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The concluding chapter assumes that it is possible to dismantle the trifecta of coercion, and if we’re going to save the individuality that our rapidly developing world will so desperately need in order to escape fascism, violence, and inequality, we have to alleviate the pressures that perfect that trifecta. Only an inclusive “we” can lead to higher levels of integration without destroying the individual. Europe has to transgress the religious, philosophical, cultural, and political boundaries that are now paradoxically trapping it due to political reasons that have more to do with exclusion than inclusion. Europe can save the democratic state through a new civilizing process that gives the political and scientific means for the emergence of a modern European Islam that fits harmoniously with the grand secular design of Europe while maintaining its faith.

The introduction focuses on the central thesis of the book: The trifecta of coercion. The trifecta is made up of the triple pressures of, first, Muslim orthodoxy’s expectations for individuals, second, Dutch—and European, in general—expectations for immigrants, and, third, the individual’s day to day challenges which are complicated by his identity as a Muslim immigrant in a non-Muslim culture, or, as the imams call it, “in the house of war.” The trifecta of coercion, a cultural dynamic identified by the introduction, acts as a pulverizing machine that destroys the individual who happens to be Muslim and reconstitutes him or her as someone who is only a part of a larger, alienated, monolithic entity, in this case the so-called “Muslim threat.” It is entirely possible to dismantle the trifecta of coercion simply by removing or substantially alleviating any one of the three sources of pressure. For example, by reducing the conflict between the religious message and the message of the larger society, or by diminishing the pressure exerted by radical unofficial Islam. Any lessening of coercions within the trifecta is like snipping a connecting wire in a bomb. Alleviate the pressure, and we can dismantle this apparatus that turns individuals who happen to be Muslim into people who see themselves, and are seen as, as merely parts of a larger alienated whole. For this, the Netherlands provides a kind of bomb-dismantling guide with cautionary tales of what not to do as well as some hopeful intimation of approaches that seem to work.