Netherlands: Tolerating Muslims excesses

Dutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Janssen. "The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means", he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of "a peaceful enclave" who have, however, "forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence". A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful "will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful", as the Arabist writes. "It will be hard to explaining this convincingly to all those respectable and friendly people in the (Christian coalition parties) CDA and ChristenUnie. And to the rest."

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

According to Jansen, Muslim fundamentalists frequently make threats, but the Dutch media remain silent about them. He is pleading for a central reporting station for all Dutch people who are being threatened.

Jansen denounces the fact that the Nieuwe Kerk, a museum in Amsterdam, allowed the Turkish government to remove passages on the Armenian genocide from the catalogue of an exhibition about Istanbul. "Even without the threat of violence, the public gets to see an exhibition opened by the Queen that has been censored by Turkey".

The Netherlands chooses not to make an issue of these sorts of matters, as Jansen states. "This attitude is gradually becoming counterproductive. What is thought, written, exhibited or performed in the Netherlands is to a large extent no longer made in freedom, without this being perceptible. It is not the lie but the obscure threat that reigns".

"We do not realise that the threat of violence, and violence itself, can only be stopped through the controlled and cunning use of violence". The Dutch secret service (AIVD) should get a special department "that gets its hands dirty, if need be".

Jansen is an authority on the Arabic language and the Koran. Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim terrorist in 2004, employed him as his tutor on Islam.

Source: NIS News (English)