NIS News Bulletin, Netherlands
March 23 2007
Islam Expert: Netherlands Tolerates Muslim Excesses
AMSTERDAM, 24/03/07 – 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.