Recently, the influence of political or even radical Islam in the Netherlands is debated, following publication of the report of the Dutch Intelligence Service on islamic schools. This article reviews the debate, with special attention for the various contributions made by young writers originating from Muslim ethnic minorities. The tendency to oppose an orthodox, and more specifically, political Islam, to an 'enlightened West' in which rationality, freedom and atheism go together, is found among some of these writers. In that, they affirm Arkoun's lament on the general unacquaintance of present Muslims as to the intellectual heritage of the original Islam. The article finally explores a case in that heritage, viz., the early madrasas in medieval Baghdad, that exemplified an intellectual cum educational climate that is quite congenial to modern Western educational thought.