One Dutchman's View

A great friend of mine, one who happens to be from Holland, recently opined on the changes in Dutch sentiment over the noteworthy events there. Even Fox is picking up on the groundswell change in Dutch tolerance as the country digests the asassination of Theo van Gogh.

My friend's answer (in his non-native English) to my question about the change in the Dutch view of tolerance is insightful:

Which bring me to your question. As you may remember my thesis will touch upon culture differences and I have studied most there is to know about the subject. I believe I understand why this field of study has not received wider attention in other fields of our societies, yet I am afraid that this state of ignorance is causing lots of unnecessary harm. I furthermore subscribe to ontological relativism, where one assumes that people live in different worlds (realities) and that there are hardly any ways of bridging our differences. This seems amongst other problems to be the case between "western modern societies" and those coming from area's where Muslims live. Muslims - at least great part of them - like the ones coming from northern African countries (Algeria and Morocco notably) have little to no tolerance to other cultures and worst is that they reject the culture they have accepted whilst deciding to live in them.

The murder of Pim Fortuyn and the one on Theo van Gogh have more differences than commonalities. The first one was shot on the day that the polls indicated that his party was going to win elections and that he was going to be the prime minister of Holland. He was murdered though by a Dutch extremist with a background in the environmental movement: a lunatic. The van Gogh killing though was done by a 26 year old Moroccan who - after his mother died of cancer - felt attracted to orthodox extremist or fundamentalist branches of Islam. He killed him in a sacred way (with knifes, cutting his throat, wearing his testimony and accepting that the police would shoot and kill him afterwards. (jihad and the prospect of being received by Mohammed in heaven with 7 virgins).

Theo van Gogh was even for the average Dutch an extreme provocateur. Although this was (barely) acceptable for the average Dutch who advocate tolerance and freedom of speech, it did provoke fundamentalist from all area's of society, but especially the Muslims. In Holland we have 950.000 Muslims, of which according to most recent calculations, 50.000 may be considered extremist. (not even fundamentalist, just extremist). This has been a problem for decades in Holland, leading to social unrest especially in large cities, such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and the like, but till Pim Fortuyn, the politicians were not concerned with doing something about it, as it was not done to criticise any minority - especially those with a different colour, race or religion.(this stems to some extent from the Dutch collaborating with the Nazi's in their haunt for Jews) They advocated and cheered our multicultural society and prided themselves with having been able to integrate all these differences. I believe that they now come to realise that this was all a mistake.

I have no idea how on earth they will try to resolve the problems they have created during so many decades of ill policies and leaving things to rotten. I only now that Western world has steep challenges to face on all areas ...

The question remains as to how the normally tolerant Dutch will deal with the upswing in violence involving the pro- or anti-Muslim groups. This certainly has touched off a spirited debate.