The Failure Of Dutch "Multiculturalism"...

[Hehe, I bet Sjoerd doesn't *dare* respond to this post...]

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.ph...ews/dutch.html


For Dutch, anger battles with tolerance

By Craig S. Smith The New York Times

Thursday, November 11, 2004


"AMSTERDAM Anger toward the Netherlands' Muslim community percolated among
the crowd that gathered outside the funeral for the Dutch filmmaker Theo van
Gogh, who was killed by an Islamic extremist a week ago.

The public debate over how conservative Islam fits into Europe's most
tolerant, liberal society had already become a no-holds-barred affair before
the killing of van Gogh, who had publicly and repeatedly used epithets
against Muslims. But his killing has now polarized the country, giving the
rest of Europe a disturbing glimpse of what may be in store if relations
with the continent's growing immigrant communities are not managed more
adeptly.

The anger is such that for the second time in two days an Islamic elementary
school was attacked Tuesday, this time in Uden, part of what Dutch
authorities fear are reprisals after van Gogh's killing. The authorities
said that Muslim sites had been the targets of a half-dozen attacks in the
past week.

In apparent retaliation, arsonists attempted to burn down Protestant
churches in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amersfoort, the police said.

The attacks have scratched the patina of tolerance on which the Dutch have
long prided themselves, particularly here in their principal city, where the
scent of hashish trails in the air, prostitutes beckon from storefront
brothels and Hell's Angels live side by side with Hare Krishnas. But many
Dutch now say that for years that tradition of tolerance suppressed an open
debate about the challenges of integrating conservative Muslims.

Jan Colijn, 46, a bookkeeper from the central Dutch town of Gorinchem who
was at the funeral Tuesday night, complained that the Netherlands' generous
social welfare system had allowed Muslim immigrants to isolate themselves.
Because of that, "there is a kind of Muslim fascism emerging here," he said.
"The government must find a way to break these communities open."

Another man, who declined to give his name, was more succinct: "Now, it's
war."

For many years, such criticism of Islam and Islamic customs, even among
Dutch extremists, was considered taboo, despite deep frustrations that had
built up against conservative Islam in the country.

Many here say that began to change after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks in the United States, when the Netherlands, like many other
countries, began to consider the dangers of political Islam seriously. The
debate fueled an anti-immigration movement and helped propel the career of
the populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered by an environmental
activist shortly before national elections in 2002.

By all accounts in the Netherlands, Fortuyn's murder removed any remaining
brakes on the debate surrounding immigrants.

"After Pim Fortuyn's murder, there were no limitations on what you could
say," said Edwin Bakker, a terrorism expert at the Netherlands Institute of
International Relations. "It has become a climate in which insulting people
is the norm."

He and others said the public discourse, even among members of government,
reached an unprecedented pitch and included language that went far beyond
the limits set for public forums in the United States.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of Parliament and one of a handful of politicians
threatened with death by Islamic extremists, publicly called the prophet
Muhammad a "pervert" and a "tyrant." She made a film with van Gogh
condemning sexual abuse among Muslim women, who were portrayed with Koranic
verses written on their bare skin.

Van Gogh himself was one of the most outspoken critics of fundamentalist
Muslims and favored an epithet for conservative Muslims that referred to
bestiality with a goat. He used the term often in his public statements,
including a column he wrote for a widely read free newspaper and during
radio broadcasts and television appearances.

The cumulative effect made van Gogh, a distant relation of the painter
Vincent van Gogh, a kind of cult clown on one side of the debate, and a
reviled hatemonger on the other.

The debate became so caustic that the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD,
issued a report in March warning that the unrestrained language could
encourage radicalization of the country's Muslim youth and drive individuals
into the arms of terrorist recruiters. The agency has warned repeatedly in
recent years that such recruiters are active in the Netherlands and
elsewhere in Europe.

While only about 20 percent of the Netherlands' estimated 900,000 Muslims
practice their religion, according to one government study, officials say as
many as 5 percent of Muslims in the country follow a conservative form of
Islam. Most are from the Netherlands' Moroccan community, which has its
roots in the Rif, an impoverished, mountainous Berber region in the north.

There are about 300,000 people of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands today,
and the intensified anti-immigration debate has alienated many of them from
Dutch society and, many people argue, has also helped fragment the Muslim
community.

Jean Tillie, a professor of political science at the University of
Amsterdam, says that the debate has broken down a network that connected
even the most extremist Muslim groups to the more moderate voices within the
Muslim community. He cited an Amsterdam government advisory board that
brought together all kinds of Moroccans and fostered communication and
cohesion within the Muslim community.

"Those groups participating didn't agree with each other, but they met
together with the collective mission of advising the city government," he
said.

The board was abolished a year ago, he says. He claims that funds for other
ethnic organizations have shrunk and outreach policies have also been
abandoned.

At El Tawheed mosque, considered by many people to be the epicenter of
extremism in Amsterdam, Farid Zaari, the mosque's spokesman, argues that
pressure from the debate has hindered the Muslim community's ability to
control its radical youth.

"If we bring these people into the mosque, it is possible to change their
thoughts, but few mosques dare to because if you do, you're branded," he
said.

Dutch media reports insist that van Gogh's killer attended the mosque, and
though Zaari says the mosque has no record of his ever being there, he said
that political leaders and the media should encourage the mosque to reach
out to the community's radical youth, rather than stigmatizing it for doing
so.

The mosque was previously associated with a Saudi-based charity, Al
Haramain, which American and Saudi Arabian officials accused earlier this
year of aiding Islamic terrorists. The mosque has since severed its ties
with the charity, but more recently it has been criticized for selling books
espousing extremist views, including female circumcision and the punishment
of homosexuals by throwing them off tall buildings.

Several legislators have called for the mosque to be shut down, but under
the Dutch constitution it is difficult to do.

Zaari admits that the Muslim community was slow to respond to the fears
within Dutch society. "We didn't feel it was our responsibility to bridge
the gap, but now, with the murder, the gap has gotten wider," he said. "All
of us want to begin a dialogue now, but the language of the political right
is too extreme, and that's preventing discussion," he said. "We all have to
cool down and be careful what we say."

The problem is how to bridge a gap that has yawned dangerously since van
Gogh's murder.

The Amsterdam Council of Churches published paid notices in some Dutch
newspapers pledging solidarity with the Muslim community. But the
government's response has been to promise more money for fighting terrorism
and stronger immigration laws.

"Islam is the most hated word in the country at this point," said Bakker,
the terrorism expert."

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