Meet the Dutch Muslim Writer Who Predicted Europe’s Islamist Problem
In France, the baton to lead the “clash of civilizations” foretold by Samuel Huntington in 2002 has been taken up by Marine Le Pen, who heads the National Front and is working to galvanize French voters with her anti-Islamist rhetoric.
While Huntington has long been credited for predicting the clash of civilizations now unfolding in Europe, it was a Dutch writer of Pakistani origin, using the pseudonym “Mohamed Rasoel,” who on March 6, 1989 wrote in the newspaper NRC Handelsblad about his fears of a disaster unfolding inside Dutch society.
Later expanded as his book De ondergang van Nederland — Land der naïeve dwazen (The Decline of the Netherlands — Land of the Naive Fools), Rasoel warned the open-door immigration policy in Holland of allowing radical, anti-western Islamists to settle in segregated ghettoes would one day trigger serious conflict.
Its publication created a firestorm storm after the writer appeared on several Dutch TV talk shows, as jihadis called for Rasoel’s head and he had to go into hiding under police protection.
His book was reprinted several times and soon sold out, but not before it was essentially banned and the author fined $4,000 for “incitement to hatred on grounds of race or religion.”