Pim Fortuyn

Dr. Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn, known as Pim Fortuyn (surname pronounced somewhat like for-TOYN, IPA: {{IPA|}}), (February 19, 1948 – May 6, 2002), was a controversial politician in the Netherlands who formed his own party List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). He was assassinated during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign by Volkert van der Graaf, a white collar left-wing environmentalist. Fortuyn could perhaps best be described as a liberal right-wing populist, though some of his ideas were rather leftist; he was in favour of free public transportation and reducing the size of the Dutch military.

Views on Islam and Immigration

In August 2001, Fortuyn was quoted in the Rotterdams Dagblad newspaper, saying, among other things, "I am also in favour of a cold war with Islam. I see Islam as an extraordinary threat, as a hostile religion."

Related Topics:
2001 - Cold war - 1

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On February 9, 2002, he made further controversial statements in a Dutch newspaper, this time the Volkskrant. He said that the Netherlands, with a population of 16 million, had enough inhabitants, and therefore, the practice of allowing as much as 40,000 asylum-seekers into the country each year had to be stopped (however, the actual number was not that high and already falling at that time). He claimed that if he became part of the next government, he would pursue an exceptionally restrictive immigration policy (but also granting citizenship to a large group of illegal immigrants). Furthermore, he considered Article 7 of the constitution, which asserts freedom of speech, of more importance than Article 1, which forbids discrimination. However, he distanced himself from Hans Janmaat of the Centrum Democraten, who in the 1980s wanted to remove all foreigners from the country and was repeatedly convicted for discrimination and hate speech.

Related Topics:
Volkskrant - 2 - Freedom of speech - Discrimination - Hans Janmaat - Centrum Democraten

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Fortuyn proposed that all people who already resided in the Netherlands would be able to stay, but he emphasised the need of the immigrants to adopt the Dutch society's consensus on human rights as their own. He said "If it were legally possible, I'd say no more Muslim will get in here", but justified this claiming that the influx of Muslims would threaten freedoms in the liberal Dutch society. He thought muslim culture had never undergone a process of modernisation and therefore still lacked acceptance of democracy and women's, gays' and lesbians' as well as minority rights in general, and feared it would dismiss the Dutch legal system in favour of the shari'a law, which calls for the stoning of adulterers or removing the hands of thieves.

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When asked by the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant whether he hated Islam, he replied: "I don't hate Islam. I consider it a backward culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's just terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old Reformed Protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have norms and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in that Muslim culture. Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of. And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much."

Related Topics:
Volkskrant - Reformed Protestants - 3

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Fortuyn was author of the 1997 book Against the Islamicisation of Our Culture.

Related Topics:
1997 - Against the Islamicisation of Our Culture

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