Category Archives: Netherlands

A testing time for immigrants

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new entrance test for would-be immigrants to the Netherlands has been condemned by some as Islamophobic and detrimental to the country’s economy. The “civic integration” test, part of a broader government policy shift on immigration, came into effect in February.

It includes the compulsory viewing of a film which includes scenes of gay men kissing and topless women. Critics say the film, which forms part of a study pack for would-be immigrants, is designed to discourage applicants from Muslim countries who may be offended by its content.

Arzu Merali, spokeswoman for the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, says the test indicates that Muslims are not welcome. People seeking entrance from other EU countries, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan do not have to take it.

“Sadly the Dutch authorities are now openly exhibiting the type of Islamophobia that sends a very clear message to wider society,” Merali said. She said the message is that new Muslim immigrants are unwelcome, as are those already present who do not conform to a uniform idea of a Dutch citizen.

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‘Gays in Eurabia’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Four years after the assassination of gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, his warning of the threat posed to the rights of European gays and women by intolerant, anti-assimilationist Muslim immigrants is increasingly vindicated by events.

“Muslims have migrated in large numbers to Europe, have more children than ethnic Europeans, are disproportionately involved in crime, and increasingly insist on being governed not by the prevailing civil laws but by Muslim Shari’ah law. Many Muslim clerics in Europe look to the day when Europe will become a Muslim caliphate. Scholar Bat Ye’or has dubbed that future Europe ‘Eurabia’. Already, Muslim leaders in France, Britain, Denmark and Belgium have declared certain Muslim neighborhoods to be under Islamic jurisdiction….

“Submissive infidels are known as dhimmis, a role tacitly embraced by those Westerners who call any criticism of Muslims racist. Fortunately, some are refusing to surrender. On March 25 in Trafalgar Square, British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, a self-described ‘left-wing Green’, joined a crowd including humanists, libertarians and liberal Muslims in a rally to defend freedom of expression….

“Tatchell wrote, ‘Sections of the left moan that the rally is being supported [by] the right. Well, if these socialists object so strongly why don’t they organize their own demo in support of free speech? The truth is that some of the left would rarely, if ever, rally to defend freedom of expression because they don’t wholeheartedly believe in it. Mired in the immoral morass of cultural relativism, they no longer endorse Enlightenment values and universal human rights’.”

Richard J. Rosendall in Washington DC’s gay and lesbian magazine Metro Weekly, 20 April 2006

For an earlier article by Rosendall on Fortuyn, see here.

Dutch convert to Islam: veiled and viewed as a ‘traitor’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BREDA, Netherlands – Rabi’a Frank sees her Dutch home town through the narrow slit of the black veil that covers her face. The looks she receives from the townspeople are seldom kindly.On a recent winter afternoon, the wind tugged at her ankle-length taupe skirt, olive head scarf and black, rectangular face veil as she walked to her car from an Islamic prayer meeting in downtown Breda. Two blond teenagers on bicycles stared, their faces screwed into hostile snarls. Other passersby gawked. Some stepped off the sidewalk to avoid coming too near.

She tried to act like it didn’t offend her. But it did. She knows what they think of Muslim women like her. “If you cover yourself, you are oppressed – that’s it,” said Frank, a lanky, 29-year-old Dutch woman who converted to Islam 11 years ago, about the time she married her Moroccan husband. “You are being brainwashed by your husband or your friends.” Or, you’re a potential terrorist.

Washington Post, 19 March 2006

Muslim vote tips the balance in Netherlands

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Yesterday’s municipal elections in the Netherlands were won by the Left. The Labour Party (PvdA) gained more than 500 town hall seats, an increase of 50 per cent compared with 2002, while the far-left Socialist Party (SP) doubled its number of seats. The Christian-Democrat CDA of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his government coalition partner, the free-market Liberal VVD, suffered heavy losses…. Today the center-left newspaper De Volkskrant writes that the immigrant vote has tipped the balance in favour of the Left. This should not come as a surprise. All across Europe, immigrants tend to vote for the Left.”

Paul Belien berates Muslims for exercising their democratic rights and voting against parties of the anti-migrant Right.

He adds: “The center-right VVD, the party of famous Dutch policians such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali … received only 1% of the immigrant vote.”

Brussels Journal, 8 March 2006

‘What awaits us all’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Tiny little Israel is one of the few reasons that ISLAM has not yet fully conquered the West. But once this nation has succumbed, swallowed up by the ferocious hate-filled forces of ISLAM, the way will be free for ISLAM to swallow up the rest of the Western world. Once they have beaten the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel, securing victory in the Middle East, there will be little to stop them on their path to bring the whole Western World into subjection, and then become the conquerors of the whole world, exactly as they all believe Allah has long intended that they will do.”

Jan Willem van der Hoeven of the International Christian Zionist Center holds forth about the threat posed by the Muslim hordes.

Israel Insider, 13 February 2006

Jihad Watch backs Hirsi Ali again

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s intervention into the cartoons controversy has been rejected by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende who said “we don’t have much use” for Hirsi Ali’s views and questioned “whether this will help the debate in the Netherlands”.

For this reasoned response Balkenende has been denounced by Robert Spencer: “Jan Peter Balkenende will go down in history as a Neville Chamberlain who chose to appease thugs rather than to resist them; Ayaan Hirsi Ali will go down in history as a heroic figure who tried to stem Europe’s headlong rush to suicide.”

Dhimmi Watch, 11 February 2006

Ayaan Hirsi Ali backs cartoons provocation

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Dutch politician and self-styled Muslim dissident urged Europeans to stand firm on Thursday in an international crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying it was “necessary and urgent” to criticise Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali praised newspapers in many countries which have printed the cartoons, considered blasphemous by many Muslims, but said others had held back for fear of criticising what she called “intolerant aspects of Islam”.

“Today I am here to defend the right to offend within the bounds of the law,” she told a news conference organised by her publisher during a visit to Berlin. “It’s necessary and it’s urgent to criticise Islam. It is urgent to criticise the teachings of Mohammad.”

Reuters, 9 February 2006

See also BBC News, 9 February 2006

And over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer hails “More heroism from the great Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who in a sane world would be Prime Minister of the Netherlands”.

Dhimmi Watch, 9 February 2006

Dutch immigration restrictions draw fire

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk’s recent anti-immigrant measures, including a rule to speak Dutch in public, drew fire from Muslim minority leaders as well as from her own party.

“Linking integration to speaking Dutch in the street is nothing but an attempt to turn a blind eye to certain realities on the ground,” Dris Boujoufi, the deputy chairman of the council of Muslim representatives in the Netherlands, told IslamOnline.net Sunday, January 22. “Immigrants of the second and third generations who were born, raised and taught in the Netherlands are yet unable to integrate though they speak Dutch.”

Verdonk told a meeting of her liberal VVD party on Saturday, January 21, that immigrants must comply with a national code of conduct by speaking Dutch in the street.

Her proposal drew immediate fire from some members of her own party. “I can’t see what would hurt the minister or others if I spoke Surinamese with a friend in the street?” asked Laetitia Griffith, a member of Amsterdam’s College of Aldermen which creates and maintains the city’s systems and policies jointly with the city council and mayor.

Islam Online, 22 January 2006

Dutch MPs to decide on burqa ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Dutch government will announce over the next few weeks whether it will make it a crime to wear traditional Islamic dress which covers the face apart from the eyes.

The Dutch parliament has already voted in favour of a proposal to ban the burqa outside the home, and some in the government have thrown their weight behind it. There are only about 50 women in all of the Netherlands who do cover up entirely – but soon they could be breaking the law.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders is the man who first suggested the idea of a ban. “It’s a medieval symbol, a symbol against women,” he says.

“We don’t want women to be ashamed to show who they are. Even if you have decided yourself to do that, you should not do it in Holland, because we want you to be integrated, assimilated into Dutch society. If people cannot see who you are, or see one inch of your body or your face, I believe this is not the way to integrate into our society.”

Mr Wilders has explicitly linked his wish for a burqa ban with terrorism. “We have problems with a growing minority of Muslims who tend to have sympathy with the Islamo-fascistic concept of radical Islam,” says Mr Wilders.

BBC News, 16 January 2006