in the past, held unparalleled standing as an Islamic civilization. According to the Tehran demagogue, by "exploiting the holocaust and . . . the pretext of protecting the Jews" powerful countries made the Palestinians homeless victims of "a completely racist government . . . the most aggressive, racist country."
Ahmadinejad's hateful outbursts were accompanied by his polemics against suppression of dissent in medieval Europe and in condemnation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, without mention that both slavery and repression of opinion were as prevalent in the Islamic world as in the West. The Iranian leader seemed incapable of reflection on the way in which, while justifying hatred and prejudice, he claimed to oppose "racism, discrimination, aggression, and tyranny"--four words that neatly sum up the history of the Iranian clerical regime.
Some countries boycotted the Durban Review conference altogether--Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States. Ahmadinejad's ramblings also caused a temporary departure from the hall by delegates from Austria, Britain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden--but most of them walked back in when the Persian fireworks had ended.
