Those amongst us who resort to the threat or use of violence to win an argument number a few score and their supporters, no more than a few hundred. Yet such is the climate of cowardice in
The threat posed by these “Islamic” terrorists is nothing as compared with the armed might of Spain or Louis XIV’s France. The Dutch did not flinch against the Spanish or French and if the challenge ever arose again, they would not do so in the future, either. The problem is that whereas it is easy to mobilise against an aggressive foreign power, it is not so easy when dealing with an aggressive cancer in your own society. Dutch silence is not a sign of weakness or of submission but of indecision. How do you deal with your own nationals who do not wish to live by your rules, but theirs? It is their democratic right to agitate for a society in which they wish to live and in which they wish us to live.
The Dutch know the answer is simple, though unpalatable. At the risk of alienating their minority Muslim population and perhaps provoking a violent backlash, the secular Dutch must campaign vigorously for a society that remains forged in their image. They know that they must confront and challenge the fundamentalists. They must hunt down the terrorists and bring them to justice. They are gathering the resolve to do what must be done … and so must we, for their battle is ours.