Leadership Quote by Gijs de Vries

De Vries is doing something deceptively hard in one clean sentence: he’s trying to lower the political temperature without letting complacency win. As a counterterrorism official in a Europe rattled by post-9/11 fear and, later, attacks on its own soil, he’s not offering a warm platitude about interfaith harmony. He’s drawing a bright line between a violent tactic and a billion-person faith, then insisting that the line matters for policy.

The specific intent is strategic. “Majority” signals empirical grounding and inoculates against the rhetorical trick of treating extremists as representatives. It’s a rebuke to two audiences at once: to would-be Islamists who want terrorism framed as religious duty, and to Western populists who benefit from framing Islam as a civilizational threat. In that sense, the quote is counter-propaganda aimed at both recruitment narratives and xenophobic political entrepreneurship.

The subtext is pragmatic: if you misdiagnose the problem, you will choose the wrong tools. Treating Islam as incompatible with democracy pushes governments toward blanket suspicion, heavy-handed surveillance, and cultural tests that alienate exactly the communities whose trust is crucial for intelligence, prevention, and social cohesion. De Vries implies that democracy isn’t a Western heirloom Muslims must borrow; it’s a political framework many already inhabit and defend.

Contextually, the line echoes a European dilemma: how to fight terror without undermining liberal legitimacy. By anchoring legitimacy on what most Muslims believe, he’s making counterterrorism a contest over narratives, not just networks.