Dutch welcome Germans to Europe's immigration debate (Feature)

By Thomas Burmeister Oct 20, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Amsterdam - Angela Merkel does not make the covers of Dutch newspapers very often.

But the German chancellor's assertion last week that 'multiculturalism has absolutely failed' in her country was headline news in the Netherlands.

As far as the Dutch are concerned, the Germans - whom they consider to sometimes be politically behind the times - have finally woken up.

'Welcome, Germany, to the European immigration debate,' the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw proclaimed in an editorial this week.

The Netherlands' dream of a happy, harmonious multicultural society burst on a grey autumn morning six years ago in Amsterdam.

On November 2, 2004, an Islamic extremist gunned down Dutch filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in the street, then slit his throat in front of horrified passers-by.

The 26-year-old killer had not been sent by al-Qaeda. The son of Moroccan immigrants, Mohammed Bouyeri was born in Amsterdam, spoke Dutch well and was thought to be solidly integrated in Dutch society.

For many Dutch, his religious fanaticism demonstrated the failure of their country's lenient integration policies, which met immigrant families more than halfway.

Despite the debates that followed Theo van Gogh's death, the Netherlands did not fundamentally change immigration policies, reforming them only slightly. Immigrants were required to attend classes on civic affairs and pass examinations to show commitment to their new homeland.

However, this decreased neither the number of 'Dutch' Muslims rejecting Western values nor the relatively high incidence of non- Western immigrants among criminals.

The first shot across the bow of the Dutch political establishment came in 2006, when the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, won nine of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament.

Members of the Netherlands' major parties did not take Wilders seriously at first. Veteran politicians said he made himself look ridiculous by attacking Islam as a 'fascist ideology of terrorism.'

Then the PVV became the country's third-strongest political force in parliamentary elections on June 24.

Anyone who thought the Netherlands would forever remain a haven of multicultural tolerance had ignored growing problems with integration - and the views of Henk and Ingrid, as the average Dutch couple is popularly known.

'I make policies for Henk and Ingrid, not Ahmed and Fatima,' Wilders has said.

All decision-making in The Hague now goes through Wilders, whose party is backing a minority government formed by the conservative Christian Democrats and centre-right Liberal Party.

As the price of his support, Wilders received a written guarantee from the coalition partners that immigration from Islamic and other non-Western countries would be reduced by 50 per cent in the coming years. To better coordinate the cuts, a ministry for immigration and asylum is to be established.

Wilders also successfully pressed for a debate on a burqa ban and on immigrants paying for Dutch language and citizenship classes themselves.

On top of that, the new government wants to hire hundreds of new police officers to keep 'problem youths' - Wilders calls them 'Moroccan street terrorists' - in check.

Wilders' ambitions do not stop at the Dutch border. He is pushing for an international 'Freedom Alliance' under the motto 'Stop Islam, Defend Freedom!'

Berlin was among the places where he recently took his message, proclaiming that 'a Germany full of mosques and veiled women is no longer the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, Bach and Mendelssohn.'

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