The One Netherlands party presented its list of candidates today and it includes one Muslim, Hikmat Mahawat Khan as well as one candidate with a Turkish background, Secil Arda. Khan is already billed in Dutch media as a ‘critical Muslim’:

“Muslims will have to take a more critical look at themselves, argues Khan. “Some demand to apply for a job wearing a burka and if they don’t get the job they expect to get welfare benefits” was a comment he made to newspaper Trouw recently.

He is furthermore angered over the anti-gay attitudes of Moroccan youths in Amsterdam, radical mosques and more recently about the hospitality with which Holland welcomed the radical imam Mohammed Anas Noorani Siddiqui.

So, One Netherlands leader Pastors not only distances himself from the irrational and xenophobic zealots that have emerged on the right, he positions immigrants as instrumental to a new and possibly more creative approach to integration. Decades of hands-off, soft multiculturalism has created disengagement, deprivation and finally, radicalism. Among the rubble of these policies we will have to find the talent that is prepared to make hard choices and willing to roll up its sleeves. They are not going to go away so what better approach is there than to get them on board to help build a new Europe. Confrontation and forced alienation can never be an option.