[1][2] Following the murders of Pim Fortuyn (in 2002) and Theo van Gogh (in 2004) the political debate on the role of multiculturalism in the Netherlands reached new heights.
There was low pressure to culturally assimilate, it was easy to gain citizenship and government agencies translated documents and services for immigrants who lacked Dutch language skills.
[4] After the Afrikaanderwijk riots the Rotterdam municipality adopted a 5% policy: people of Mediterranean, Surinamese and Antillean background should not exceed 5% of a neighbourhood population.
[5] Multiculturalism was adopted as a government policy by the Netherlands in the early 1980s,[6] largely from a conviction that a quick assimilation of Muslim immigrants was impossible, and to stimulate remigration.
[7] The Second Oil Crisis led to a collapse of Dutch industrial labour and caused massive unemployment for the former "guest workers", who were not easily integrated into the newly developing postindustrial society.
The waves should be discerned from a general high and rising 'background' level of labour immigration from European countries, that accounts for the majority of people settling in the Netherlands.
[citation needed] The anti-immigration Centrumpartij had a limited electoral success since 1982, but its leader Hans Janmaat was ostracized, and fined for his discriminatory statements and promotion of ethnic cleansing.
[4] The multicultural policy consensus down-played negative aspects of the presence of immigrant cultural communities, and stressed beneficial effects.
[12] Immigration transformed Dutch cities especially: in Amsterdam, 55% of young people are of non-Western origin (mainly Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish).
He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants.
Cliteur lists infanticide, torture, slavery, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty.
Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and the Ku Klux Klan.
[17] He was assassinated during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign by a militant animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf, who claimed in court to murdering Fortuyn to stop him exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" in seeking political power.
The new cabinet, under premier Jan-Peter Balkenende instituted a hard-line assimilation policy, enforced by fines and deportation, accompanied by far tighter controls on immigration and asylum.
Piet Hein Donner, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in the Rutte cabinet, said that "Dutch culture, norms and values must be dominant".
Threatened with death and heavily guarded, she spent most of her time in the United States, and moved to Washington in 2006 to work for the American Enterprise Institute.
In 2006, she also expressed support for the Eurabia thesis — that mainstream politicians are conspiring to fully Islamise Europe —, and that its non-Muslim inhabitants will be reduced to dhimmitude.
The proposals illustrate the "post-multicultural" climate: a loyalty oath for all citizens, legal prohibition of public use of a foreign language, cessation of all immigration, expulsion of criminal, unemployed or not integrated immigrants, withdrawal from the European Union, a compulsory (non-military) national service;[24] a ban on the construction of mosques,[25] closure of all Islamic schools,[26] a closure of all mosques, or a complete ban on Islam.
[31] In Amsterdam's secondary schools, about half of the Moroccan minority does not identify with the Netherlands: they see their identity as "Muslim", and regularly express anti-Western views.