WHAT DUTCH?:

The new Dutch model?: Increasingly, the Netherlands wonders whether diversity is always desirable (The Economist, Mar 31st 2005)

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 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.

Nice to have History on your side, better to have demographics. The future of Holland is as a tolerant Islamic society.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2005 9:21 PM