As you take a stroll on Stationsweg, a non-descript street in The Hague close to China­town, you pass a Muslim gro­cery store, a mosque and an Is­lamic ladies’ garment shop in quick succession.

Muslim wo­men clad in hijabs and black flow­ing robes and Pakistani men wear­ing salwar kameez suits and embroidered kufi hats glide by a smattering of Dutch and South American Caucasians and Africans. By all appearances, this somewhat scruffy district in The Ha­gue – the seat of government in the Netherlands – seems inhabited main­ly by Muslim immigrants.

If a controversial Dutch politician nam­ed Geert Wilders fares well in the June 9 general election, he will not only transform the political landscape of  this  bastion of  multiculturalism and tolerance but send shivers of fear cour­sing through the Mus­lim community. Wilders, the leader of the Freedom party, known in Dutch as the PVV, scored major gains in municipal elections in March, win­ning the greatest num­ber of seats in the town of Almere and finishing se­cond in The Hague.

Last year, the PVV ­– which has nine of 150 seats in the Netherlands’ parliament – won four out of 25 Dutch seats in European parliamentary elections. In next week’s national election, the PVV is poised to win 27 seats, giving Wilders, who aspires to be prime minister, an opportunity to be a kingmaker in a future coalition government.

Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Harry Kney-Tal, suggested that Wilders is a rising star in the Dutch political firmament and “will be bigger in the future.” Wilders’ primary opponents will be the incumbent prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende of the Christian Democratic Alliance and Marius Job Cohen of the Dutch Labour party.

Muslims, not to mention liberals and social democrats, will be sorely disappointed and  quite apprehensive should Wilders hold the balance of power following the election. A libertarian who compares Islam to fas­cism and the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Wilders is probably best known as the screenwriter and producer of Fitna, a short, polarizing film that links Qur’anic verses and radical Islamic precepts with terrorism and oppression.

Although he denies being a fas­cist, rejects comparisons likening him to French far-rightist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and considers Britain’s Margaret Thatcher his role model, critics have ac­cused him of being an anti-Mus­lim demagogue who would stir so­cial discord if given the chance.

Wilders’ harsh critique of Islam underpins their concerns. Claiming he bears no personal animus against Mus­lims, Wilders, who is unabash­edly pro-Israel, says, “I don’t hate Muslims, I hate Islam.”

Proceeding from the assumption that moderate Islam is non-existent, he believes that Is­lam is as much a religion as an ideology. As he recently told a Canadian correspondent from the Globe and Mail, “As I see it, the aim of the Islamic ideology is to dominate and to submit the western societies to their belief, and this is unlike the other religions. I say that Islam is not another branch on the tree of religions. It has to be put in the corner of totalitarian ideologies. That’s why I compare it with communism and fascism.”

To Wilders, the Qur’an “incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our legal order.” Having urged Muslims to “tear out half of the Qur’an if they [wish] to stay in the Netherlands,” Wilders has branded Moham­med the Prophet as “the devil” who would be “hunted down today as a terrorist.”

Claiming that Islam is “a Trojan-horse” doctrine that commands Muslims to immigrate to non-Muslim countries, procreate and take control, Wilders holds that Muslim immigration to the Netherlands should be halted and that settled Muslim immigrants from such countries as Turkey, Morocco, Af­ghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan should be paid to leave.

In a reference to the nearly one million Muslims in this nation of about 16 million inhabitants, he has said, “Take walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country.”

Wilders is of the view that a five-year ban should be imposed on the construction of mosques and Islamic schools, that foreign imams should not be permitted to preach in existing mos­ques, that radical mosques should be closed, that Mus­lim extremists should be expelled and that a clause in the Dutch constitution guaranteeing equality should be replaced by a clause underscoring the cultural dominance of Ju­deo-Christian values.

By all accounts, Wilders formed the core of his beliefs while travelling in Israel and the Arab world. He has been quoted as saying, “We [in the West] are all Israel” and “Israel is the West’s first line of defence” against radical Islam.

It also seems clear that events in the Nether­lands and the rest of Europe influenced him as well.

In all probability, Wilders was deeply affected by the murder of the Dutch politician Wilhelmus Simon Petrus “Pim” Fortuyn, who brand­ed Islam as “a backward culture” and “an extraordinary threat” and called for an end to Mus­­lim immigration.

Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002. His  assassin, Volkert van der Graaf, explained he had murdered For­tuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as “scape­goats.”

The assassination two years later of Theo van Gogh, a film director who made Submission, a documentary critical of the treatment of women in Islam, was probably another galvanzing event.

His murderer, Mohammed Bou­yeri, a 26-year-old Dutch citizen of Moroccan des­cent, left a note on Van Gogh’s body condemning western governments, Jews and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Muslim Dutch feminist writer and critic of Islam due to speak in Toronto on June 8. She wrote the screenplay for Submission, worked briefly with Wilders and currently lives in the United States.

In the wake of Van Gogh’s murder, the mi­n­ister of immigration commissioned an in­quiry into the radicalization of young Dutch Muslims. A report concluded that many of them feel disconnected from their immigrant parents and Dutch society.

The violent deaths of Fortuyn and Van Gogh heightened the growing debate in Eu­rope on the integration, of lack thereof, of the Muslim minority.

Last November, a majority of Swiss citizens voted to ban the construction of min­arets. Two months ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would submit a bill to ban the wearing of the full veil in pub­­lic places.

In the Netherlands, these issues form part of the current election campaign. The Dutch Labour party, led by Cohen,  the fourth Jewish mayor of Amsterdam,  is widely seen as a mo­d­erating voice in the de­bate over Muslim integration.

Wil­ders, who appointed the Jewish candidate Giddy Markuszower to run on his electoral list, has dismissed Cohen as a throwback to outdated multiculturalism.

The 40,000 Jews of the Netherlands are  watch­ing developments carefully.

Ruben Vis, the secretary general of the Amsterdam-based Central Jewish Organization, disagrees with Wilders’ position that Mus­­lim immigration should be halted. “That’s racism,” he said.

But Vis – whose uncle Leo­nard Vis lives in Toronto – is concerned by the physical and verbal attacks by Muslims on Jews, a troubling phenomenon that escalated during Is­rael’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009. “We face some problems from Muslims in the Netherlands,” he said.

The Dutch prime minister concurs, having been quoted as saying that Jews and Muslims need to work together to ease tensions.