| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Dutch: 'We have let things slip, and let extremists live under our noses' |
| 2004-11-14 |
| Slightly EFL The streets of Rotterdam are silent apart from a whistling wind. Flickering neon signs advertising Halal butchers and falafel bars punctuate the grey facades of the tower blocks. Splintered glass from a broken window that no one has bothered to repair is slowly trampled into the autumn leaves. In the distance, a mosque's minarets pierce the fog and drizzle. Almost half the population of Rotterdam is of non-Dutch origin and the city is studded by grim ghettoes. Fifteen-year-old Rafih Bourdin has hunched his shoulders up against the cold. His head is wrapped in a red bandana and covered by a heavy, hooded top that almost entirely obscures his eyes. "Things are going to change for the worse," he says, his breath like cigarette smoke against the cold air. "We have less respect for each other. Because Mohammed Bouyeri killed van Gogh, the white Dutch now feel that all Muslims are responsible. They are looking at us differently." The Netherlands, with its reputation for liberalism, tolerance and freedom of speech, has never been so divided. Since the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim a fortnight ago, the country's 30-year-old experiment in tolerant multi-culturalism has begun to fail. Van Gogh, an outspoken public figure and critic of Islam, was gunned down and stabbed to death while cycling to work in Amsterdam on November 2. Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan, allegedly shot his victim six times, knifed him as he lay dying and impaled a note of Islamic quotations on his body. When the police arrived, they discovered that the corpse had been almost decapitated. His murder came only two years after the assassination of Pym Fortuyn, the populist anti-immigration politician who was killed by an animal rights extremist of ethnic Dutch origin. Mr Fortuyn found his best support in Rotterdam. But even on the streets of Amsterdam - for so long a bastion of liberalism - the feeling is that multi-culturalism has gone too far. "We have been too tolerant," says Joyce de Witt, 39, an office worker from Diemen, a town south of Amsterdam. "We need tougher immigration policies. For 20 or 30 years, we have let things slip and let extremists live under our noses. Dutch society is segregated because a lot of first generation immigrants didn't learn our language and passed on this separateness to their children." |
| Posted by:Bulldog |
| #2 Don't forget that Fortuyn's murderer was the ultimate dhimmi, he murdered Fortuyn on behalf of the Muslims. |
| Posted by: Jabba the Nutt 2004-11-14 7:08:34 PM |
| #1 Sad that the entire world is slow to learn that not all of Islam is at peace. The Dutch got off cheap, it cost us 3k people. I hope the rest of Europestan catches on soon or they will suffer too. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2004-11-14 7:23:18 AM |