Since the beginning of the new millenium, a heated debate has been taking place in the Netherlands on multi-cultural society. After the political revolution that Pim Fortuyn caused in 2002, people's ideas are changing. Consensus on multi-cultural society as a successful project disappears to make room for rather negative evaluations. Politicians from different ideologies claim that multi-cultural society is a failure. Politicians, opinion leaders and media icons are involved in this loud debate, which cannot be seen loose from the debate on the status of the European Union and the position the Netherlands hold in it. Serious doubts concerning the future of the European Union have led to the rejection of the proposal for the European Constitution on June 1st 2005.

In this article the 21st century debate on the relation between church and state in the Netherlands will be placed in an historical context followed by the presentation of some considerations on the issue of the relation between the internal debate on multiculturalism, emphasising the role of Islam, and the debate on the position and future of the Netherlands in the European Union. Islam is a new religion in the Netherlands but Islam isn't the first religion that tries to find a place in Dutch society. From the late Middle Ages onwards there have been different groups of Jews coming to the Low Countries. In the course of ages they underwent processes of so called acculturation. In the 17th and 18th century Jews were a group in a disadvantaged position. But they were not the only ones. The Catholic part of the people also had a legally inferior position in that period. In the years afterwards other cultural groups came to look for a place in the Netherlands. In the 19th and 20th century it concerned people from the former Dutch Indies. Later people arrived from Surinam and the Dutch Antilles and after that it were among others labourers that came from Turkey and Morocco, both of which are Islamic countries.

In Turkey small minorities of Jews and Christians live as well. The great majority of the people has an Islamic background though.