Use violence against Muslims, says Van Gogh’s former mentor

Hans JansenDutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Jansen. “The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means”, he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of “a peaceful enclave” who have, however, “forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence”. A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful “will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful”, as the Arabist writes.

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

“We do not realise that the threat of violence, and violence itself, can only be stopped through the controlled and cunning use of violence”. The Dutch secret service (AIVD) should get a special department “that gets its hands dirty, if need be”.

Jansen is an authority on the Arabic language and the Koran. Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim terrorist in 2004, employed him as his tutor on Islam.

NIS News Bulletin, 24 March 2007