Posted on 11/15/2004 8:02:13 AM PST by GMMAC
A Dutch lesson for Canada
National Post
Monday, November 15, 2004
Page: A19
Section: Editorials
Byline: Lorne Gunter
Bravo to the Dutch for recognizing that the assimilation of immigrants and refugees is preferable to multiculturalism and political correctness.
A sea change has occurred in the Netherlands in the past few years. The famously liberal Dutch citizenry, and a goodly number in officialdom, have come to recognize that too much acquiescence to the customs and traditions of immigrants and refugees has led to civil strife.
The prevailing sentiment among the majority of Dutch voters now is that their national immigration policy has made insufficient demands on newcomers to respect the foundations of Dutch law and culture. In particular, a large and growing Muslim community has been encouraged by official diversity programs to remain both detached from mainstream Dutch culture and hostile to it.
It has taken two gruesome political murders to jolt the Dutch from their previous cult-like devotion to tolerance.
Tolerance had become a civil religion among the Dutch before the assassinations of politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and filmmaker Theo van Gogh earlier this month. Fortuyn was not murdered by Muslims, but rather by a fanatic leftist, environmentalist, animal-rights activist outraged by Fortuyn's opposition to Muslim immigration. Volkert van der Graaf shot Fortuyn dead in the middle of the last Dutch election.
At the time of his death, Fortuyn was widely described as a right-wing populist, because reporters and editors assume the only politicians opposed to immigration and multiculturalism are on the right. But Fortuyn was a flamboyantly gay sociologist long active in the Partij van de Arbeid, the Dutch social democratic party. What distressed him about the rapid increase in the Muslim population was the threat rigid Muslims posed to his nation's liberal traditions. They were antagonistic to Holland's acceptance of same-sex rights, the sex trade and recreational drug use.
Similarly, Van Gogh was killed for producing a left-of-centre film exposing Muslim discrimination against women.
Van Gogh's alleged murderer is a Muslim, as are his six alleged accomplices.
And the filmmaker's death was especially grisly: Shot several times at close range, but (apparently) deliberately left alive, his throat was then slashed as he pleaded for his life. Finally, Koranic verses and exhortations that Islam would crush the Netherlands and western Europe were pegged to his corpse's chest by the knife used almost to decapitate him.
Even before this second killing, the Dutch had taken bold steps to end Muslim immigrants' self-imposed isolation and to reduce the security threat from the most radical Islamists in the country. Imams at Dutch mosques -- most of whom are Arab-born, and many of whom are financed by radical Middle Eastern Muslims and preach virulently anti-Western sermons -- were being compelled by the government to take Dutch lessons. These clerics were advocating an end to Dutch society without even being able to speak the native language well enough to understand events around them.
Authorities are also pondering the closure of Muslim schools and the transfer of students to public schools to get them away from teachers and curricula antagonistic of Western values.
Within the next three years, too, Dutch immigration officials intend to deport all 26,000 unsuccessful refugee claimants still at large and return them to their home countries -- even if they have stable jobs and Dutch-born children.
As is the case here, the biggest problem with radicals in the Dutch Muslim community is among bogus refugee claimants, not legitimate immigrants.
Is there a lesson in this for Canada? Probably. At the very least, a cautionary tale. In the past decade, our Muslim population has risen more than 130%. Muslims comprise the fastest growing religious group in Canada with more than 100,000 adherents.
And it is recently arrived Muslims who are the most likely to be filled with the hateful, anti-Western teaching that is booming in the Middle East. Long-standing Canadian Muslims are largely as peaceful as they claim to be.
There is also mounting evidence that a growing number of Canadian mosques and Islamic schools have come under the control of Saudi-funded Wahhabis and other radical Islamists. In April, 2002, a crowd of 1,000 or more, many from a Calgary mosque funded by the Saudi royals, marched through that city's downtown chanting "Death to the Jews." At a recent conference in Ottawa on the advent of shariah -- Islamic law -- in Canada, one delegate, a moderate Muslim and university professor, estimated that 90% of the new mosques constructed in Canada since 1990 were Wahhabi-dominated.
A Vancouver imam was recently revealed preaching venomous anti-Semitic and anti-Western dogma after one of his flock was shot dead in Chechnya fighting for Muslim extremists against Russian troops.
Judy Sgro, Canada's Immigration Minister, announced this week that Ottawa will get tougher with bogus refugee claimants. This would be the best place to start. Both CSIS and the RCMP insist most of the jihadis who have entered Canada in the past decade have come as false refugees.
Sgro's task will not be easy. An earlier attempt by the Liberals to reform our refugee rules, in 1995, ran aground on protests from refugee lawyers who have developed lucrative practices defending refugee claimants at public expense and opposition from the ethnic political leaders many Liberals rely on for re-election.
But if Canada is to be spared the Netherlands' upheaval, Sgro must be serious, and she much succeed.
© National Post 2004
The Islamists seem to be using Canada as a staging area for future mayham in the U.S. The Canadians seem to be helpless and passive.
Thats a bummer. Oh well, time to put the military on the border.
Anyone think the Muslim community will just peacefully accept a change in government's attitude towards them? Pushing the Muslim kids into the public schools could very well start a civil war, and guess what side has the will to win there.
"Arise!O ye slumberers!
Saudi Arab must be destroyed. They are the nidus for this mess!!
Not helpless, they are blind to the danger around them, thanks in part to the government and it's influence on the MSM up here.
There is a lesson here for us. I know many of our American friends think us a passive group, and we are for the most part, but if there is any upheaval similar to that of Holland's recent problems in Canada, it will be alot uglier here, and I'm talking about the reactions of born and bred Canadians. Anyone foolish enough to try any of this stuff up here had better think twice. Anyone who mistakes Canadian politeness with weakness in the face of causing trouble in our country doesn't know squat about Canadians and to what lengths we will go if our country is threatened on it's own soil.
The Dutch may want to consider deporting Muslims with dual citizenships also.
Didn't one of the provinces just pass a law to allow "sharia" in some civil suits?..Is that still in effect?
"ran aground on protests from refugee lawyers who have developed lucrative practices defending refugee claimants at public expense and opposition from the ethnic political leaders "
THAT is exactly the problem we have. Add to that a handful of people who prefer to line their pockets illegally by hiring aliens at slave wages.
I take it you are speaking for the western provences.
PS: I'd suggest a long hard look at any US bred socialists who actually do try to move to Canada; they won't be a very comforting element in the event you DO crack down on their currently most favored 'oppressed' faction.
You think that the US will tolerate some kind of Muslim fundamentalist base on our borders?
I don't think so.
That is why no one has ever dared to mess with any country in North America or South America.
More like welcoming and obliging.
I think this qualifies as hate speech in Canada. Hope ole Lorne Gunter watches his back.
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