Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, thinks he knows what has gone wrong in the Netherlands. He wrote recently: "By treating migrants as unwelcome strangers we risk turning people who came to us desperately wanting to be friends into the enemies we fear… the grim news from the Netherlands shows that the Dutch have succeeded in doing exactly that."
I think Phillips is wrong. The Netherlands has experienced an act of international terrorism that cannot be explained by Dutch circumstances alone. The man who killed the filmmaker Theo van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, and until three years ago was apparently well integrated. Not everything is known yet, but it seems that the combination of 9/11 and the death of his mother made him receptive to extremism. Mohammed B, as he is usually referred to, participated in a fundamentalist network inspired by a travelling Syrian Koran-teacher.
Politicians from right and left have explained the murder in terms of failed integration policies. From the right, it was said that the murder proved the failure of multiculturalism and that Dutch society should be much tougher on what it demands of the Muslim minority. From the left, it was argued by some, echoing Trevor Phillips, that the marginalisation of Muslims was in part responsible for the murder.
I think both views are wrong. The murder is more usefully seen as the Dutch version of the attacks on the World Trade Centre or Madrid. The motives of the murderer, and the way he was recruited and inspired, makes 11/2 our own 9/11. Militant Islamists recruit both well-integrated and badly integrated youngsters; they murder in Bali and Casablanca as they do in Amsterdam. And they have, incidentally, murdered many more Muslims than non-Muslims. If we see the murder as mainly the result of failed integration policies, we do exactly what the terrorists want: we place them alongside the genuinely marginalised Muslim youngsters in our society. But the truth is that they hate those youths as much as they hate everyone else who wants to live in our free, modern society.
If this analysis is right, then the first answer to this new threat to Dutch society must be a purely pragmatic one: strengthen the police and intelligence efforts to capture the extremists. Here, it is vital that all Dutch citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims, believe that the Dutch government represents them and the Dutch police and intelligence services protect them. Only then will it be harder for extremists to recruit youngsters and exploit feelings of alienation.
Integration was not the problem in this case, but it is part of the solution. We do need a further strengthening of our effort to integrate ethnic minorities into our society, to make them part of the "we" that unites to fight the "them" who threaten our core values.
But integration is not only important in winning that fight against terrorism. If we do not manage diversity intelligently, then slowly, imperceptibly, support for a good society with a high degree of welfare-sharing and political participation will be replaced with something more fragmented and introverted (as David Goodhart argued in Prospect, February 2004).
The Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan argues that the welfare state is based not on altruism, but on enlightened self-interest: we all run the same risks so we might as well collectively insure ourselves against those risks. We do not like to live in neighbourhoods with a high chance of running into beggars and homeless people all the time. We do not want to live in houses that may be broken into by bored youngsters - so let us educate them and improve their life chances.
Solidarity is not paid for by the rich but by the middle class, by fairly ordinary people. They continue to pay because they believe that at some point they may become the ones who need it. A more diverse society makes it harder to sustain support for this type of solidarity. Some say this is because we have lost a common culture: "Why should I make an effort for people I don't know, don't understand or who don't do things the way I would?"
Yes, it is harder to organise solidarity in the absence of a common culture, but it is harder still in the absence of a common interest. If welfare state solidarity stems from a perceived common interest because we all run the same risks, then the key question becomes: do we still all run the same risks in life?
Mark Elchardus, the Belgian sociologist, says no. He points to the fact that those with a low level of education run a higher risk of becoming unemployed, becoming sick or being in other ways marginalised. And if those on either side of the dividing line between well educated and poorly educated, employed and unemployed, healthy and sick, without a criminal record and with a criminal record, overlap too often with ethnic divisions between white and black, western origin or non-western origin, then the danger is that the better off will think of collective solidarity not as enlightened self-interest, but as an arrangement by which "we" pay for "them."
This is not only a problem for the welfare state, but also for the rule of law. For example, we support the presumption of innocence in a court case partly because we ourselves could end up in court unfairly accused. If, however, in a more diverse society, the risk of being suspected of a crime is much higher for citizens of non-western origin than for citizens of western origin, then sooner or later the latter may agree to more repressive policies because they believe it will affect the former and not themselves.
This is exactly what may now be happening in the Netherlands. Discussions focus on the use of anonymous information from the intelligence services in court, and on whether it should be made possible to prosecute extremists for what they think or believe rather than for what they do or tell others to do. These measures are new to the Netherlands but are very popular, because most people believe they will only affect "others."
The integration debate is different in all European countries, although there is also some overlap. Migrants in Britain tend to be better integrated - a common language is one reason, and the more deregulated labour market, which makes it easier to get low-paying jobs, may be another.
Most recent migrants into the Netherlands, Muslim and non-Muslim, did not speak the language when they arrived. This was not the case for migrants from our former colonies, but they were quickly outnumbered by asylum-seekers and "guest workers," mainly from Turkey and Morocco. Many of these migrants still do not speak Dutch and the extent to which their children do varies. Moreover, studies have shown that, unlike in Britain, the net economic benefits of migration to Dutch society over the last 40 years have been negative. Disproportionate numbers of migrants are unemployed and on social security. "Marriage migration" of poorly educated young women, often illiterate, has reinforced this effect.
This means that diversity in the Netherlands too often means that members of migrant families have a far higher chance of being poorly educated, unemployed, sick or in possession of a criminal record. Failing integration is therefore not just a problem in itself but is also a direct threat to maintaining solidarity and the rule of law in the Dutch welfare state. How should we respond to this challenge?
The first challenge to address is the absence of common cultural values that may endanger the willingness of the middle classes to pay for solidarity. Those who favour more economic migration into western societies, and even those who simply consider it inevitable, will only be politically credible if they are also credible on the core contract our society requires all citizens to accept: civil liberties, including freedom of expression; the equal treatment of men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals; the separation of church and state; the principle of democratic government and the rule of law.
These core principles are not fixed for all time, but we will only be believable defenders of migration if we are believable defenders of this contract.
The second challenge to address is the absence of a common interest. If we all run roughly the same risks in life, it will be much easier to find support for collective sharing arrangements. That requires working towards the classic progressive goal of emancipating and developing those who lag behind. We are, of course, aiming at a society where, whether you are black or white, Christian or Muslim, everyone is an equal citizen with a decent chance in life. Only then will collective arrangements be seen as arrangements that are paid for by all of us and benefit all of us, regardless of origin. And only then will the rule of law be seen as an arrangement that protects all of us, regardless of origin.
The third challenge is to realise how difficult this is going to be. Shouting out that migration is inevitable and that in ten, 20 or 30 years' time we will need migrant workers does not make the task any easier. Integration requires an effort from all of us: those whose families have lived here for centuries, those who have lived here for a generation or two and those who have just arrived. It requires an effort from employers, schools, politicians, spiritual leaders, journalists, building companies and many more. Every society has limits to its capacity to absorb newcomers. Successful integration therefore requires a restrictive migration policy, because our capacity to integrate and emancipate is not limitless.
Progressive politicians could leave this challenge to others. We could leave the dilemmas unacknowledged. Those of us on the centre-left in the Netherlands know where that got us: look at the historic defeat of the left in the 2002 elections, look at the way politicians from the right reacted, look at the hardening of the debate on migration that followed, look at how little is left of the tolerance and liberty that Dutch society was once famous for.
Leaving this debate to the conservatives may feel comfortable because we will not have to disappoint anybody and it will enable us to continue promising everything to everybody: solidarity and diversity; the rule of law and multiculturalism; and a relaxed migration policy. But let's not fool ourselves. This will not help those who count on us. It won't help the newcomers to our society who are promised a future that we cannot provide. And it won't help the long-term citizens who either fool themselves that diversity causes no problems at all or who will suffer from the slow erosion of collective arrangements. That is not what I want. This debate cannot be ignored by the progressive side of politics. It is our debate too.
