Guest
Column: Going Dutch - The Psychometric Tool Against Jihadism in the West
by Esam Sohail
Special to IPT News
November 3, 2014
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 The famed laissez
faire liberalism of the Dutch is only matched by their flinty
commonsense. Two years after the brutal 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van
Gogh at the hand of Islamist jihadists in Amsterdam, the Dutch government
quietly introduced a form of personality testing for immigrants from
certain backgrounds who wished to make the Netherlands their permanent
abode. By showing a set of short video clips highlighting the culture of
diversity, secularism, free speech, and gender equality to potential
migrants from very different cultures and then allowing responsible
officers to evaluate reactions of the audience, the Dutch government made a
very business-like decision to ensure a proper fit for a person to his/her
new home. The government of the Netherlands continues to monitor this new
screening tool which went into effect as a pilot project in 2006 and will
likely be rolled out on a larger scale in the years ahead.
Immigration, especially of people with high education and in their prime
working years, remains vital to the economic prowess and social welfare
systems of most developed countries. That said, that necessity is better
coupled with wisdom. With tens of thousands of people from the Middle East,
Africa, and South Asia moving to the Anglophone countries every year, the
United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia do not have the luxury of
waiting to institute large scale and focused immigrant testing that small
Holland does. While security safeguards have been heightened in all of
these desired immigration destinations, the common flaw remains the same
across the board in the English speaking democracies: all potential
immigrants are treated to the same battery of standardized screening
procedures which often evaluate the Christian fleeing victimization in
Bangladesh and Pakistan along the same lines as an Islamist engineer
wishing to plant the flag of Islam for himself and his children in Canada.
Neither the standard questions of the type "have you ever been part of
a terror group" nor the routine check of law enforcement agency
reports is going to do much diagnostic good in this regard. The Dutch
figured this out finally and, instead, decided to tentatively use the
science of psychometrics to detect potential trouble before it becomes
actual trouble.
Let us be brutally honest about immigration from countries where Muslims
are in big majorities. Almost all of these countries have cultures where
Salafi Islamism is ascendant, where free speech and gender equality are
increasingly dismissed as parts of some Western plot, and anti-Semitism is
a staple for the most popular conspiracy theories. Not all immigrants from
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Malaysia, or the Arab world adhere to such
Islamist tendencies. But many, including quite a few professional and
educated types, do. And these are the ones that can quickly become the
transmitters, organizers, sympathizers, funders, and even purveyors of
jihadism in the civilized world (remember Palestinian Islamic Jihad board
member Sami Al-Arian and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad?). In
the age of shadowy ISIS sympathizers in Chicago, jihadist murderers on
London streets, and Muslims converts on rampage in Ottawa, it only make
sense to quarantine the Islamist virus at the entry point whether it is
dormant, passive, or active. The Dutch have shown the path to do so; the
rest of the civilized world should improvise.
Psychometrics is not an exact science and no psychological evaluation or
personality test is fool proof. On top of such uncertainty, these things
cost time and money which are realistic constraints for visa evaluators and
Customs agents. Yet, these tools are increasingly sophisticated and used in
human resourcing decisions by growing number of major businesses and public
entities; at the disposal of well-trained immigration professionals who
have the flexibility of discretion and a relatively narrow focus, such
psychometric instruments can be vital weapons against potential jihadist
terror.
Potential long term immigrants from certain areas should be instructed –
even provocatively so – on the fundamental importance of free speech,
dissent, apostasy, equality before the law regardless of religion or
gender, and basic personal liberties. They should be evaluated on their
reactions through well developed and professionally benchmarked tests and
such evaluations should be allowed to inform an immigration official's
decision to about a residency application. Indeed this kind of approach
could lead to the penalization of certain beliefs; but if such beliefs
include the rectitude of killing apostates and punishing women for wearing
short skirts, should we be shedding too many tears? And even if we were to
shed some tears at such scrutiny of those desiring to live in a pluralist
society, isn't it better than the shedding of blood that could happen
otherwise?
Esam Sohail is an educational research analyst and college lecturer
of social sciences. He writes from Kansas, USA
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