Go Dutch!

Agent 3 wants to know if an e-mail rant he received from a business associate is the Real McCoy. It's headed "Go Dutch - but why wait until 2013?" and comments approvingly on a news report that the Dutch government is planning to do away with multiculturalism. Here's the text.

The Netherlands , where six per cent of the population is now Muslim, is scrapping multiculturalism. The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.

A new integration bill, which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16 [2011. Walt] reads: "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people.
In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role.With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society."

The letter [see below] continues: "A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands .

"The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants who ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law."

The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner: "It is not the government's job to integrate immigrants."

The government will introduce new legislation that outlaws forced marriages and will also impose tougher measures against Muslim immigrants who lower their chances of employment by the way they dress. More specifically, the government will impose a ban on face-covering, Islamic burqas as of January 1, 2013. [Walt reported this in "Muslim eyes aren't smiling -- Dutch to ban the burqa", posted 16/9/11.]

The e-mail forwarded by Agent 3 continues:
Holland has done that whole liberal thing, and realized -- maybe too late -- that creating a nation of tribes will kill the nation itself. The future of Australia, the UK and Canada may well be read here.

Muslim immigrants leave their countries of birth because of civil and political unrest created by the very nature of their own culture. Countries like the Netherlands, Canada, the UK and Australia have an established way of life that actually works, so why embrace the unworkable? If Muslims do not wish to accept another culture, the answer is simple: stay where you are!

This gives a whole new meaning to the term "Dutch courage". Unfortunately Australian, British, and Canadian politicians don't have the guts to do the same. There's a whole lot of truth here!

Agent 3 expresses his agreement, but before forwarding it to his long list of correspondents wants to be sure the report isn't a hoax. Well, Mr. Three, you'll be happy to know it's the real thing -- old news, to be sure, but worth repeating.

The text quoted in the first part of the e-mail was written by Soeren Kern and posted on the Gatestone Institute's website 23/6/11. Needless to say, the story was generally ignored by the PC, "pro-diversity", American media.

The "letter" referred to is apparently the covering letter attached by Minister Donner to the new integration bill. The Gatestone article gives the background to the new legislation and the reasons why the Dutch government thought it necessary.

Polls taken just before the introduction of the bill showed that a majority of Dutch voters supported the government's skepticism about multiculturalism. 74% of Dutch voters told the Maurice de Hond organization that immigrants should conform to Dutch values. And 83% of those polled supported a ban on burqas in public spaces.

The problem of course is the increasing number of Muslim immigrants, including many 1000s from largely Muslim Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. As their numbers increase, the Muslims become more and more assertive in carving out a role for Islam within the "host" society. For example, the Dutch TV programme Netwerk reported in June 2009 that Dutch law was being systematically undermined by the growth of Sharia "justice".

An earlier report, "From Dawa to Jihad", by AIVD (the Dutch equivalent to the CIA), concluded that Dutch society is poorly equipped to resist the threat of radical Islam because of "a culture of permissiveness" that has become synonymous with "closing one's eyes to multiple transgressions of the law".

In his letter, Minister Donner said the Dutch government "will distance itself from the relativism contained in the model of a multicultural society." Although society changes, he wrote, it must not be "interchangeable with any other form of society."