Glowing approval as Dutch government gets first Muslims.

Politics: Interesting spin put on by Arthur Max as this is a sign of Muslim intergration into Dutch society, but is it progress or the numbers game coming into play?

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – As a city councilman, Ahmed Aboutaleb, the son of a Moroccan clergyman, helped immigrants find jobs, put their toddlers in school to learn Dutch and doled out stern advice: integrate or leave. On Thursday, Aboutaleb is being sworn in as a junior minister in the Dutch Cabinet. Joining him will be Nebahat Albayrak, a Turkish-born member of parliament. They are the first Muslims to reach the inner core of political power in the Netherlands, and are among only a few immigrants to rise to even second-rung Cabinet positions in Western Europe.

Nice, but here is where the spin goes out of control.

“This is the new Europe, and the Netherlands is setting the example,” said Sadik Harchaoui, a Moroccan who heads the national Institute of Multicultural Development. “This is the moment when Dutch citizens of migrant backgrounds can take these kind of jobs, not only in government but in business,” he said. But he said there is a long way to go. “In 15 to 20 years it will be a normal thing.” While statistics are difficult to come by, Muslim integration does appear to be happening in many areas of the Netherlands. In Dutch municipal elections last year, the number of city council members from Turkey and Morocco, the Muslim countries with the largest populations in the Netherlands, grew by 62 percent, to 223 from 139, according to a Dutch research group. Immigrants from those countries in the 150-seat national parliament rose to seven from five. Aboutaleb and Albayrak belong to the Labor Party, which draws a disproportionately large immigrant vote in national and local elections.

Now even this should raise a couple of eyebrows to say this is merely integration by Muslims adjusting to Dutch norms and culture while going to vote. This section by Max dismisses the clash of civilizations talk with a touch of sneering at Europeans not realizing the new reality.

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States and deadly bombings in London and Madrid, studies have focused on an intensifying clash between Europeans and a flood of immigrants who hold fast to their own cultures. But some say a new reality is emerging, even though many Europeans do not realize it. Moroccan-born Khalid Boutachekourt, 33, advises corporations on employment practices. He sees people of his age and background moving up as businesses reach out to a new client base of immigrants.

All well and good, problem is as pointed out by this Reuters piece covering the local elections last year, this has less to do with integration and more of just an emerging minority majority.

ROTTERDAM (Reuters) - Immigrants in the Netherlands have had enough. Four years ago, populist Pim Fortuyn promised voters in Rotterdam he would stop the building of a huge new mosque near the city's Feyenoord soccer stadium. Today, the country's biggest mosque is nearing completion and immigrants have helped oust Fortuyn's party from power. While immigrants in France have expressed frustration by rioting, in the Netherlands they are using the ballot box. "People are saying we are here for 30 years and we have worked hard and done our best to integrate so what gives them the right to talk about us this way and to hurt us?" said Brahim Bourzik, a Moroccan-born former member of Rotterdam's council. "You cannot say we have a football (soccer) stadium but you cannot have a mosque because they are big," he said. "Why can't you have a very big beautiful building? So it is a mosque, so what?" In local elections in March, immigrants voted in droves for the opposition Labor Party, helping remove right-wing councils in Rotterdam and elsewhere, a warning shot for the center-right government ahead of the general election in 2007. About 10 percent of the Dutch population of 16 million is defined as having "non-Western" roots, 1 million of them Muslims, mostly from Turkey and Morocco. Among the young in the big cities such as Rotterdam, immigrants are in the majority. Bourzik said the dispute over possibly stripping prominent Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali of Dutch citizenship after the Somali-born member of parliament admitted lying to win asylum showed the need for immigrants to fight for their rights. "There will be a day in Holland, and in Rotterdam, when you cannot act without these groups. If you look at Rotterdam now, it is 47 percent immigrants and we know that immigrants are the only ones having babies," he said.

Read the whole article and you realize what a nice spin job Arthur Max puts on this "new reality" It has less to do with immigrants coming into the Dutch society and more to do with just having more people.