Pieter Dorsman looks at how political expediency has replaced political correctness in the Netherlands:

A few weeks ago, Justice Minister Donner – known for his legalistic approach to most issues – said in an interview that if two-thirds of the Dutch population would support it, the Dutch constitution would have to be amended in order to introduce Sharia law. The immediate broad public outburst over the minister’s remarks was, given their factual and legal basis in the principle of majority rule, surprising.

Nobody seemed to realize that when Donner was talking about a nation that opted for abandoning liberal democracy in favor of implementing Sharia it was one that would likely be very different from the one that the Dutch inhabit today. Donner’s scenario was thus highly speculative and even if it were to come to fruition, would, to use Mark Steyn’s estimate, not occur until the year 2050.

Even then the demographic projections of today would have to materialize, and we would have to assume that all Muslim immigrants in the lowlands would remain unintegrated, rejecting all the great things that a free democracy had to offer. So, Donner’s theoretical approach should have given commentators some pause and most could have argued, “Well, the man is technically right, but we will have to ask ourselves if we should get all that excited about it today?” But that didn’t happen.

Donner more than anyone – he was, after all, the man ultimately in charge of the prosecution of Van Gogh’s killer and the jihadist Hofstad Group – should have realized how sensitive an issue like this is. In retrospect he should have qualified his statements to some extent. Still, the reactions to his statement revealed once more that the raw emotions over Islam run very deep in the Netherlands. They show that no matter how excellent the budget surpluses and tax reductions, the Dutch people remain, at the end of the day, deeply fearful over a future nation where Sharia law may indeed start to play a significant role in Dutch life.

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Sharia in the Netherlands