The new Dutch model?

Living with Islam

The new Dutch model?

Mar 31st 2005 | AMSTERDAM AND THE HAGUE
From The Economist print edition
Source

Increasingly, the Netherlands wonders whether diversity is always desirable

FOR people who see themselves as the front line in an uncertain struggle to defend western civilisation—a struggle, moreover, which has already cost some lives—the cultural warriors of the Netherlands have a surprising spring in their step. “I see developments in the Arab world as very promising,” says Paul Scheffer, a journalist who is one of the leaders of an ideological movement that wants to counter Islamist extremism by putting more emphasis on the rule of law and less on accommodating differences.

Taking his cue from America's political right, he hails the fact that in some Middle Eastern countries ordinary people have challenged old elites and theocracies. In Europe, he reckons, traditional leaders who presume to speak for Muslim immigrants have it too easy, because governments pander to them out of a misplaced respect for cultural diversity.

“The very idea of a multi-cultural society is too conservative, because it denies the fact that the migration changes people,” says Mr Scheffer, a veteran of Amsterdam's bohemian, canalside intelligentsia, a world where the right to be eccentric, and to change, is held dear. He and his friends have been arguing that all would-be citizens of the Netherlands must be presented with a clear message. As the price of living in an open, law-governed society, they should acknowledge the right of others to individual choice, dissent and “apostasy” from the beliefs of their own community.

In some European countries, such language might sound intolerant. But in the Netherlands of 2005, it has entered the political mainstream. Nor are all its advocates of European background. Indeed, its strongest advocate of all, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (see article) has a personal history which, in many people's eyes, gives her a unique authority to speak about the dark side of religious fundamentalism. What she, Mr Scheffer and, in a different way, the maverick politician Geert Wilders—who recently left the centre-right Liberals to form a new, Eurosceptical party—all have in common is a sense, bordering on arrogance, that history is on their side.

From their viewpoint, the events of last November—the killing of a film-maker, Theo van Gogh, followed by a spate of tit-for-tat burnings of schools and places of worship—merely vindicated what they had been saying for years: immigrant communities that refuse to align their values to those of western democracy are a ticking time-bomb. Nor are they shy about voicing opinions on other parts of Europe. Mr Scheffer, for example, thinks Britain made a terrible mistake by allowing policewomen to wear Muslim headscarves, since uniforms are supposed to express the state's neutrality between citizens.

Do these cultural ideologues have good reasons to feel confident, at least with respect to their own country? To some extent, yes. In all parts of the Dutch spectrum, politicians have to take account of a public mood that is deeply fearful of religious extremism and terrorism, and feels that too much stress has been laid on accommodating different values and faiths.

There are long-term reasons for this, and also short-term ones. Take the latter first. Dutch citizens have been horrified not only by the slaying of Van Gogh—the second murder of a critic of Islam in two years—but also by the reports that the alleged killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, was part of a larger cell, consisting of about 15 youngsters, who may have been in touch with some quite sophisticated godfathers of international terror.

Twelve suspected members of this cell, dubbed the Hofstad group by police, went on trial in Rotterdam in February; they were accused of planning more political killings. Most were of Moroccan origin, but they included two Dutch-American converts to Islam. For some Dutch citizens, Mr Bouyeri's life-story provides a sober warning of the complexity of the integration issue. Far from being a victim of exclusion, he did well at school and was active in community affairs. Only after hitting professional and family problems did he fall in with extremists.

Snail's-pace integration

The current wave of alarm over terrorism—heightened this week by a bomb scare in parliament—comes on top of a longer-term Dutch backlash, beginning five years ago, against policies which, as people now see things, threw money at poorly integrated immigrants and hoped their problems would go away. This political impulse helped to fuel the spectacular rise of Pim Fortuyn, a sociologist who denounced Islam's intolerance and was killed by an animal-rights activist in 2002.

Now that everyone deplores the “denial” of social and cultural problems in years past, there has been a spate of well-publicised research into the size and shape of Dutch Islam. Its findings are at once both troubling and reassuring.

In a Muslim community approaching 1m, there are two big groups. About 350,000 originate from Turkey and 300,000 from Morocco, mostly from the poorest parts of those countries. In both groups, young people usually take spouses from the home country—so integration into Dutch society is delayed by a generation or more. Among youths of Moroccan origin, there is a high incidence of petty crime. The Turks, by contrast, tend to form a “society within a society” with their own businesses, legal and otherwise, and strong links with the homeland.

The second generation of Dutch Muslims is less devout than the first, but only a little. A survey found that 37% of second-generation Turks attended a mosque once a week while 47% of their parents did; among Moroccans, the equivalent figures were 32% and 46%. In both groups, about two-thirds said they would not want their daughters to marry a non-Muslim. Generation made little difference to this. Some 29% of those from Turkey and 32% of those from Morocco felt Islam should have some say in politics, but only 2% and 3%, respectively, felt it should have the final say.

Meanwhile the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, has made an estimate that was meant to reassure but may have done the opposite. It said 95% of Dutch Muslims were “moderates”—a figure which suggests that nearly 50,000 are potential militants. In fact, the number of active extremists, liable to commit violence, is estimated at around 200, with a loose support group of 1,200.

In a society that was sure of its values, and determined to protect itself, keeping such a threat at bay should not present an insuperable problem. But despite the self-confidence of the new political right, Dutch society is far from sure of itself. The Netherlands tends to alternate between long periods of stability and phases of dramatic social change. The current mood feels more like the latter, says Geert Mak, a journalist.

There is now a widespread feeling that the country's social problems have been exacerbated by policies that made it easier to live on welfare than to work. In some urban areas, until very recently, well over half the men of Moroccan origin over the age of 40 were living on social security and had little expectation of working.

Tolerant in Amsterdam

The government has now made it harder for people to refuse jobs that they are capable of doing, and still receive unemployment benefits. But for all their self-confidence, advocates of “tough love” for immigrants are exaggerating if they claim to have the field to themselves. For one thing, one big institution still believes strongly that public money is well spent on bringing together people of different faiths and races: the city of Amsterdam.

Like every Dutch advocate of what some would call touchy-feely policies, the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, is a little defensive these days. But he still argues that learning to live with immigrant cultures, including Islam, is a challenge for hosts and newcomers alike. “Both sides must take steps” to understand one another, he insists, if only for the “purely selfish reasons that society cannot function” otherwise. Such talk might sound reactionary in the municipal politics of, say, London; but in the Netherlands, it identifies the speaker as a bleeding heart.

The mayor insists that not everything done in the 1990s was wrong. Despite differences of culture and religion, he points out, two-thirds of immigrants are now doing well. He takes satisfaction from the fact that Amsterdam was spared last November's spate of Christian-Muslim violence and arson, believing that the city's spending on race relations helped. But he worries that “integration cannot be achieved overnight” and that the process may take another generation.

Government officials insist that the centre-right coalition is not indifferent to the welfare of immigrants, Muslim or otherwise. During the Dutch presidency of the European Union, in the second half of last year, the government made a huge effort to affirm the idea that policing migration and promoting “integration”—including the problems posed by culture and religion—were inseparable policies which EU states must tackle jointly.

Only days after the killing of Van Gogh, the Dutch government convened the first EU-wide meeting of “integration” ministers and won assent for “common basic principles”—including the idea that helping migrants to adapt is a task for receiving countries and new arrivals alike. Given the climate in the Netherlands at the time, that was not uncontroversial. Back at home, the government has launched a very Dutch-sounding “broad initiative for social cohesion” in which NGOs and religious groups will be urged, and helped, to find ways of improving race relations.

Tackling the extremists

But that is not the main concern of many Dutch citizens. They are more interested in recent government moves to crack down on extremism by expelling militant imams and insisting that, in the near future, all imams must be Dutch-educated. Dutch universities have been offered subsidies to open theological departments to train Muslim prayer-leaders. The education ministry has also announced that any new schools will be expected, as a condition of opening, to prove that they intend to transmit the values of Dutch society to their pupils. Although this makes no explicit reference to Islam, it is clearly aimed at Muslim schools.

As the government is surely aware, some strange noises have been coming from a country known for pragmatism and tolerance. The head of the Liberal Party's think-tank is calling for the return of the death penalty, while the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats, the main party in the ruling coalition, has promised to resist the introduction of sharia law.

A little closer to the real world, perhaps, Parliament is in the process of adopting a package of stringent anti-terrorism laws that would curb civil liberties to a degree that worries some judges. This, too, is an unfamiliar turn of events for a country that until recently saw the European charter of fundamental rights as much too lax in its defence of personal freedom.

In a mood of confusion over national identity, there have been calls for a new canon of Dutch history, hitherto an unfashionable subject. This could be a basis for national self-awareness and even for pride in the country's tradition of freedom and tolerance. Some people have retorted that such a canon should also reflect the unhappier moments in the Dutch past, including colonial wars and the failure to save many Jews from the Nazis.

And though the frenzy caused by the Van Gogh killing has now eased, neither Dutch society nor politics should be considered stable, says Mayor Cohen. The current quiet, he believes, may last only as long as there are no dramatic events. In any case, the Netherlands “seems as if it has lost its anchor”, and it may stay so for a while yet.

What nobody knows is whether the new political right will succeed in persuading the Dutch—and indeed other Europeans—to embrace a new sort of politics which, like its American counterpart, puts strong emphasis on values and principles rather than expediency and compromise.

To many Dutch observers, the country's famed tradition of tolerance is a reflection not so much of high ideals as of pragmatism. In cities such as Amsterdam or Rotterdam, which aspired to be international commercial centres long before globalisation, it made good business sense for Protestants, Catholics and Jews to co-exist and trade together, live and let-live.

Faced with the challenge of absorbing immigrants from traditional societies—and drawing the right line between curbing extremism and fostering diversity—Dutch common sense will certainly help, but may not be enough. Like their American counterparts, the ideologues of the new Dutch right have won a wide hearing for the idea that values are important. They have yet to convince Dutch society that they have found the right means of upholding these principles.


Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.