Too Much Islam? Challenges to the Dutch Model

Nico Landman is associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Utrecht.

“There is too much Islam in the Netherlands.” “We have to stop the tsunami of Islamisation.” By repeating phrases like these over and over again, the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders makes it clear that anti-Islamic discourse has become part of Dutch political culture. Until the 1990s, even xenophobic extreme-right parties on the Dutch political fringe did not express their hostility towards Islam so openly as some members of Parliament do today. What is happening in Holland? Has the murder of Theo van Gogh also killed the multiculturalist tradition for which the Netherlands was praised until recently?

Dealing with Diversity 

As in many west European countries, the Islamic presence in the Netherlands is associated with immigration, from Turkey, North Africa, and to some extent from other parts of the Muslim world, an immigration which had its peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Immigrants and their descendants now form a considerable part of Holland’s population, and in some quarters of the larger towns they constitute a majority. The number of Muslims in the Netherlands is now estimated at 850,000, out of a total population of 16.3 million. The Muslim immigrants created their own infrastructure of small shops and cultural and religious organisations, as did Hindu and Christian immigrants from Surinam.

The Dutch way of dealing with this increased ethnic, cultural and religious diversity is shaped by two factors. The first is the “pillarised” structure of social life—or what is left of it. Pillarisation is the segmentation of society mainly along religious lines, each religious community having its own schools, political parties, media, and institutions for social and cultural life. Although secularisation since the 1960s has put the legitimacy of this segmentation into question and reduced its importance, it continues to shape some sectors of society, notably the education system. Muslims were able to use the legal opportunities provided by pillarisation to establish Islamic primary schools and some Islamic secondary schools, which were fully funded by the state.

The second factor shaping the Dutch response to mass immigration was the minorities policy of the national government that was drafted in the early 1980s and then modified in the late 1980s. This policy aimed at integrating the newcomers into Dutch society without attempting to change their culture. Initially, ties with the immigrants’ countries of origin were even encouraged by providing courses in indigenous languages and by subsidising associations that tried mainly to transplant the cultural life of Turkey and Morocco, for example, into the Netherlands. This policy was motivated partly by the expectation that many immigrants would eventually return to their country of origin. But it was also believed that immigrant associations created a safe haven for their members and contributed to their collective integration into Dutch society. In this atmosphere, the Muslim associations could often count on government support, both practical and financial. True, the political climate in the Netherlands became more secular in the 1980s, formal financial ties between the state and the churches were cut in 1983, and the separation of religion and state gained prominence in political thought. But, in the framework of integration policy, many mosque associations received funding for non-religious activities such as Dutch-language courses. And there are many examples of local aldermen who devoted much of their time to helping Muslim communities to build a mosque.

In short, Dutch integration policy was multiculturalist in that it took for granted the emergence of immigrant communities with their own cultures, and to some extent facilitated the infrastructure needed to maintain these separate cultures, including those strongly influenced by Islam. It was not just the political elite that took pride in the tolerance of Dutch society; the Dutch public, too, was (until recently) more positive about multiculturalism than the publics of most other European countries. Xenophobic sentiments were expressed only by small organisations and political parties, but such groups were either silenced by judicial means or marginalised. Mainstream political parties may have disagreed on details of the integration policies, but they focused the debate on the socio-economic aspects of integration. 

A Multicultural Tragedy? 

However, this rosy picture of cultures living peacefully together started to crack in the 1990s. A turning point in the public debate about integration was an essay by the journalist and academic Paul Scheffer, entitled “The Multicultural Tragedy”, published in 2000. In this intelligent and sophisticated but much-debated essay, Scheffer argued that Dutch politics had been far too optimistic about the integration of newcomers, since an ethnic underclass was emerging that consisted of alienated second-generation immigrants. Rather than social integration, Scheffer saw a social segregation which threatened the peaceful coexistence of the different ethnic communities in the Netherlands.

Scheffer refused to restrict the discussion to socio-economic issues and defined the problem in cultural terms. He blamed it on the allegedly soft and lenient attitude of Holland’s elite, whom he accused of being reluctant to promote Dutch cultural values among the immigrants and their descendants, and of failing to set limits to cultural diversity. The result, according to Scheffer, was a dangerous lack of cohesion in society.

One of the sources of the missing cohesion Scheffer found in Islam. Although he was aware of liberal tendencies in modern Islam, he argued that important values of modern Western culture, such as the separation of religion and state and the freedom to change one’s religion, were not fully accepted by most Muslims.

Scheffer’s essay about the “multicultural tragedy” was a turning point in the Netherlands because it did not come from a marginal right-wing group, but from an eloquent and respected member of the social-democratic establishment which had dominated politics in the large towns for decades. It introduced a critical approach towards multiculturalism into the heart of the public debate.

In his relatively mild comments on the cleft between modern Western values and orthodox Islamic ones, Scheffer took up some issues which right-wing politicians and intellectuals had started to emphasise some years earlier. In 1991, Frits Bolkestein, then the leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), had already made a plea for a tougher approach towards the culture of Muslim immigrants, arguing that the wearing of headscarves was permissible but forcible arranged marriages for girls were unacceptable. In the political climate of that time, this sounded a new note, and the dominant reaction was hostile. Bolkestein’s remarks were rejected as being based on stereotypes, as malevolent misrepresentations of immigrant culture, and as adding fuel to social tensions. Some accused Bolkestein of being Islamophobic and racist.

A stronger attack against the growing visibility of Islam in Dutch cities followed in 1997, when the dissident publicist Pim Fortuyn wrote a booklet called, “Against the Islamisation of Our Culture”. This was a direct assault on the “so-called multicultural society” which, Fortuyn maintained, was based on a misplaced cultural relativism. Rather than assuming the equality of cultures, the Dutch ought to defend their cultural values against fundamentalist and absolutist tendencies which had gained influence in their society. Like Bolkestein, Fortuyn targeted expressions of Islamic culture that seemed at odds with modern, liberal values such as the separation of church and state and the equality of men and women. Fortuyn’s booklet carefully avoided generalisations about Islam as a religion. Thus, he emphasised that the abuse of women in some Muslim countries is not based on the Qur’an, or on the Prophet’s example. But that did not alter his main argument, namely, that aspects of immigrant Muslim culture result in an unhealthy social climate. This culture produces, according to Fortuyn, a male chauvinism that condemns Muslim women to social isolation, an insufficient sexual education that causes young adolescents to be unable to control their sexual desires, and anti-Western, anti-democratic Islamic groups that are likely to attract frustrated teenagers. The multi-ethnic and underprivileged quarters in Holland’s big cities, predicted Fortuyn, are the ideal breeding ground for both criminality and Islamic fundamentalism.

Fortuyn met the same response as Bolkestein had a number of years earlier. A prominent social-democratic politician called him an “extraordinarily inferior person”. But the attempts of the multiculturalist establishment to smother voices that criticised immigrant cultures started to backfire as growing numbers of observers argued that the leading politicians were out of touch with the man in the street, who experienced the darker sides of multicultural society on a daily basis. The sense of pride in Dutch cosmopolitism and tolerance for cultural diversity increasingly came under suspicion. Acceptance of cultural diversity was more and more associated with political correctness rather than with broadmindedness.

The hostile response to Fortuyn became even more counterproductive when he stopped shouting from the sidelines and went into politics in 2001. He introduced a provocative style into the Dutch political arena that was new, shocking, and often difficult for his opponents to handle. His clash with established politics also led him to sharpen his tone about Islam, with one-liners such as “Islam is a backward religion”. The charismatic way in which he mobilised both anti-establishment and anti-Islamic sentiments made him a factor to deal with. As leader of the local political party Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable Rotterdam) he won a landslide victory in the local elections of March 2002, condemning the dominant social-democratic Labour Party to the opposition bench for the first time in half a century. On the national level, opinion polls predicted a similar development in Parliament, but shortly before the general elections, in May 2002, Fortuyn was murdered by a radical environmentalist. 

After Pim Fortuyn 

The murder of Pim Fortuyn shook the Dutch political landscape as much as the rise of the charismatic and populist politician had done. Those of his opponents who had warned the public of his extreme ideas and had compared his anti-Islamic rhetoric with anti-Semitism in the period before the Second World War were now accused of complicity in his murder. For the leader of the Labour Party, Ad Melkert, it meant the end of his role in the Dutch Parliament. The surge in public sympathy for the murdered Fortuyn resulted in a crushing electoral defeat for Labour, and Melkert stood down as party leader.

The decline of Fortuyn’s party—which soon after his death fell victim to internal strife—is a story which need not be told here. More relevant is the influence that Fortuyn’s short-lived political career had on Dutch politics. Mainstream parties had discovered that social tensions associated with immigration and integration could no longer be downplayed or ignored, and that a considerable part of the electorate felt dissatisfied with the dominant multiculturalist policies.

The rise of Fortuynism and its open criticism of Islamic culture in the Netherlands were not disconnected from international developments, in particular the 11 September 2024 attacks in New York and Washington and the Bush administration’s subsequent “war on terror”. These developments have heightened tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim populations all around the world, and the Netherlands is no exception. However, the Dutch response to this global crisis had its own dynamics because of an already changing social climate, of which Fortuyn was both a symbol and a catalyst.

After 2002, that the allegedly soft and lenient integration policies of the past had failed became a new article of political faith. Immigration, both of asylum-seekers and of family members of already present immigrants, was restricted by new legal measures. The pressure put on migrants to conform to Dutch culture increased. In this atmosphere, Islam and Muslims became the chief objects of public scorn. Both inside and outside the Dutch Parliament the tone was set by people who perhaps could not match the style of Pim Fortuyn, but had learned from him to speak out against Islam with no wish to spare religious sensitivities. Those who objected were attacked as representing “old policies” whose failure was taken for granted by the critics of Islam. Or, worse, they were accused of trying to curb freedom of speech.

Until recently, the torch of free speech against Islam was carried first and foremost by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP of Somali descent whose star rose to international heights after the film Submission, which she produced together with Theo van Gogh, was shown on Dutch television in August 2004. This short film, in which a half-naked woman with Qur’anic verses written all over her beaten-up body complains to God about the injustice that is done in his name, is typical of Hirsi Ali’s approach to the multiculturalism debate in the Netherlands. For her, criticising specific cultural issues such as forced marriages or the physical maltreatment of women is not enough. The roots of this unacceptable behaviour must be addressed, and Hirsi Ali feels these lie in the Islamic system of beliefs, and in the holy scripture on which it is based. Although in some interviews she has expressed a more balanced stance and claimed that she targets only “Islamic fundamentalism”, or “political Islam”, more often she stresses that the problem is not just some Muslims but Islam itself. After the brutal murder of van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in November 2004, and the death threats to Hirsi Ali that accompanied it, her tough approach only gained legitimacy, and she ended up advocating the “right to insult”.

So far, not much has been said about Holland’s Muslims themselves. It goes without saying that most resent the negative way in which their religion is portrayed daily in the media and by politicians. Many express their frustration at having to defend themselves continuously for being a Muslim and to explain the behaviour of violent and intolerant co-religionists. The Dutch security service AIVD and the national co-ordinator for combating terrorism have repeatedly expressed their concern that this frustration about the anti-Islamic climate in the Netherlands has become an important reinforcing factor in the radicalisation of Muslim youth. However, their warnings about the possible adverse effects of Islam-bashing by leading politicians have prompted only a Pavlovian reaction from the advocates of the freedom to insult: they will not give up this cherished freedom.

On the other hand, there are indications that mainstream politicians are looking for a new balance between the fundamental right to freedom of speech and the need to prevent further polarisation. The coalition government in which Hirsi Ali’s Liberal Party participated lost its majority in the November 2006 elections, and the new coalition of Christian Democrats, the Labour Party, and the Christian Union has taken a much more pragmatic and relaxed approach to the issues of integration and multiculturalism than the former government. One of its first measures was a regulation in favour of a specific group of asylum-seekers whom the former government had tried to expel. The new minister responsible for integration policy, Ella Vogelaar, said in a newspaper interview that it had to be accepted that Islam was simply becoming a part of Dutch culture. In the same interview, she imagined a scenario in which future generations would talk about a “Judaic–Christian–Islamic tradition”. She made these statements with the explicit goal of ending the negativism about, and fear of, Islam in the Netherlands, and to help Muslims feel at home in the country. In the current polarised climate, a minister cannot say such things without provoking angry reactions in the media and in Parliament, but the incident shows a willingness on the part of the new government to return to more inclusive, and multiculturalist, discourses.

A similar relaxation can be seen in identity policies, in particular, the relation between nationality, identity, and loyalty. The former minister of justice, Rita Verdonk, tried to stimulate the identification of immigrants with Dutch society by imposing citizenship courses on both newcomers and already settled immigrants, and by trying to make the naturalisation of foreigners a formal “rite of passage” that required them to give up their former nationality. By contrast, the new government includes two Muslim secretaries of state, one of Moroccan and the other of Turkish descent, both of whom were allowed to retain the nationality of their country of origin. The right-wing opposition, notably the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, has questioned the loyalty of these newly appointed cabinet members, but the government has responded that their loyalty is beyond doubt, citing their service record as evidence.

In terms of concrete integration policies, the recent changes are modest. In terms of the attitude and public discourse of government representatives, they are more significant. What seems to be occurring is a move away from the language of ideological confrontation and a return to a more inclusive discourse and a greater acceptance of cultural diversity.

It is clear, though, that the battle about multiculturalism is far from over. The Netherlands may have a new government, but Pim Fortuyn’s genie has not been put back into the bottle. Populist politicians with their anti-Islamic rhetoric still make the headlines on a weekly basis and opinion polls suggest they enjoy undiminished support. However, it may be that the confrontationalists have overplayed their hand somewhat, notably when their leader Geert Wilders in August 2007 proposed that the Qur’an be banned in the Netherlands because of what he claimed were its intolerant contents. Some analysts have suggested that the proposal was just another trick to get media attention. Others see a more sinister and totalitarian trend emerging in Dutch politics. But the failure of Wilders’s clash-of-civilisations approach to the multicultural society cannot be better illustrated than by this proposal. Even many who share his view about the content of the sacred book of Islam felt the need to stress that such inflammatory suggestions provide no solution to social and political problems. 

Friction in Rotterdam 

In local politics the challenges to multiculturalism have been even more visible, especially in Rotterdam, where Pim Fortuyn’s party Leefbaar Rotterdam won a landslide victory in 2004–5. Claiming that the old socialist establishment with its political correctness had left serious social problems unaddressed, the city’s new leaders launched a programme to enhance civic security, adopting a zero-tolerance approach towards petty criminals and drug addicts. In the field of integration, a similar no-nonsense attitude could not so easily be translated into concrete action. One of the Leefbaar Rotterdam aldermen, Marco Pastors, tried unsuccessfully to stop the construction of a mosque for which his predecessor had already granted a building permit. Pastors claimed that the minarets were too high, would dominate the Rotterdam skyline, and that the mosque’s “outlandish design” symbolised an unwillingness to integrate into Dutch culture. With this attitude towards Islamic building projects the tone was set. Those who felt threatened by the changing ethnic composition of Rotterdam’s population and the increasing visibility of Islam applauded the new critical tone of the local authorities, but many Muslims felt offended.

Another of Leefbaar Rotterdam’s initiatives was the local “Islam debate”: a series of activities in Rotterdam’s various quarters that was presented as an attempt to overcome religious and ethnic divisions. But rather than emphasising inter-religious understanding and dialogue, the authorities stressed the need to “tell each other the truth”, in other words, to challenge openly aspects of Islam felt to be problematic in a modern society, such as the subordinate position of women, intolerance towards homosexuals, and the undemocratic character of shari’a or Islamic law. An alderwoman, Marianne van den Anker, made this approach clear in a 2005 essay, Geloof in (g)een privé-zaak (Belief is not a private matter), in which she strongly attacks the inequality of men and women in Muslim cultures, using sexually explicit language and provocative examples: “In everyday Muslim practice boys show their masculinity when they have sex before marriage. But girls who do the same are whores in the eyes of their families and run into great trouble.” Van den Anker then criticises what she calls a standard defensive reaction among Muslims: the simple statement that such practices have nothing to do with Islam, but are only cultural traditions. According to her, this reaction serves to close the circle of the group against outside criticism and to leave serious problems unaddressed and therefore unsolved.

There may be some truth in van den Anker’s analysis. The distinction between religion and culture has indeed become the routine riposte of many Muslims to critical observations about their co-religionists’ behaviour and attitudes. And this riposte may indeed be used too easily to circumvent serious discussion. On the other hand, the distinction modern Muslims make between religion and culture is also a means of adapting to a new cultural environment without compromising the core values of their religion. One can question, therefore, the wisdom of the antagonistic and provocative approach to sensitive issues like sexual morality taken by a representative of the local government. It is clear that many Rotterdam Muslims have experienced the “Islam debates” of Leefbaar Rotterdam as an attack on their religion and on the Muslim community, rather than as a contribution to mutual understanding.

In the local elections of March 2006 Leefbaar Rotterdam was ousted from power, even though it remained the largest opposition party. The elections were won by the Labour Party, which formed a coalition with the Christian Democrats to govern the city. Labour’s victory was partly due to the relatively large turnout of ethnic communities, including Moroccans and Turks, most of whom voted left and showed their dislike of Leefbaar Rotterdam’s political style. It is likely that the confrontational approach of the followers of Pim Fortuyn prompted greater political awareness and activity on the part of citizens of Muslim background. 

Rapprochement in Amsterdam 

While Rotterdam’s local politics were dominated by Fortuynism and its anti-Islamic rhetoric, the capital Amsterdam took quite an opposite stance. The mayor of Amsterdam since January 2001, Job Cohen, has become one of the most prominent advocates of a pragmatic approach to cultural diversity in the Netherlands. Indeed, Cohen has often expressed the need to include migrant communities in local politics and for that purpose has put much time and energy into dialogue with them.

From the outset of his becoming mayor, Cohen has stressed that acceptance is a precondition for integration. After the 11 September attacks he deplored the mistrust of Muslims that was growing in the Netherlands, and claimed that Muslim immigrants and other Dutch citizens shared common values which had to be the basis for co-operation. Dialogue had to be based on openness and mutual respect. The dialogue Cohen advocates is not just a dialogue of individuals, but also of organisations, including mosques. In fact, he has argued that mosques can play a crucial role in the integration of Muslim citizens, because they can reach individuals that government agencies and secular welfare institutions can hardly reach. Consequently, Cohen was personally involved in (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts of the Turkish religious movement Milli Görüs to build a large Turkish mosque in Amsterdam and in joint projects of the Amsterdam municipality and mosques to counter Muslim radicalism.

This warm acceptance of cultural diversity has made Cohen a prime target of critics of Islam who accuse him of a soft and naive multiculturalism and even of protecting Islamic radicals. An open letter sent to him by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in March 2004 clarifies the controversy. Hirsi Ali argued that the integration of Muslims necessitates their tolerating Jews, Christians and non-believers, that Muslims accept the secular authorities and respect the civil rights of homosexuals and women—whereas in her view mosque leaders and imams represent an unchanging and non-negotiable theocratic world-order. Hirsi Ali accused Cohen of being blind to the anti-democratic and intolerant nature of Muslim beliefs, and of naivety in trying to integrate true Muslim believers into a secular society.

However, if one looks at the many speeches of the Amsterdam mayor before Muslim audiences, one cannot fail to see that he is far from being blind to anti-democratic and intolerant tendencies among Muslim immigrant communities. In these speeches he confronts his hearers with social problems in these communities, such as high crime rates and anti-Semitism. He calls on them to accept the right of Hirsi Ali to express her thoughts on the Prophet Mohammad, even if they abhor her views. Based on these observations, it is unfair to depict Cohen as an otherworldly politician who is unable to face the harsh nature of the real world.

What distinguishes the Amsterdam approach from the “Rotterdam model” of the Fortuynists is the deliberate attempt to prevent the alienation of Muslim citizens by using the language of reciprocity, communality, and mutual respect, rather than emphasising allegedly unbridgeable gaps. It is hard to judge the effect of the two approaches on the integration of Muslims in the local societies of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. After all, the extent to which Muslims participate in and take responsibility for local society depends on much more than the tone of public speeches by government officials. But the impact of such speeches should not be neglected either. Local officials do spend quite some time speaking at festivals and sports tournaments, praising the important contribution of their audiences to the creation of a better world. A sceptic might question the sincerity and usefulness of such political pep-talks. But imagine a local government representative attacking the local football club in the style of a newspaper columnist: he is guaranteed to get trouble.

From this perspective, the respectful approach of the Amsterdam mayor is simply a matter of political wisdom, whereas the hard-line approach of Leefbaar Rotterdam towards its Muslim co-citizens can only produce antagonistic responses and exacerbate social tensions. Another flaw in the stance of the hardliners is that it is tantamount to a diplomacy without a serious exit strategy. If “true Islam” is fundamentally opposed to modern secular society, as Hirsi Ali never tired of saying to the likes of mayor Cohen, the integration of Muslims requires them to stop being true Muslims. The insistence that true Islam is a major problem for modern west European societies leads the debate into a cul-de-sac. By contrast, the only way forward is to underline the complexity and flexibility of identities and the possibility of combining religious affiliation and identification with the wider society. 

Holland at the Crossroads 

More than in most European countries, in the Netherlands the rise of international Islamist terrorism led to a dramatic shift in public opinion and in the political discourse on Islam and its place in society. That was because the terrorist surge boosted an already present tendency to challenge the multiculturalist establishment in the larger cities. The good news, however, is that social, cultural and religious conflicts can now be discussed more openly, and social problems in ethnic communities are no longer avoided as being too sensitive or out of political correctness. On the other hand, there is a serious danger of alienating Muslim communities, of polarisation, of a negative spiral in which Islamophobia provokes Islamic radicalism, and Islamic radicalism provokes Islamophobia.

If the 1980s and 1990s were characterised by an over-optimistic and naive approach to cultural diversity and a lack of attention to the difficulties that go with it, in the post–Pim Fortuyn era the Netherlands is proving far from able to cope with this diversity. It is now the task of responsible politicians and opinion leaders to avoid and prevent the chain of reactions which can only alienate large groups of Muslims from the rest of society.