Tracy,

It is difficult to get a real life picture withouth actually living in the Netherlands. Since the Netherlands is only a very small (geographically) country, surrounded by much greater powers (eg. UK, Germany, France) the dutch always tries to look for diplomatic solutions rather than to go to war. It is not in our nature to do extreme things because we are so depended on the world outside.

This is reflected in our politics: Always trying to look for compromises. Extremists tend to be negletected.... until they have a point of which the majority of the population agrees with (e.g. Pim Fortuin).

The problem of making compromises is that some things tend to be ignored as irrelevant or just are to sensative. For example, we did and still do have problems of immigrants who are not integrating in our society. Up until the rise of Pim Fortuin, the politicians (maybe with the exception of the VVD - a political party) ignored the problem as being affraid to be called a racist. Pim Fortuin was able to open the debate of immigrants. After the murder of Fortuin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali took over the crusade.... However there is a great difference. Ayaan is focusing on the islam and really is fighting it. This in some eyes is a bit extreme, as we generally do not have problems with islam as longs as it does not lead to violence and the violation of the law. There are about 1 - 1.5 million muslims living in holland and in general we do not have a problem with that. There are very, very few that try to undermine the democracy and we can only hope that our secret service than cope with them. The politics are changin laws to make it possible to throw out imans that spread hate against our western society. There are few young terrorist that have been convicted for long sentences in jail. One will never see the outside world again (jailed for life).

Only very slightly related is the problems we have with morrocan youth which tend to make carreer in crime. They are responsible of a large percentable of small crimes in cities like amsterdam and rotterdam. Their religion probably has nothing to do with this problem but rather their cultural background, but it often used as both the sword and shield. In the past, too often action was not taken because of being affraid for 'racism'.

We are faced with the problem of solving these problems. Fortunately, nowerdays the politicians are not affriad to talk about the problem and search for solutions. However there are no easy answers and solutions. We try to construct generic laws that will make it possible to solve a piece of the puzzle. Education, more police, mentality change of the parents, convict the problem makers earlier and convict them with longer jail time, etc.

We have a long way to go, we still have significant problems, however we are trying practically what works without going to extremes. However the dutch are not affraid to take certain steps if we have to (We are active in Afghanistan), but those steps are only taken when all other things have proven not to work and problems increase.

Walter,







>This is not designed to criticize either approach. I am hoping that we will see in the end that the more tolerant approach will succeed. However, given that the U.S. actually employed that approach for years I am not overly optimistic. The U.S. did negate that approach with other policies though and since I am not aware of the Dutch doing the same thing, hopefully they will be successful where the U.S. has failed. If they fail as well, who will they go to for support? The U.S? The EU? The UN?
>
>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2426314.ece
>http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/dutch_experience1.html
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali
>http://www.aivd.nl/contents/pages/65582/jihad2006en.pdf
>
>The New York Times says that the Netherlands has been “the world’s most tolerant, open-minded society, with full sexual equality and same-sex marriage, as well as liberal policies on soft drugs and prostitution.” Is it true that before 9/11 the Netherlands had the largest number of wiretaps in the world? Let's hope that Netherlands has more success than the U.S. has had. I hope history proves that pacivism, tolerance and dialogue are successful as long as it doesn't involve capitulation.
>
>Here’s what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to say about Islam:
>
>All of Europe is in a state of denial. It thinks these killings will go away, but they will not. The Holy Book says infidels must be destroyed. Osama bin Laden is a puritan Muslim. That is why he keeps insisting on the Koran. Islam is not a religion of peace, or only of peace with other Muslims. We should acknowledge that it’s a very violent religion, say, yes, you are right, instead of pretending, like Bush, that this violence is not true Islam. And then we should encourage Muslims to say that they will remain Muslims, but reject those verses incompatible with human rights, with a decent coexistence between men and women. We should demand an Islamic Reformation.
>
>If she is right, then neither approach will succeed in the long run and we all set on a path to a world of Sharia Islamic Law.