A Wiser Holland
The Dutch, mugged by reality, toughen up on radical Islam
THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Before the assassination of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, the Dutch were
apt to give you the impression that they had cracked the secret of life and
knew without doubt how it ought to be lived. They viewed other, less
enlightened societies - which meant all the rest - with a kind of complacent
pity, tempered by the certainty that eventually even the most benighted of
them would follow where the Netherlands led.
All that has changed. Whatever other effects the two murders have had, they
have rendered the Dutch and their society much more interesting than when
Holland was merely the land that permitted everything. The era of
complacency is over; that of anxiety and doubt has well and truly begun.
For the first time in several decades, liberal consensus is not enough; real
thought has become necessary in Holland. In the not-distant past, Holland's
less-than-glorious performance during its occupation of the Dutch East
Indies (now Indonesia) - and its violent attempt to reestablish its power
there after the Second World War was over - acted as a reproach to any Dutch
conservatism or sense of national pride. But far from remaining a liberal
paradise in which it is heresy to question the tenets of multiculturalism,
Holland has become a country in which fear of inter-ethnic and religious
strife is never far from the surface.
Several questions now haunt the country. Was its previous tolerance mere
indifference, blindness, or, even worse, cowardice? How tolerant ought it to
be towards those who want to destroy the institutional basis of the
tolerance that they themselves have enjoyed but think mere weakness and
decadence? Are there incompatible cultures, and if so was it wise to have
encouraged mass immigration from a deeply alien land merely to ease a
temporary labor shortage? In short, will the Netherlands reap the whirlwind
it has sown?
These questions are uppermost in all Dutchmen's minds, and provoke furious
debates over small matters that quickly become emblematic. Salomon Kalou, a
gifted soccer player from the Ivory Coast who plays for the famous Dutch
club Feyenoord, applied for immediate Dutch citizenship in the hope of being
included in the Dutch national team for the World Cup championships to take
place later this year in Germany. The minister of immigration, Rita
Verdonk,who has presided over a toughening stance towards immigrants and
asylum-seekers, has steadfastly opposed granting him citizenship, arguing
that Kalou should fulfill the conditions laid down for everyone else,
including a five-year residence. This has led to howls of protest from
liberals, hitherto used to having everything their way.
Events in Holland are now - for the first time in many years - of interest
to its neighbors and near-neighbors, many of whose problems with immigration
and multiculturalism are similar. Le Monde, the French liberal-left
newspaper, reported the Kalou affair, in the process calling Rita Verdonk
the most hated politician in Holland: which, translated from Le Monde-speak,
means that she is by far the most popular politician in the country.
According to polls, three-quarters of the Dutch population support her
refusal to grant Kalou citizenship merely because he is good at kicking a
ball about
: They recognize that there is something more at stake than the
results of a soccer tournament.
The fact is that Dutch citizenship has hitherto been insouciantly and
indiscriminately granted to people to whom it means little other than a meal
ticket. There was open, public rejoicing in some of the Muslim-inhabited
areas of Holland immediately after the events of September 11, 2001, by
large numbers of people who were on social security. The murderer of Theo
van Gogh, Mohammed Bouyeri, did not recognize the legitimacy of the law
under which he was tried for murder, but, with the grotesque and mercenary
hypocrisy typical of Islamic fundamentalism, he did condescend to recognize
the legitimacy of the law that had granted him three years' unemployment
benefits before he committed the murder.
The disdain that Bouyeri showed towards everything Dutch was not unique to
him. A young man of Moroccan origin living in Holland named Samir Azzouz has
been arrested several times on suspicion of being a terrorist (he is still
only 19). Plans of the Dutch parliament building, Schiphol Airport, and a
nuclear power station were found in his apartment after he was arrested
during an armed robbery, as well as night-vision spectacles and bomb-making
equipment, but this was all deemed by the judges to be of insufficient
probative value, especially as the fertilizer he had in his apartment was of
the wrong type to detonate a bomb, so he was acquitted on appeal. Who can
blame the Dutch if they feel that the law is failing to protect them?
One thing Azzouz can't be accused of is of hiding his disdain for Holland,
its government, and its legal system. In his most recent court appearance,
Azzouz said, "We reject you, we reject your system, we hate you." As Dickens
would have put it, you can't say fairer than that. Azzouz was defended by a
German lawyer long resident in Holland, Britta Böhler, who also defended the
murderer of Pim Fortuyn and the Kurdish Pol-Potist Abdullah Ocalan, and who
has made no secret of her sympathy for the erstwhile German terrorists of
the Red Army Faction. It is hardly surprising if ordinary Dutch people
conclude that the rule of law is actually the impunity of terror.
As if this were not enough, there is plenty of evidence that the famed Dutch
tolerance is indistinguishable from cowardice, both moral and physical. It
is widely known that teachers in Holland are reluctant to teach the history
of the Second World War in high schools in areas where there are large
numbers of pupils of Moroccan origin, because these pupils will argue either
that the Holocaust never took place or that, if it did, it can be reproached
only for not finishing the job. Scared of physical attack, the teachers
avoid the subject on the pretext of keeping the peace.
In February 2005, two students at a school attended by many pupils of
Moroccan origin were advised by the director of the school to "consider
urgently" the question of whether the little Dutch flags that they had sewn
onto their school bags were sufficiently sensitive to the feelings of their
fellow pupils, or whether they represented a provocation. In other words,
the director took for granted that the children of Moroccan origin were
profoundly and irredeemably anti-Dutch; he wanted to avoid the violence that
he supposed any manifestation of patriotism would inevitably cause.
But pusillanimity and self-loathing have not altogether won the day, and
there are signs of a healthy reaction. I had the extraordinary experience
recently of finding my ideas about multiculturalism, criminality, and the
underclass taken more seriously in Holland than in Britain. I was invited to
give a talk in Rita Verdonk's ministry, and found a highly intelligent,
receptive, and appreciative, if questioning, audience of civil servants -
far better and more open-minded than any audience I have ever had in
Britain.
In Holland, for example, unlike in Britain, the reality of forced marriages
among the Muslims has already been officially recognized, and the Dutch
government has tried to do something about it. (Those who argue that such
marriages are culturally rather than religiously sanctioned ignore the fact
that they occur from Morocco to Somalia and from Somalia to Bangladesh,
whose principal characteristic in common is adherence to Islam.) The law now
confers upon Dutch citizens no right to bring into the country spouses they
have married abroad, thus recognizing the non-voluntary nature of many of
these marriages.
Of course, there are limits, as yet, to the determination of the Dutch to
deal with the threat posed by Islamification. For reasons having to do with
a residual belief in non-discrimination, the law on marriage applies to all
marriages contracted outside of Holland, as if a marriage to a white
Canadian from Toronto could possibly have the same sinister social meaning
as a marriage to a Moroccan villager. Besides, the failure of other European
countries to adopt the Dutch approach, and the recognition of marriages
contracted in other member countries of the European Union, leaves a large
loophole in the law that will soon be exploited.
Nevertheless, subjects that were taboo in Holland only a few years ago are
now openly discussed, often very realistically, by Dutch intellectuals and
politicians. Formerly among the most complacent people in Europe, the Dutch
are now some of the most fearlessly self-examining (along with the Danes).
It is as if they had woken from a beautiful and beguiling daydream and
plunged straight into a cold bath of reality. There is resistance, of
course, to the new realism. You do not get rid of the intellectual habits of
generations overnight. But I never thought there was the remotest
possibility that Holland might in the end show more backbone than any other
country in Europe. Now it is distinctly possible.
--
Pete
A Wiser Holland 
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