http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=8e9051e3-ed1f-48d8-998a-6ae0c623e12aThis week, elections in the Netherlands seemed to reinforce the growing distrust between the native and immigrant populations when the Freedom Party, a previously insignificant far-right fringe group, won nine seats in parliament.
Led by Geert Wilders, a strident radical who goes out of his way to insult Muslims and warn that the Netherlands is about to be engulfed by an "Islamic tsunami," the Freedom Party is now the fifth- largest in the Dutch parliament.
Mr. Wilders is the political heir of Pim Fortuyn, a populist politician who campaigned on immigration issues and was assassinated in 2002 just before elections.
This time around, Mr. Wilders called for an end to immigration and demanded bans on building religious schools and mosques.
"We need more decency in this country, more education and less Islam," he recently told Dutch television.
"We have had enough Islam in the Netherlands. I believe Islam is a violent religion and the Koran is a violent book. There is no such thing as moderate Islam."
Similar far-right movements are flourishing, along with large Muslim immigrant populations, in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy.
In France, one citizen in five voted for right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election.
Now, Nicolas Sarkozy, the hardline Interior Minister who hopes to represent the centre-right in next April's presidential contest, has begun to court the anti-immigrant vote, unveiling a proposed immigration act that is a virtual copy of the Dutch regulations.
"The French way of integration no longer works," he said recently, referring to last year's riots in immigrant neighbourhoods, the worst civil unrest in the country in decades.
But it's not just the far right that is declaring the death of multiculturalism.
Britain's ruling labor party has abandoned the laissez-faire pluralism of the past and introduced a U.S.-style citizenship ceremony, complete with declarations of loyalty. Naturalizing immigrants must also pass language and citizenship tests.
More recently, Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary, created a huge controversy when he declared he wanted Muslim women to abandon the veil.