Assumptions

Imagine, for a moment, that Amsterdam is an independent state rather than the capital of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Picture Amsterdam as the Mecca of football, Ajax as a cult that produces footballers as sons of gods. Ajax, revered and observed, defiant in the eyes of those abroad who kick and head balls.

Once imagined, you can see how countless conflicts outside the stadium would arise, and violence against people and buildings would become a given. A given around which a society must be built. Let that sink in. And of course, with all respect for the decades of success Ajax has achieved, the idea that Ajax is the golden standard of football can only be established through a lack of knowledge, a lack of observation, and a lack of representation of all those abroad who kick and head balls.

And this brings me to the demographic proportions in the Netherlands. When the Netherlands offers settlement rights to large numbers of Muslims from similar societies, a society emerges that is not influenced by Islam itself but by the culture that, in the majority of incoming Muslims, provides a ‘standard’ against which Islam is measured. Once imagined, you can see how countless conflicts begin to shape life, and Islam is suddenly placed at the center as a standard.

But just as with Ajax: Ajax is no supplier of sons of gods, the influx of a single branch of Islam, and the absence of other branches, can never be equated with Islam itself. And so? A Walhalla for critics inside and outside politics, inside and outside the media, behaving like verbal hooligans.

A given that the majority of Muslims recognize and keep their distance from. And that is what a wise person does: to recognize and acknowledge that such nonsense does not ask for involvement, and simply goes on to ‘keep playing football.’

And so it becomes clear that it is not merely about Ajax or Islam, but about a recurring pattern. A pattern in which a part is elevated to the whole, in which a single voice is inflated into a chorus, in which a single misstep is magnified into a standard. The same mechanism that turns politicians into caricatures, that reduces media to echoes of their own framing, that traps individuals in labels that never do justice to their humanity. It is a game of projection and reduction, a game that challenges society time and again to choose: to join the hysteria or to acknowledge that reality is always broader, richer, and more complex than the hooligans would have us believe. And those who see this, those who refuse to be swept along, choose to keep playing – to live itself, beyond the nonsense, beyond the imposed standards.