JOB COHENAl Qaeda on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, were a turning point.
Since then we have experienced two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which Dutch troops
have participated. Since 9/11, terrorist attacks have been carried out by Muslim funda-
mentalists at various places in the world—Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid, and Lon-
don, to mention but a few—causing dozens of fatalities and casualties. And, yes, in
Amsterdam we too were confronted by this violence when the filmmaker and publisher
Theo van Gogh was murdered by Muhammad Bouyari, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan
descent, in November 2004.
The international climate is undeniably contributing to the present climate of menace
and alienation. Individuals who face one another as strangers do not know what norms
and values they share with one another (or do not share—because this too creates clarity,
as was apparent in the era when the Netherlands was divided along denominational and
ideological lines) and therefore do not know what they can expect of other people. We
merely suspect that the other person will act on the basis of his or her own norms and
values, which are often unknown to us. As strangers facing one another, we suspect that
if everyone merely acts on his or her own authority or on the basis of his or her own
norms and values (and this also immediately explains the concern, or even the fear, as
criminologist Hans Boutellier has said^3 ), things will become a real mess.
This is why one can hear calls for clarity from all segments of Dutch society: clarity
about the applicable rules, both about the content of the rules and about how they are to
be applied; clarity about the rules that one must observe and can expect others to observe
in the public domain; clarity about the role of government. It goes without saying that
observance of the laws and rules of our country is a precondition for the functioning of
our society, and hence for the integration of all population groups in the same society;
indeed, this is so self-evident that I will not discuss it today. In everything that follows I
will assume that this requirement is fulfilled. What is much less clear is the form that
these rules should take. This also explains the question we are dealing with this afternoon:
‘‘Can a minority retain its identity in law?’’ with the emphasis on ‘‘in law.’’ As we shall
see, though, this term ‘‘in law’’ is probably not the nub of the matter.
Minorities and Majority in the Netherlands in the Year 2005
If we try to define the Netherlands, in 2005, we might say that it is a society of individuals
who face one another as strangers in a country that has traditionally comprised minorities
that cohabit but are unable, because of their size, to dominate one another. In such a
country, everyone has an interest in ensuring that the rights of ‘‘minorities’’ are properly
defined and properly regulated. The Netherlands is, after all, a country in which minori-
ties have traditionally been treated with a degree of respect less commonly found in other
countries. This came about only because everyone belonged to a minority or was aware
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