CONTRARY to popular belief, the most interesting figure in Dutch ethnic relations is not the Islam-bashing politician Geert Wilders. Rather, it is a 34-year-old rapper, comedian and reality-television host named Ali Bouali, better known by his stage name Ali B. In the mid-2000s, after Mr B had a string of hip-hop hits, talk shows began inviting him to represent Moroccan-Dutch youth. He turned out to be not only funny but an absolute sweetheart. He took part in education programmes on climate change; he recorded with the country’s most successful white pop artist; he performed confessional one-man shows. During Queen’s Day celebrations in 2005, he gave the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix an impromptu hug.
Eight years later, at the inauguration of Beatrix’s son Willem-Alexander, Mr B delivered the central musical performance directly to the new king and queen. By that time his deep eyes and comically intense stare had come to stand for the hopeful side of the Dutch integration story. He is sometimes dismissively referred to as a knuffelmarokkaan, or “huggy-Moroccan”: the Dutch idiom implies that he is both a token and the squeeze-…
