Islamophobia in Holland

[Bengal_Tiger]

Will Saudi ban on Dutch companies do any good?


Geert Wilders, a Dutch far-right extremist MP, has been insulting Islam and Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and others for years. His political movement has a large number of supporters within Dutch society. His hate speech stimulates the growth of anti-Islamic sentiments day by day.

At the end of 2013, he distributed a sticker showing the flag of the Kingdom, but the text of the shahadah was replaced with an anti-Islamic slur.

This disgraceful act resulted in a Royal Decree by which Saudi Arabia banned all Dutch companies from implementing projects in the Kingdom.

Being a native Dutch citizen, I converted to Islam (Alhamdolillah) over six years ago. Since then, I have made three visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for Haj and Umrah. I have precious memories of making tawaf, the Standing at Arafat, visiting the Prophet’s Mosque and Riyadh.

Living in the Netherlands with just a five percent Muslim minority, we experience the growing anti-Islamic sentiments in our everyday lives. We see the numerous insults to Islam in the media, we see vandalism of our mosques and we see our sisters in Islam who wear hijab receiving hateful comments on the streets daily. This bothers me and makes me sad.

I fully agree with the decision of the Kingdom to react to this growing anti-Islamic sentiment. It has received a lot of media attention inside my country and sparked a debate on the path we are on and where it will lead us. This is good.

However, the ban itself will not alter the hearts and the minds of the people toward Islam. In fact, instead of us growing closer, it also widens the gap between our two countries. I would love to continue seeing responses from the Arab world and the Kingdom in particular on the anti-Islamic sentiments in our western European countries. However, I hope this will not be in the form of a ban. Rather, I hope to see the expansion of business, the expansion of dawah, support for the construct of new mosques, support for Islamic media initiatives, etc.

Only by inviting people to Islam and showing the beauty of this religion will we be fully able to successfully combat the anti-Islamic sentiments in this part of the globe. A ban will not do that.

Nourdeen Wildeman, Utrecht, the Netherlands

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20140531206880

[Khostai]

I live in Belgium and the most blames go to muslim youth themself, hanging around metro and calling Belgium girls **** and *****s if they don't give atention to them, what do you expect from the general population than? And than complain when there muslimas or they are looked at. Muslims forget that this is not your country and you are the immigrant here. Not the other way around. Nobody is going to love you or accept you, if you do **** in your host country.

[Bengal_Tiger]

I live in Belgium and the most blames go to muslim youth themself, hanging around metro and calling Belgium girls **** and *****s if they don't give atention to them, what do you expect from the general population than? And than complain when there muslimas or they are looked at. Muslims forget that this is not your country and you are the immigrant here. Not the other way around. Nobody is going to love you or accept you, if you do **** in your host country.

Some of the Muslim youth in Europe really need to clean up their act and stop trying to act ghetto or watch rap videos and think they're from the Bronx.

However though there is bad behaviour from Muslims, there is also Islamophobia. Both are problems which need to be tackled.

[Khostai]

Some of the Muslim youth in Europe really need to clean up their act and stop trying to act ghetto or watch rap videos and think they're from the Bronx.

However though there is bad behaviour from Muslims, there is also Islamophobia. Both are problems which need to be tackled.

Yes that is true, but the main food for Islamophobia in Europe is the extrem youth here, in Belgium you have the so called Sharia for Belgium lol. They organise meetings and speeches about how to spread shariah in Belgium, plus they publicaly support Al-Qaida and taliban and say they are the example of good mulsim....-_-

If you have this kind of people in your society what do you expect from the European people. And of cource racist people who were ignored most of the time gain now popularity becuase of those extremists.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Yes that is true, but the main food for Islamophobia in Europe is the extrem youth here, in Belgium you have the so called Sharia for Belgium lol. They organise meetings and speeches about how to spread shariah in Belgium, plus they publicaly support Al-Qaida and taliban and say they are the example of good mulsim....-_-

If you have this kind of people in your society what do you expect from the European people. And of cource racist people who were ignored most of the time gain now popularity becuase of those extremists.

Which part of Belgium are you in? Brussels, Antwerp?

I have been to Brussels many years ago and even back then it was heavily Muslim (area around Molambique/Stalingrad).

Those Shamlawar Khorasani type people supporting extremists such as Al-Qaida and the Taliban and calling for the pseudo-shariah are living in "cloud cuckoo land", and benefitting from the freedom that the liberal democracy the say they hate gives them.

However aside from extremists there is a hatred for Islam and non-whites even amongst "liberal" westerners which has nothing to do with the type of people you mentioned. The French in Algeria massacred a million or more Algerian Muslims way before immigration to western Europe took place. A French commander also kicked the grave of Salahuddin when the Europeans took Jerusalem, Churchill gassed the Kurds etc. All of this happened before modern mass migration.

[Khostai]

Which part of Belgium are you in? Brussels, Antwerp?

I have been to Brussels many years ago and even back then it was heavily Muslim (area around Molambique/Stalingrad).

Those Shamlawar Khorasani type people supporting extremists such as Al-Qaida and the Taliban and calling for the pseudo-shariah are living in "cloud cuckoo land", and benefitting from the freedom that the liberal democracy the say they hate gives them.

However aside from extremists there is a hatred for Islam and non-whites even amongst "liberal" westerners which has nothing to do with the type of people you mentioned. The French in Algeria massacred a million or more Algerian Muslims way before immigration to western Europe took place. A French commander also kicked the grave of Salahuddin when the Europeans took Jerusalem, Churchill gassed the Kurds etc. All of this happened before modern mass migration.

I live in Brussels

French killed many in there colonisation process, they also fought and killed many during the Napoleon wars, the same with English... What does goverments did was just expansion hunger, and not only to kill muslims and non-whites, but I am speaking about regular people, I can stil remeber before this whole Al-qaida mess started, nobody cared about Islam and religion or looked down on them....People ignored racist they didn't even had any support, now the bigest winners in European election are the nationalistic parties, who clearly say on TV they hate Islam and want it to be removed, before those extremist started with there jihad such things were unheard off.

[Bengal_Tiger]

I live in Brussels

French killed many in there colonisation process, they also fought and killed many during the Napoleon wars, the same with English... What does goverments did was just expansion hunger, and not only to kill muslims and non-whites, but I am speaking about regular people, I can stil remeber before this whole Al-qaida mess started, nobody cared about Islam and religion or looked down on them....People ignored racist they didn't even had any support, now the bigest winners in European election are the nationalistic parties, who clearly say on TV they hate Islam and want it to be removed, before those extremist started with there jihad such things were unheard off.

Ordinary people are not just turning against Islam because of the bad behaviour of some Muslims (which I accept is a reality) but also because of the media e.g. 9/11, Boko Haram, Al-Qaida etc.

Here in England, on facebook, there are people from areas with no Muslims but say their hatred of Muslims is because of X, Y and Z i.e. things which they see on the media.

The media also promote false lies about Muslims, i.e. stories of Muslims doing X, Y and Z in London which never happened.

So though I accept the bad behaviour of Muslims (e.g. Mirpuris in England, some Turks in Germany, some North Africans in France) there is also media-inspired hatred of Muslims.

[Bengal_Tiger]

However I accept that western people are very tolerant and in some ways more tolerant and less racist than many Muslims.

I would definitely prefer to live in relatively civilized western Europe than the middle east and some of the "Muslim" countries (excluding the likes of Morocco, Malaysia, Indonesia etc).

Also these "Islamic" radicals in Europe are not appreciative of how tolerant western Europeans really are, and would start crying the moment that the freedom of speech given to them by the liberal democratic system they live in is taken away.

[randolph85]

many westerners accept muslims because they are mindless, not because they are tolerant. before 9/11 we were all basically indians to them, now we are all arabs.