What went wrong in the Netherlands?

Abstract

If I really would know the answer to that question, I would not be standing here. I would probably be sitting, in whatever capacity, in the office of the Prime Minister. But even someone who does not really know the answer to this question may nevertheless be able to analyze a few factors that contribute to the present mess we are in. The religion of Islam, and the Dutch reactions to it, are definitely parts of the problem. Islamic communities, if sufficiently large, develop two types of elite. I use `elite' here not only in its meaning of `a group that has a power out of proportion to its size', but also in the meaning of ‘a small group that thinks of itself as superior to all others'. The first elite are the Muslim religious professionals, the religious leaders, usually called imams in this country, but they are better known under their Iranian name, the Ayatollahs.