Two articles in Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant are very revealing about the state of Islamic fundamentalism in the Netherlands, and about the increasingly steely way the Dutch think about the problem.
First the bad news: Radical Islam has made spectacular inroads among young Dutch Muslims in the last three years, according to a report by the national intelligence agency, AIVD. There is no shortage of groups that preach violent jihad either openly or in secret. Most of the born-again Muslims manage to stay within the bounds of the law, of course, but the authors of the report worry that a subset of these closet radicals could easily turn to murder and mayhem. The AIVD thinks that the possible number of young recruits drawn to violence is as high as "several thousand." That more or less jibes with earlier ballpark estimates saying that of the roughly one million Muslims in the Netherlands, about 100,000 are sympathetic to violent Islamic causes, and that a tiny but still mindblowing percentage of those 100,000 are prone to terrorist acts themselves.
It's noteworthy that increasingly, these would-be murderers no longer have to be actively recruited through mosques, schools, and prisons. The AIVD observes that, like everyone else, they now do their shopping on the Internet. Obviously, we're not talking about Amazon and eBay. In Muslim chat rooms and on Jihadist websites, calls for violence are plentiful, often issued by self-styled imams and various recent converts to radical Islam.
Now the good news: The readers of de Volkskrant were asked to nominate the Dutch Person of the Year. Almost 10,000 people voted, and the first two neck-and-neck finishers are nothing short of astounding. Number one is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian who is a critic of radical Islam, and who wrote the film Submission that got director Theo van Gogh assassinated last month (Van Gogh himself won the number-four slot). In second place is another non-white politician: Ahmed Aboutaleb, an Amsterdam City Council member from Morocco. Aboutaleb is emerging as a kind of Dutch Barack Obama — a whip-smart minority candidate who can build badly needed bridges but isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. Like Hirsi Ali, he has taken radical Muslims to task on plenty of occasions (and like her, he now needs round-the-clock police protection.)
What's surprising and heartening about these choices is not just that the Dutch refuse to go on some White-Power trip — that they make clear distinctions between violent swarthy scum and the allochtonous heroes who risk life and limb in defense of free speech and other cherished Western values. What's particularly encouraging is that Volkskrant readers, of all people, made these nominations. The newspaper was long infamous for catering excessively to an audience of social workers, leftie academics, and advocates of unfettered multiculturalism. For decades, de Volkskrant and its readers were part of the problem rather than the solution. Now the tide seems to have turned.
For me, that's reason enough to have an extra glass of eggnog tonight. I'll be quietly toasting Hirsi Ali and Aboutaleb for their courage and fortitude, and congratulating them on having found a way into the hearts of so many Dutch burghers. Santé, friends.
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