A single book is like a blow from a club: its author, Sheikh Abu Bakr Jabir al-Jaza'iri, attacks homosexuals and women's emancipation and defends the right of husbands to beat disobedient wives. This book, "The Path of Muslims," published in the Netherlands, has provoked protests from all the country's political parties - the sheikh is accused of racism and reactionary views. Nevertheless, the imam of the Amsterdam mosque al-Tawhid can continue to freely spread these views: liberal Dutchmen have preferred to be guided by the principle gedogen, which has become ingrained in the national consciousness - this word means something like "no big deal, let it pass" in Russian.
This principle of forbearance, in fact, is already outliving its usefulness in the Netherlands. Until now, it allowed the police and the judiciary to turn a blind eye to minor offenses in order to have more strength and opportunities to deal with serious crimes. However, this book is not such a minor offense at all. Among other things, one can learn from it, for example, that homosexuals should be thrown from the roofs of houses and, if they remain alive after that, stoned with stones. Dutch reality proves that not only can the majority be intolerant towards a minority, but also vice versa. The country's residents are very concerned about the integration of allochthones, as foreigners are called here, as opposed to local residents, autochthones. The bright and colorful international community flourishing among the Amsterdam canals creates a deceptive illusion of a harmonious multicultural society - in fact, it simply does not exist.
A democratic society, believes Professor Paul Scheffer, an Amsterdam "urban sociologist," should not leave to chance the question of which "foreigners" it is willing to admit. Any country is a country of immigration only if the local residents want it to be - and not otherwise. Scheffer, one of the followers of the right-wing populist leader Pim Fortuyn, claims that the ideas of his deceased party boss are alive and thriving, moreover, they are the only correct ones. However, many Dutch leftists and liberals also believe today that Pim Fortuyn was not so wrong. Fortuyn, a homosexual and a taboo-breaker who wanted to completely eliminate the possibility of Muslims entering the Netherlands, was killed by a left-wing radical terrorist in May 2002 - at the very moment when he almost became the country's prime minister.
For Fortuyn, Islamists were nothing but parasites. "They consider us inferior people, even less valuable than pigs, so they can rob us with impunity," - these words of his led to an inevitable conclusion: such guests are not needed in the Netherlands. Fortuyn's legacy lives on. Earlier his associates said: "Other parties are rushing to jump on the step of our speeding train." Today, other parties have simply thrown the driver off the locomotive's tender and seized the entire train.
What especially worries the Dutch is the fact that, according to statistical forecasts, in 2010 allochthones will constitute the majority of the population in the country's four largest cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague. For the Dutch, the prospect is a bleak one. The immigrant Muslims are far from the elite: many barely understand Dutch, let alone - they often cannot read and write in their own languages. In addition, they do not know how to ride bicycles - which is completely unacceptable for the Dutch.
In February, the coalition civil government headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende adopted the strictest refugee laws in Europe. 26 thousand asylum seekers are soon to be sent back home. From now on, the process of accepting new applicants will be accelerated, so that 70% will receive a final answer within 48 hours. Until deportation from the country, they will now be kept in special deportation centers.
The bulk of the approximately one million Muslim allochthones is not so dangerous. It is poor, immobile, and conservative. And inclined to throw their pita or kebab wrappers right onto the sidewalk - which in Amsterdam, where even gentlemen in dark tailored suits still relieve themselves directly into the canals from pedestrian bridges, does not cause much disapproval. What is, however, perceived as a hindrance is the fact that among foreigners, the unemployment rate is three to four times higher (according to age groups) than among local residents. Thus, immigrants take much more from the social pot than they put into it - thereby accelerating the collapse of the Netherlands' social system.
Only 8-10 thousand Muslims, whom the police have marked as potential terrorists, are truly dangerous. Most of them are highly educated, integrated into society, and many even hold Dutch passports.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a pretty young political scientist from Somalia, who considers herself a Joan of Arc in the battle against so-called Islamofascism, also received Dutch citizenship a couple of years after arriving in the country. A year ago, she was elected to the Hague parliament as a deputy from the right-liberal VVD party. Previously, Hirsi Ali was a Muslim. Today she is ashamed of her old confession, which she considers backward, of Muhammad, whom she calls a "tyrannical lecher," and of the holy Quran, which she calls an "instrument of oppression."
Of course, it would have been better to speak more politely. However, Hirsi Ali deliberately provokes her opponents - she loves to polemicize, besides, she knows very well what she is talking about. When she was still very young, she was circumcised in Mogadishu, and she almost died from it. A Koran teacher, during one of the school lessons, cracked her skull - as a "disciplinary measure". In 1992, her father decided to marry her off to a distant relative from Canada, whom Hirsi Ali had never seen in her life. At that time she happened to be in Berlin - the girl called her father and told him that she did not want to get married. Instead of an airplane ticket to Toronto, she took a train ticket to Amsterdam.
As a social worker, Hirsi Ali became very closely acquainted with the suffering that falls to the lot of Muslim women in the Netherlands - primarily, with the consequences of sexual violence in families. "This happens daily - incest, beatings, abortions," she asserts. Muslim women account for 60% of all abortions in Holland.
The Islamic establishment cannot stand the young warrior woman. Fawaz Jneid, imam of the Sennah mosque in The Hague: "This cleaning woman who sneaked into parliament does not exist for us!" A black beauty with the mentality of John Wayne, constantly rushing into battle against the reactionary culture of her father, accompanied by two bodyguards, is the adornment of her party faction. The Pim Fortuyn party would have gladly taken her on as its candidate, but she was too clever to get on a sinking ship. The fact that the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan demanded her immediate recall from parliament added a couple of plus points to Hirsi Ali's political rating. Last year, in the election of the most popular Dutch person, she won second place.