Category Archives: Netherlands

Tariq Ramadan sues Rotterdam city council for wrongful dismissal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

TariqRamdan2Academic Tariq Ramadan, sacked by Rotterdam city council last year, is asking for €75,000 compensation for wrongful dismissal.

Ramadan lost his job as city integration adviser after officials discovered he presented a tv show for a broadcast company financed by Iran. The city said this could not be combined with his other roles. Erasmus University also ended his contract as a visiting professor.

Court hearings over the compensation claim began on Monday. Ramadan claims the sacking damaged his reputation as an Islamic scholar.

Dutch News, 28 June 2010

Wilders and the US Israel lobby

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the last televised debate before the Dutch elections on 9 June, the party leaders were asked which country they would fly to if there was a plane ready to go. Geert Wilders, as ever setting out his own path, said Israel, because it was a country that deserved support. In the context of the recent mayhem surrounding the Gaza convoys, this answer stood out.

But Wilders has good contacts in Israel who support his political movement. Likewise in the United States.

A crucial detail about Wilders’ party, the PVV, is that it only has two official members: himself, and the Friends of the PVV Foundation which he formed as a finance-gathering apparatus.

Dutch law states that every party with a membership of 100,000 or more can receive state subsidy. Wilders’ decision to keep his party in his own hands therefore also has severe financial consequences.

Someone else aside from the Dutch state has to provide the money. Much of it comes from the US, where Wilders travels regularly. According to the Volkskrant, in 2008 Wilders even changed the statutes of the Foundation to ensure that it could be used to accept donations for legal cases – the grounds of which remain unspecified in the document – that he might be faced with.

The Dutch press has tracked down several of the principal financial sources for the PVV in the US. Two figures stand out: David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. Horowitz runs the online FrontPage Magazine and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which with an annual budget of around 5 million dollars is an important financier of outlets such as Jihad Watch and Islam critic Robert Spencer.

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Wilders in line for Dutch Cabinet role

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Freedom Party of the anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders emerged as the third force in Dutch politics last night, more than doubling its number of seats in Parliament in the country’s general elections. Exit polls predicted that Mr Wilders would command 23 seats, up from 9 – pushing the Christian Democrats, led by the outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, into fourth place.

With the Dutch Labour Party running neck-and-neck with the cost-cutting right-wing Liberal Party (VVD), it was unclear who would form the next government.

Mr Wilders, who wants to ban Muslim veils and the building of new mosques, is constitutionally bound to take part in coalition talks. He could be offered a place in a Cabinet chosen by Mr Rutte, who has said that the Freedom Party is “just another party”, but Mr Cohen has ruled out on moral grounds sharing power with the controversial critic of Islam on moral grounds.

“We really want to be part of government, We want to participate. I don’t think the other parties can escape us,” Mr Wilders said.

Times, 10 June 2010

Wilders’ PVV a potential coalition partner

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The sluice gates are wide open,” Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders says in a campaign video that shows planes landing in Holland as women in headscarves outnumber natives in shopping street scenes. “Every day we are confronted with mass immigration: headscarves, burqas, minarets, social security dependence, crime … it never ends,” Wilders laments as dramatic music plays in the background of the clip released ahead of June 9 parliamentary elections. Whole neighborhoods are being Islamized.”

Pollsters expect Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV), to double its strength from nine to 18 MPs in the 150 seat parliament on a ticket of halting the “Islamic invasion” – enough to make it a potential ruling coalition candidate.

“Wilders exerts a big influence on these elections,” political analyst Martin Rosema of Twente University told AFP. Wilders’ bold move onto the shaky ground of multi-cultural tolerance, for long a matter of Dutch pride, “has prompted other parties to adopt a stricter approach to security and the integration of Muslims,” said Rosema.

Agence France-Presse, 6 June 2010

Update:  See also “Poll favourite may put anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders in Cabinet”, Times, 7 June 2010

Netherlands: mosque opponents hang dead sheep at building site

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Unidentified persons hung a dead sheep from the front of a building due for demolition in the Burgemeester Schneiderlaan in Roosendaal. On the fleece of the sheep was written with green paint “No Mosk”, i.e. “No Mosque”. This was made public by the police on Saturday.

The site where the building due for demolition stands is reserved for the building of a mosque. According to the police a number of people must have been involved in this act, considering the weight of the animal and the position it was placed in. The sheep was hanging at a height of four to five meters with its head upside down and tied to a strap. Firefighters brought the dead animal down.

The police started an inquiry in the neighbourhood on Saturday morning. “This has not yet produced any concrete information about the possible offenders”, according to the police.

NU.nl, 15 May 2010

What’s threatening about European attacks on Muslim veils

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The anti-burqa cause is sweeping Europe. In addition to Belgium and France, Italy and the Netherlands are considering bans. Yet the targets of these measures are virtually nonexistent. Mr. Bacquelaine estimates that a couple of hundred women in Belgium wear a full veil. In France, one study estimated that there are 1,900 burqa wearers in a Muslim population of 5 million.

“The idea that this poses a criminal or cultural threat is ludicrous. Those who say they are defending women’s rights have it exactly backward: They are violating fundamental rights to free expression and religious freedom…. Muslims, including the devoutly religious, are in Europe to stay. Banning their customs, their clothing or their places of worship will not make them more European. It will only make Europe less free.”

Editorial in the Washington Post, 1 May 2010

Labour leads in Netherlands, support for Wilders’ party drops

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Labour Party (PvdA) is the most popular political organization in the Netherlands, according to a poll by Maurice de Hond. A prospective tally of seats shows that the PvdA would secure 33 seats in next month’s election to the Second Chamber.

The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is in second place with 30 seats, followed by the governing Christian-Democratic Appeal (CDA) with 27, the far-right Party for Freedom (PvdV) with 18 seats, and the Democrats 66 (D66) with 12. Support is lower for the Green Left (GL), the Socialist Party (SP), the Christian Union (CU), the Reformed Political Party (SGP), and the Party for the Animals (PvdD).

In June 2009, the PvdV – which has gained notoriety due to the stance on immigration of its leader, Geert Wilders – won four of the 25 Dutch seats in the European Parliament.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 29 April 2010

Netherlands: Labour Party’s rise may block Wilders’ bid for power

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Job_CohenRising support for the Dutch opposition Labor Party is putting it in a dead heat with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s Christian Democrats and may block an anti-Islam party’s bid for power in June elections.

Labor candidate Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam, was officially named party leader at a congress today in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His surprise candidacy sent the Labor Party, which favors lifting taxes on the highest earners, from third place to the top of opinion polls. Labor’s rise coincides with the slump to fourth place of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, which wants to ban headscarves and new mosques.

Cohen, whose popularity rose after he helped keep the peace following the killing in Amsterdam of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004, contrasts with Wilders, who is being prosecuted for comments in his 2008 film “Fitna” in which he calls on Muslims to rip out “hate-preaching” verses from the Koran.

“I want to live in a land where civilization is not an old-fashioned word,” Cohen told the party congress today, “where ambulance staff can work without being harassed, where the elderly can walk the streets safely to visit their children, where nobody is called names; not Jews, not gays, not Muslims.”

Cohen, 62, a former law professor and rector at Maastricht University, rules out any coalition with Wilders. “The Netherlands has always been a country of minorities and we have succeeded in living together in a decent way,” Cohen, said when presenting his election program on April 7. “Newcomers and inhabitants who, despite differences in religion, culture and tradition, choose a joint future.”

Bloomberg, 25 April 2010

opposing Islam central tenet of Dutch Freedom Party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The last Dutch party to present its election manifesto, the anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV) headed by Geert Wilders, has said it will focus on “more security and less immigration”. The manifesto was published on Friday in The Hague, ahead of the national elections on 9 June.

The right-wing populist party leader repeated his party’s well-known slogans. Mr Wilders wants to achieve “more security” by recruiting an additional 10,000 policemen. “Less immigration” should be realised by imposing an annual quota of 1,000 on asylum seekers, and a ban on immigration from Muslim countries. Non-Dutch residents who commit a crime should be extradited, in the PVV’s view. Earlier proposals, such as a headscarf tax and a ban on burqas and the Qur’an are repeated in the manifesto.

Radio Netherlands, 23 April 2010