The downsides should have been obvious from the start, but were not. These included the fact that ordinary Muslims suddenly had a branch of religious representation inserted between them and their political representatives. The model also favoured those who were already politically active and engaged, while disadvantaging those too busy with their lives or careers to bother with community politics, let alone community politics already tied up by sectarian groups. The model favoured the loud, the extreme, the offended and those like Jamaat that were already organised – a fact that meant their brand of sectarian politics, which was often unpopular in their country of origin, became the mainstream voice for Muslim representation in Europe. Four years after 11 September 2001, Rushdie gave an interview in which he discussed Islamist efforts to dominate in the wake of the Satanic Verses affair, and in particular to exclude ‘progressive’ Muslim voices. ‘People weren’t interested in hearing about this at the time,’ he pointed out. ‘And then along comes 9/11, and now many people say that, in hindsight, the fatwa was the prologue and this is the main event.’21

But even before that ‘main event’ there were warning signs across Europe that the continent’s twenty-first century was going to be consistently entangled with the demands of one religion in particular, because its adherents had been brought to Europe in such large numbers. One country that had a noticeable head start in these arguments was Holland.

8. Prophets without honour

8

Prophets without honour

When labour in the Netherlands was scarce, in the 1960s, immigration into the country had mainly come from Morocco and Turkey. The immigrants brought their wives and families and by the 1990s the continuing immigration and higher birth rates among these communities meant that they were growing at a faster rate than any other community in the country. The Dutch government’s policy had been to emphasise ‘integration without prejudice to everyone’s own identity’. The few people in public life who objected to the government’s immigration and integration policies during this period were not treated kindly. In the 1980s one maverick politician, Hans Janmaat, proclaimed that the Netherlands was full and expressed himself opposed to the multicultural model, insisting that immigrants should either assimilate into the Dutch way of life or leave. Not only was Janmaat politically shunned but in 1986 left-wing activists set fire to a hotel in Kedichem in the south of the country, where his small party was holding a meeting. Janmaat’s wife was among those forced to jump from the building to save their lives. She lost a leg in the process.