CAN A MINORITY RETAIN ITS IDENTITY IN LAW?- Muslim women and girls with headscarves have difficulties in the Netherlands in
school, in employment, and even in public places, where they are regularly exposed
to verbal harassment. - Jews with yarmulkes dare not go to some places because of verbal harassment by
young Moroccans. - Intolerant attitudes exist between ethnic minority groups or within an ethnic minor-
ity community (e.g., Berbers and Arabs in the Moroccan community, Hindustanis
and Creoles in the Surinamese community). - In some secular circles, it is not the done thing to say that you are against euthanasia,
donor codicils, or gay marriage.
These are relatively harmless examples compared with the violence committed by young
Moroccans against Jews during the Palestine demonstration in Amsterdam in April 2002,
or compared with the murder of Theo van Gogh by Muhammad Bouyari; freedom of
expression was brutally smothered by someone who considered that his religious feelings
had been insulted and offended. Or take the fact that some members of the lower house
of parliament and other politicians have to go through life surrounded by heavy security,
as their lives are not safe on account of their opinions.
There has undeniably been an atmosphere of fear, alienation, and menace in the
Netherlands since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002
and of Theo van Gogh almost a year ago. But the five major changes that have occurred
in the past forty years and have led to a society in which people face one another as
strangers—as I outlined at the start of my lecture—have also contributed to this atmo-
sphere. These feelings of fear and alienation are being compounded by the fact that people
must confront the nuisance or criminality of groups of young people from ethnic back-
grounds in their own neighborhoods or districts. The same applies to the threat of a
terrorist attack in the Netherlands, which has become a reality since the murder of Theo
van Gogh. So, in a nutshell, this is the explosive cocktail served up with the debate on
minorities in the Netherlands in 2005.
To this must be added the fact that many people in the Netherlands feel threatened
by the presence of Muslims in general. It is not merely the threat of terrorist attacks that
is feared; the fear is deeper and is connected with various factors:
- The fear that the clock will be turned back and that freedoms won in the 1960s and
1970s, particularly in the sexual field (namely cohabiting, more relaxed divorce laws,
homosexuality, abortion, the Pill, ‘‘free’’ sex), in the field of women’s rights, and in
respect of self-determination (euthanasia) will be lost. - Demographic factors: the Dutch population is aging; people are having fewer and
fewer children; and there are more and more single people. At the same time, the
number of non-Western immigrants is growing. In 2005, 10.3 percent of the Dutch
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