Unsuspected victims of Salafism in the Netherlands: two professors of Tilburg University

What was labelled as Muslim fanaticism, or 'Islamism' now is called Salafism in the Netherlands.
Maurits Berger of Amsterdam University was the leader of  research term, reading and summarising 46 studies on Salafism for the period 2003-2018. The quite sensational conclusion was that the great majority of Salafi Muslims are quite Dutch citizens, rejecting terrorism of jihadi fighters. They accept the Dutch democratic rules, can sometimes utter strong statements, but do not practice these harsh words (so about the right of men to physically punish their spouses: it is said, but not or seldom practised; death sentence for apostacy: not done!). Their number is also decreasing.
But with this summary of 46 studies, the debate has not yet finished!
In early September 2018 Mohammed Soroush defended his doctoral dissertation on Salafist Movements in the Netherlands at Tilburg University. His research was heavily criticised, because of the soft and unclear definition of Salafism. ‘Salafi people seek confrontation with Dutch society’ was one of the statements. They do not accept democratic rules or society in general and want to live in a separate community, apart from Dutch society in general. This was not accepted by colleagues in the Dutch academic world. Tilburg University even installed a committee to scrutinise the dissertation again and it came with a very negative conclusion. Mohammed Soroush cannot further spread his dissertation, promotor Ruben Gowricharn lost his right to be a promotor and Copromotor Jan-Jaap de Ruijter is officially reprimanded for being a poor tutor. This is very unusual in the academic world of the Netherlands. The main criticism of the dissertation was that its classification of Salafism is not well defined, taken too broad. Besides, the fieldwork was executed in a sloppy way: organisations that were very only during two short visits were classified as Salafist without a good argumentation and with poor sources.

The pictures: above we see Professor Ruben Gowricharn in happier days as the promotor at the PhD ceremony of Gürkan Celik on "The Gülen Movement. Building social cohesion through dialogue and education". Below Jan Jaap de Ruiter.