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Rights watchdog sounds alarm over Dutch Islamophobia
Islamophobia is gaining ground in the Netherlands, with Muslim minorities facing rising violence and discrimination, a pan-European anti-racism commission said in a report released on Tuesday.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found Islamophobia in the country to have “increased dramatically” since 2000, reporting that Muslims were “disproportionately targeted” by security policies and were facing racist violence and discrimination.
How about violence by Islamic youts and extremists against the other good citizens of Dutch-land? Any increases there?
The ECRI studies and makes recommendations on the problems of racism and intolerance in the 47 states of the Council of Europe.

Tensions have been fuelled by national and international events, such as 9/11 attacks in the United States and the murder of outspoken columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim in 2004, the report said.
How 'bout that murder, does the ECRI have anything to say about that?
“The tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic deterioration,” it said, warning of a “worrying polarisation between majority and minority communities”.

It found that the country’s Muslims – a community of one million people, or six percent of the population – had faced “stereotyping, stigmatising, outright racist political discourse and biased media portrayal”.

The Moroccan and Turkish communities were especially hard hit, it said. Community tensions had also led to a rise in anti-Semitism, the report found.

The report also found that anti-Semitic insults and expressions had “tended to become a feature of everyday life, reflecting in part a similar trend in Holocaust denial, notably among the younger generations”. According to the report, the word “Jew” is increasingly used as an insult and different aspects of the Holocaust are reportedly questioned in everyday situations, including in schools.
Which everyday situations? By whom?
The Dutch government, in an annex to the report, replied that it had adopted anti-racism legislation, opened anti-discrimination offices around the country and taken steps to fight discrimination in the job market.

But a Dutch minister said on Friday the government wanted schools, public bodies and public transport companies to forbid clothing that covers the face – although it would not explicitly ban the burqa.

European Union ministers and Dutch Muslim groups have also expressed serious concern about plans by far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders to make a potentially inflammatory film about the Quran. Wilders, who has been under round-the-clock protection since the filmmaker Van Gogh was murdered for making a film critical of Islam in 2004, said this weekend his film would be aired in March.
Posted by: Fred 2008-02-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=225264