"Tartuffe" is a social comedy of the kind for which Moliere was famous. Tartuffe is a religious hypocrite and imposter, who almost cheats a frien's family out of their home. In fact, the play was really a damning critique of the Catholic Church. Moliere initially won Louis the IV's permission to perform it, but the Church soon had it banned.

Hypocrisy is, of course, when stated beliefs don't match action, and there's such an abundance of it these days that I'm never short of material for my columns! In fact, if anything is globalised, besides fear and ignorance, it's hypocrisy.

Like when a nation calls itself Œdemocratic', but wants to take away people¹s religious freedom - that¹s hypocritical, right? No, this time I'm not talking about Indonesia (for once!) but about supposedly Œmature' democratic developed countries, like France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. That's right, all are countries that want to ban symbols of Islam like minarets or the burqa.

The reason? Basically it's fear and ignorance, in this case anxieties about supposed Œcreeping Islamization'. The UK and Denmark have even formed a political interest group called ³Stop the Islamization of Europe' (SIOE). SIOE is a nativist, right-wing group that describes itself as an alliance "with the single aim of preventing Islam becoming a dominant political force in Europe".

Islam a dominant political force? Excuse me? With Islam a mere three percent of the population in Denmark, and even less in the UK, is that remotely likely?

I lived in London between 1976-79, and what's happening now is reminiscent of Conservative MP Enoch Powell's notorious "rivers of blood" speech in 1968 (Wikipedia Rivers of Blood Speech), opposing Œcoloured immigration', primarily from India and Pakistan. His rabble-rousing speech was condemned even by leading Conservatives as racist, and Powell was sacked. But the fact that the white supremacist British National Party (BNP) won two seats in the European Parliament in June 2009 shows that his views are still alive in Britain.

Belgium recently imposed a burqa ban (Online WSJ ). It is home to 600.000 Muslims - about three percent of the population - and the number of women wearing burqas is about three dozen. As a percentage of the Muslim population the dreaded burqa-wearers were therefore 0.00006%, and of the total population of Belgium, they were S 0.000003%! Talk about overkill.

In Switzerland, the controversial minaret ban was passed after a referendum in November 2009. It was a reaction to rapid increases in immigration since 1980 that jacked up the percentage of Muslims in 2010 to S (wait for it) S 4.3%. Clearly, the numbers don't match the intensity of the panicky reaction. Even Claire Berlinski, a self-professed alarmist about European Islamization, admitted she could not find a good legal, political, or moral argument for the ban (City Journal ).

In Holland and France, the percentages are bigger: 5.7% and 6% respectively. In France, burqa-wearing women number 1900 out of a total Muslim population of six million: 0.0003% of Muslims and 0.00003% of the entire French population. Huuuge threat, huh?

MP Geert Wilders, the ultra-right wing leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), thinks so, even though Muslims are a smaller community in his country. He not only campaigned for 1000 Euro excise tax on burqas in The Netherlands, but also for banning the Quran, which he says is Fascist, like Hitler's Mein Kampf. And he's not Fascist? Even though he wants to halt all Muslim immigration to The Netherlands, and to pay settled immigrants to leave? Does he hate Muslims? Oh no, no, ejust Islam', he says. I think there's a serious logic problem there, but one Tartuffe would appreciate.

So what's behind this widespread Islamophia in western Europe, where people who pride themselves on being tolerant, reasonable and supportive of human rights are able to hold such racist and discriminatory views for such irrational reasons? According to Karen Armstrong, a British former nun famous for her excellent books on religions, including Islam, Al Qaeda's September 11th attacks " confirmed a view of Islam that is centuries-old, that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant of others". Her point is that just because a small minority of Muslims use their religion to justify violence, doesn't mean all Muslims are like that, in the same way that fundamentalist Christians don't represent all Christians, or their religion for that matter.

According to Karen Armstrong, anti-Islamic attitudes are a deep-seated Western ethos that was formulated during the Crusades (11th - 13th Centuries), a time when the Western world was redefining itself. One of the best ways to create an identity is to define yourself in contradistinction to an enemy.

Muslim empires were among the greatest world powers then, and remained so for centuries. And they ruled the Holy Lands of Christianity (also for Islam and Judaism, but don't mind that). They thus became targets for violent attack. "Islam was everything that the West thought it was not, and it was at the time of the Crusades that the idea that Islam was essentially a violent religion took hold in the West S Europe was projecting anxiety about its own behaviour onto Islam," Armstrong says.

This anxiety-projecting behaviour continues, and like the Crusades, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By invading Muslim lands in medieval times violent conflict was created. If Europeans now attack the symbols of Muslim belief like the burqa and the minaret, this will push even moderates into the camp of the hardliners, who do practice violence: the best way to make unfounded fears real is to act on them.

So maybe my friend the director of the Goethe Haus should invite his compatriots from the free, democratic EU countries to see Tartuffe, instead of showing it here in Jakarta. But if they're so blind to their own insecurities, why would they be able to see their own hypocrisy?