Muslims in the Netherlands have reacted with an understandable mixture of trepidation and anger to the electoral triumph of the far-right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders. Should they be afraid?
‘I don’t know if Muslims are still safe in the Netherlands,’ Habib El Kaddouri, a spokesman for Dutch Moroccans, dramatically informed the news agency ANP. On the face of it, who can blame Muslims for worrying about what Wilders’ unexpected — and frankly stunning — victory might mean for their future prospects. After all, Wilders is no friend of Muslims or Islam. No mosques, Korans or headscarves is the political clarion call of his Freedom Party (PVV). It is unashamedly anti-Islam: ‘We want less Islam in the Netherlands,’ it proclaims. In all, the PVV won 37 seats in Wednesday’s vote — more than any other party, and double its total at the last election in 2021. It is no longer some extremist fringe of no great political consequence.
For Dutch Muslims, Wilders has long been an enemy hiding in plain sight. In 2017, he described the biggest problem facing the Netherlands as ‘Islamisation’. This process, Wilders claimed, constitutes an ‘existential threat’ to ‘our identity, our freedom. Who we are. Everything.’
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He has dismissed Islam as a fascist ideology of ‘a retarded culture’ and a ‘backward religion’. He even compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In 2016, he was convicted of discrimination after calling Moroccans ‘scum’ at a campaign rally, remarks that he has not withdrawn.
Wilders knows what he is doing. Even though there are other migrant groups in the Netherlands, public debate around immigration and multiculturalism has focused on non-Western migrants, mostly those of Moroccan and Turkish origin. This is, in part, because these groups likely account for the growth of Islam within a largely secularised Dutch society: about five per cent of the population in the Netherlands is now estimated to be Muslim, compared to less than one per cent in the 1970s.
Wilders has been successful in tying his twin obsessions of Islam and Muslims to wider voter worries about asylum and immigration, more so at a time of economic hardship, growing social problems and widespread public disenchantment with mainstream politics. This is the context behind the fears of Muslims and others who are dismayed by the steady encroachment of Wilders into the Dutch political mainstream.
What’s harder to calibrate is whether these fears will turn out to be right. On the campaign trial, for example, Wilders softened (by his standards, at least) some of his wilder rhetoric, vowing to push policies ‘within the law and constitution’. He has gone on to stress that he wants to be ‘prime minister for all Dutch regardless of their religion, colour, sexuality, gender or whatever.’
In saying different things to different audiences at different times, Wilders merely reveals himself as a rather traditional politician rather than an anti-establishment firebrand. Indeed some of the reaction to his election triumph may turn out to be mere hyperbole. Rather than signalling the end of the world, it is simply more of the same in the world of Dutch coalition politics.
There is no guarantee that Wilders will be able to form a government with a viable working majority in the Netherlands’ 150-seat parliament. He simply did not win enough seats, so his chances of becoming prime minister remain small. What’s more, Wilders will need to convince at least two more mainstream parties to join him. The centre-right conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won 24 seats, has ruled out formally joining any new cabinet under Wilders. Its leader Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius said her party would consider offering outside support. If Wilders is to lead the country he will have to do so under some form of coalition government, which will require him to jettison most of his radical ideas. A ban on the Koran is not likely to be official government policy any time soon, nor is a referendum on exit (Nexit) from the European Union much of a starter. In reality, Wilders may soon find himself prisoner to a lengthy process of coalition wrangling, the favourite pastime of Dutch politics (it took a record-breaking 299 days to form a government after the March 2021 election). The end result could well be a new coalition of centrist parties or even fresh elections. Hardly a triumph for Wilders, who described his election victory as the ‘most beautiful day of his life’. It might be all downhill from here. Dutch Muslims should take note.
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