C L O S E R

Three imams are ‘personae non gratae’ in the Netherlands

Posted on June 17th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Verdonk orders three imams to leave

Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has ordered three imams of the Al Fourqaan mosque in Eindhoven, accused of being a threat to public order and national security, to get out of the Netherlands.

Lawyer Marq Wijngaarden is representing the three imams says he will go to court to
block the minister’s order. He did not want to comment further as he has not yet read the full text of Verdonk’s decision.

The Dutch intelligence service AIVD indicated that the imams “contribute to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands”, the Justice Ministry said earlier this year.

The ministry claimed the imams tried to recruit, or tolerated the recruiting, of Muslims for Jihad, or holy war. They are also accused of using their sermons to urge Muslims to “isolate” themselves from the rest of Dutch society.

The AIVD said the mosque in Eindhoven disseminated the Salafist philosophy � which is strongly opposed to Western society and the imams there were sponsoring aversion of the West in their sermons.

Well I hope they have more against them then the Salafist philosophy, because the question is which Salafist philosopy; it is not a clear cut and homogenous philosophy.

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Three imams are 'personae non gratae' in the Netherlands

Posted on June 17th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Verdonk orders three imams to leave

Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has ordered three imams of the Al Fourqaan mosque in Eindhoven, accused of being a threat to public order and national security, to get out of the Netherlands.

Lawyer Marq Wijngaarden is representing the three imams says he will go to court to
block the minister’s order. He did not want to comment further as he has not yet read the full text of Verdonk’s decision.

The Dutch intelligence service AIVD indicated that the imams “contribute to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands”, the Justice Ministry said earlier this year.

The ministry claimed the imams tried to recruit, or tolerated the recruiting, of Muslims for Jihad, or holy war. They are also accused of using their sermons to urge Muslims to “isolate” themselves from the rest of Dutch society.

The AIVD said the mosque in Eindhoven disseminated the Salafist philosophy � which is strongly opposed to Western society and the imams there were sponsoring aversion of the West in their sermons.

Well I hope they have more against them then the Salafist philosophy, because the question is which Salafist philosopy; it is not a clear cut and homogenous philosophy.

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The Dutch-Muslim Culture War – Yahoo! News

Posted on June 12th, 2005 by .
Categories: Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues, Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, My Research, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

In The Nation an article of Deborah Scroggins (placed on Yahoo! News) on The Dutch-Muslim Culture War

It has become a nice article that centres around Hirsi Ali. I have a small contribution in it (in italics) and for the record, no I do not investigate jihadi-groups. And I also do not work at Leiden University but at ISIM in Leiden.

Meanwhile, Hirsi Ali focused her broadsides more and more plainly on Islam itself. She wrote that the Prophet Mohammed was a “despicable” individual who had married “the 9-year-old daughter of his best friend.” “Mohammed is, by our Western standards, a perverse man,” she wrote. “A tyrant. He is against free speech. If you do not do what he says, then you will have an unhappy ending. It makes me think of all those megalomaniac rulers in the Middle East: bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam.” By this point, Hirsi Ali had gravitated further to the right; she left the Labor Party for the center-right Liberal VVD Party and won a parliamentary seat in 2003.

Hirsi Ali’s many critics contend that far from being a revolutionary, she brings a message that the West is all too willing to hear. They say that in calling for European governments to protect Muslim women from Muslim men, she and her admirers recycle the same Orientalist tropes that the West has used since colonial times as an excuse to control and subjugate Muslims. “White men saving black women from black men–it’s a very old fantasy that is always popular,” Annelies Moors, a University of Amsterdam anthropologist who writes about Islamic gender relations, said dryly. “But I don’t think male violence against women, a phenomenon known to every society in history, can be explained by a few Koranic verses.”

Moors and others don’t dispute the existence of the social problems Hirsi Ali identifies. Many Dutch Muslim women do live in segregated “parallel cities” where Islamic social codes are enforced. Muslims make up only 5.5 percent of the Dutch population, but they account for more than half the women in battered women’s shelters and more than half of those seeking abortions. Muslim girls have far higher suicide rates than non-Muslim girls. Some Muslim girls, mostly African, are genitally mutilated. But in putting all the blame on Islam, they say, Hirsi Ali ignores the influence of patriarchal custom as well as the work of a generation of Muslim feminists. They point to thinkers like Fatima Mernissi and Amina Wadud, who have shown that Islam’s sacred texts can be interpreted in a more female-friendly way. And they say Hirsi Ali avoids mention of the role the West has played and continues to play in assisting the rise of the Islamist movements. “The rightist forces and the radical Islamists feed on each other, and she contributes to that,” Moors said.

Karima Belhaj is the director of the largest women’s shelter in Amsterdam. She’s also one of the organizers of the “Stop the Witchhunt!” campaign against what she sees as anti-Muslim hysteria. On the day we talked, she was despondent. Arsonists had set fire for the second time to an Islamic school in the town of Uden. A few days later a regional police unit warned that the rise of right-wing Dutch youth gangs potentially presents a more dangerous threat to the country than Islamist terrorism. “The rise of Islamism is not the problem,” Belhaj said. “The problem is that hatred against Arabs and Muslims is shown in this country without any shame.” With her message that Muslim women must give up their faith and their families if they want to be liberated, Hirsi Ali is actually driving women into the arms of the fundamentalists, said Belhaj: “She attacks their values, so they are wearing more and more veils. It frightens me. I’m losing my country. I’m losing my people.”

If Belhaj was sad, another “Stop the Witchhunt!” organizer was angry. Like Belhaj, Miriyam Aouragh is a second-generation immigrant of Moroccan background. A self-described peace and women’s activist, Aouragh was the first in her family to attend university. She’s now studying for a PhD in anthropology. She scoffs at the idea that Hirsi Ali is a champion of oppressed Muslim women. “She’s nothing but an Uncle Tom,” Aouragh said. “She has never fought for the oppressed. In fact, she’s done the opposite. She uses these problems as a cover to attack Islam. She insults me and she makes my life as a feminist ten times harder because she forces me to be associated with anti-Muslim attacks.”

Aouragh accuses Hirsi Ali and her political allies of deliberately fostering the hostility that has led to the attacks on Islamic institutions and to police brutality against young Muslim men. “I’m surprised the Arab-Muslim community isn’t more angry with her,” Aouragh said. “When she talks about Muslims as violent people, and Muslim men as rapists, this is very insulting. She calls the Prophet a pedophile. Theo van Gogh called the Prophet a pimp, a goat-fucker. Well, no, we don’t accept that.”

Although the press has focused on the threats against critics of Islam like Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, Aouragh says that there have been many more attacks on Dutch Muslims than on non-Muslims. She suspects that what the Dutch really fear is not Islamic fundamentalism but the prospect of having to deal with a new generation of highly educated young Muslims who demand a fair hearing for their values. “We are telling them, ‘We have rights, too. You have to change your idea about freedom or face the consequences.'”

Whatever happens to Hirsi Ali, the debate she helped polarize over women and Islam is sure to spread and intensify all over Europe in the next few years. As Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued in their book Rising Tide, the true clash of opinions between Islam and the West is not about democracy but sex. Successive World Values Surveys, in which social scientists polled public opinion in more than eighty countries between 1981 and 2001, have shown that people in Muslim countries share broadly the same views on political participation as people in the West. What they disagree strongly about is gender equality and sexual liberalization.

In the United States the distinction is not as sharply drawn. Conservative Muslims are not the only religious group here opposed to what they see as sexual license; it’s their opposition to Israel and US foreign policy, not their sexual politics, that sets American Muslims apart from the rest of the right. But in Europe, acceptance of gender equality and homosexuality have become core values across the political spectrum, said Jocelyne Cesari, a Harvard research associate and the author of When Islam and Democracy Meet. “Here it is part of a national debate that doesn’t involve immigrants only,” Cesari said. “In Europe, this is seen as proof that Muslims are still outsiders whose values are in contradiction to ours.”

Islamist thinkers have often argued that women are the key to culture, since they have the responsibility of raising children. An emerging coalition of European feminist and anti-immigration forces seems to be adopting the same view. In France, Belgium, Germany and Scandinavia, as in the Netherlands, the “woman question” is at the center of the debate over how to integrate the Muslim community. “I know most of my Muslim friends will disagree with me, but in my opinion the gender issue is the most important issue,” says Martijn de Koning, an anthropologist at Leiden University who studies jihadi groups. “The head scarf, the Islamic schools, the policy of family reunification–every debate here more or less concerns the position of women.”

Hirsi Ali is only the most prominent of a number of young Muslim women who have lately begun to criticize their own communities for their treatment of women. In Sweden, Fadime Sahindal campaigned against forced marriages before her father killed her in 2002 for having a relationship with a Swedish man. In France, Fadela Amara heads the Ni Putes ni Soumises (“Neither Whores nor Submissives”) movement against Islamist groups she calls “the green fascists.” In Germany, where six honor killings have taken place just this year, Seyran Ates, a Berlin-based lawyer, has charged the government with allowing Islamic fundamentalism to flourish under a policy of false tolerance.

I really do think the gender-issues is the key-issue, at least in Europe (as Cesari also acknowledges in this article) It is for Muslims as well as for non-Muslims. That is not very surprisingly. Gender-issues are often the most important boundary-markers between insiders and outsiders for all groups. Of course it is more than a boundary marker. There are some real issues like domestic violence. It isn’t true however that half of the women in women’s shelters are Muslim. It is probably about one third; still too much of course. I don’t know exactly about the suicide rates, but they are higher among most of the immigrant girls compared to native dutch. Also all these statistics don’t include Muslims but ethnicity and nationality. So it is implied that every Turk or Moroccan woman is also a (practising) Muslim.

(more…)

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Protected: Trouw, nieuws & achtergronden – Columnisten – Ephimenco / De profeet als blaffende hond

Posted on June 11th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues, Religion Other.

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Van waterdruppel tot mens: Moslims, evolutie & intelligent design

Posted on June 5th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Some personal considerations, Young Muslims.

Nou ja ik ben iets te jong om de Big Bang meegemaakt te hebben en volgens mijn moeder ook nog eens een wandelend Intelligent Design (…maar hoever ben je nu eigenlijk met je proefschrift?), maar heb toch wel wat te zeggen over het door minister Van der Hoeven aangezwengelde debat.

Van der Hoeven’s pleidooi voor een debat over ID hoeft helemaal niet weggegooid te worden, maar als ze denkt hiermee multiculti spanningen op te lossen, slaat ze de plank mis. Vragen als ‘wat zegt de islam over de evolutietheorie’ of ‘wat zegt de koran over de schepping’ zijn wel interessant voor moslims, maar zijn totaal onbelangrijk als we houding en gedrag van moslims in Nederland willen verklaren. Wanneer we daar iets meer van willen weten, moeten we niet met de Koran beginnen, maar moeten we onderzoeken hoe moslims zelf, binnen de gegeven politieke, juridische, economische en sociale omstandigheden, betekenis geven aan hun leven in Nederland. Dat is ook waar mijn proefschrift en dat van anderen zoals Welmoet Boender van het ISIM en Susan Ketner van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen over gaat. Misschien moeten we toch maar eens opschieten met dat proefschrift.

(more…)

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Van waterdruppel tot mens: Moslims, evolutie & intelligent design

Posted on June 5th, 2005 by .
Categories: Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Some personal considerations, Young Muslims.

Nou ja ik ben iets te jong om de Big Bang meegemaakt te hebben en volgens mijn moeder ook nog eens een wandelend Intelligent Design (…maar hoever ben je nu eigenlijk met je proefschrift?), maar heb toch wel wat te zeggen over het door minister Van der Hoeven aangezwengelde debat.

Van der Hoeven’s pleidooi voor een debat over ID hoeft helemaal niet weggegooid te worden, maar als ze denkt hiermee multiculti spanningen op te lossen, slaat ze de plank mis. Vragen als ‘wat zegt de islam over de evolutietheorie’ of ‘wat zegt de koran over de schepping’ zijn wel interessant voor moslims, maar zijn totaal onbelangrijk als we houding en gedrag van moslims in Nederland willen verklaren. Wanneer we daar iets meer van willen weten, moeten we niet met de Koran beginnen, maar moeten we onderzoeken hoe moslims zelf, binnen de gegeven politieke, juridische, economische en sociale omstandigheden, betekenis geven aan hun leven in Nederland. Dat is ook waar mijn proefschrift en dat van anderen zoals Welmoet Boender van het ISIM en Susan Ketner van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen over gaat. Misschien moeten we toch maar eens opschieten met dat proefschrift.

(more…)

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Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Binnenland: 'Moeite met moslims is uw eigen schuld'

Posted on May 21st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues.

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Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Binnenland: ‘Moeite met moslims is uw eigen schuld’

Posted on May 21st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues.

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The 2005 TIME 100: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on April 18th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Manji is the author of The Trouble with Islam Today. She has written the portrait of Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Time 100: The 2005 TIME 100: Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Paying a Price for Her Views

Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows the risks of standing up for one’s beliefs. The Somalia-born Dutch politician last year made Submission, a film that portrays a Muslim woman ritually abused by the men in her family. Hirsi Ali used the woman’s body as a canvas on which to display troubling verses from the Koran. Her film incited a fanatic to kill Hirsi Ali’s co-producer, Theo Van Gogh. After plunging a knife into his body, the murderer transformed Van Gogh’s corpse into a canvas of his own. On it, he pinned a letter to Hirsi Ali, warning her that she is next.

I met Hirsi Ali, 35, last year during a book tour. Because I have written a blunt call for reform in Islam, a Dutch newspaper assigned her to interview me�heretic to heretic. The difference is, she has left Islam. I asked her if she thought I was naive for sticking with Allah. “Don’t go,” she told me. “Islam needs you.”

And Europe, it seems, needs her, to highlight a critical challenge: Can a multicultural society produce pluralism without relativism? So far, it doesn’t bode well for her plight. After Van Gogh’s killing last November, Hirsi Ali hid for two months. Now, as then, she is enveloped by a human burqa of four bodyguards.

Still, she persists. In parliament, Hirsi Ali is pushing to outlaw honor crimes�customs that can’t be pinned on the Koran but thrive amid the silence of Muslim leaders. They have forgotten, she says, that the Koran implores Muslims to “bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.” In that sense, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a true believer.

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Europe’s Boys of Jihad

Posted on April 5th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims, Youth culture (as a practice).

An article in the LA Times refers to events here in the Netherlands.

Last year, a group of young Internet enthusiasts was charged with unleashing terrorism in the Netherlands: the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and a plot to assassinate politicians. Police captured Jason Walters, 19, in a raid that left him and three officers wounded. His 17-year-old brother was also jailed.

Walters’ Internet chats reveal a casual, adolescent cold-bloodedness, according to excerpts published in the Dutch media. A spokesman for the AIVD intelligence service, the leading Dutch anti-terrorism agency, confirmed that the transcripts were authentic.

In an Internet conversation on Sept. 28, 2003, Walters joked about beheading the Dutch prime minister and bragged about a monthlong training session at an Afghan terrorism camp. The son of a Dutch mother and American father said he had fooled his family into thinking he was in Britain.

He urged his chat partner, “Galas03,” to join him on a future trip. “They will train you how to use guns,” Walters wrote, using the name “Mujaheed.” “I can assemble and dismantle a Kalashnikov blindfolded.”

“Is shooting difficult?” Galas03 asked.

“No way, man, it is not that hard,” Walters responded. “I even had to roll over with a pistol and then shoot and that went all right, praise Allah.”

Walters became radicalized at about 16, investigators say. Fellow suspect Samir Azzouz, 18, was equally precocious. Azzouz was first detained in 2002 in Ukraine en route to joining Muslim combatants in Chechnya, AIVD spokesman Vincent van Steen said.

For the whole article: (more…)

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Europe's Boys of Jihad

Posted on April 5th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims, Youth culture (as a practice).

An article in the LA Times refers to events here in the Netherlands.

Last year, a group of young Internet enthusiasts was charged with unleashing terrorism in the Netherlands: the killing of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and a plot to assassinate politicians. Police captured Jason Walters, 19, in a raid that left him and three officers wounded. His 17-year-old brother was also jailed.

Walters’ Internet chats reveal a casual, adolescent cold-bloodedness, according to excerpts published in the Dutch media. A spokesman for the AIVD intelligence service, the leading Dutch anti-terrorism agency, confirmed that the transcripts were authentic.

In an Internet conversation on Sept. 28, 2003, Walters joked about beheading the Dutch prime minister and bragged about a monthlong training session at an Afghan terrorism camp. The son of a Dutch mother and American father said he had fooled his family into thinking he was in Britain.

He urged his chat partner, “Galas03,” to join him on a future trip. “They will train you how to use guns,” Walters wrote, using the name “Mujaheed.” “I can assemble and dismantle a Kalashnikov blindfolded.”

“Is shooting difficult?” Galas03 asked.

“No way, man, it is not that hard,” Walters responded. “I even had to roll over with a pistol and then shoot and that went all right, praise Allah.”

Walters became radicalized at about 16, investigators say. Fellow suspect Samir Azzouz, 18, was equally precocious. Azzouz was first detained in 2002 in Ukraine en route to joining Muslim combatants in Chechnya, AIVD spokesman Vincent van Steen said.

For the whole article: (more…)

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Tariq Ramadan: An International call for Moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in the Islamic World

Posted on March 31st, 2005 by .
Categories: Important Publications, Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands.

In several European newspapers an article written by Tariq Ramadan today. In the Netherlands this article appeared in NRC Handelsblad called: Stop tijdelijk toepassing van shari’a.

Tariq Ramadan is very popular among many European young Muslims. His message to them, in short, is that they have no excuse for not behaving like and being a good Muslim in Europe. He is controversial because of, among other things, his vagueness about several items in the shari’a. This article can be seen as an attempt to clarify that position: he calls for a moratorium on applying the shari’a and for a discussion about the sources of the shari’a.

In the name of the scriptural sources, the Islamic teachings, and the contemporary Muslim conscience, statements must be made and decisions need to be taken.

[…]

we launch today a call for an immediate international moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in all Muslim majority countries. Considering that the opinions of most scholars, regarding the comprehension of the texts and the application of hudûd, are neither explicit nor unanimous (indeed there is not even a clear majority), and bearing in mind that political systems and the state of the majority Muslim societies do not guarantee a just and equal treatment of individuals before the law, it is our moral obligation and religious responsibility to demand for the immediate suspension of the application of the hudûd which is inaccurately accepted as an application of “Islamic sharî’a”.
This call doubles itself with a series of basic questions addressed to the body of Islamic religious authorities of the world, whatever their tradition (sunnî or shî’î), their school of thought (hanâfî, mâlikî, ja’farî, etc.) or their tendencies (literalist, salafî, reformist, etc.)

or in Dutch:

Ik roep op tot een onmiddellijk moratorium in de islamitisch wereld in naam van de principes van de islam zelf.

Voor het Westen zijn lijfstraffen, steniging en doodstraf in naam van een religieuze verwijzing die aan een hele maatschappij wordt opgelegd niet aanvaardbaar: men moet deze praktijken zonder meer veroordelen.
De islamitische wereld geeft zeer tegenstrijdige signalen af: harde en definitieve veroordelingen komen van een kleine minderheid van intellectuelen of sociale en politieke actoren, terwijl bepaalde regeringen proberen hun `islamitische’ karakter te laten zien door de toepassing van deze repressieve praktijken.
Delen van de islamitische wereld (van Nigeria tot Maleisië) eisen strikte toepassing van de shari’a, terwijl de meeste ulema’s (islamitische schriftgeleerden – red.) verzekeren dat deze straffen `bijna nooit opgelegd kunnen worden’ (door op de vereiste voorwaarden te wijzen), maar zij vermijden zich daarover duidelijk uit te spreken (meestal om hun geloofwaardigheid bij de bevolking niet te verliezen).

(The article in the NRC is somewhat different from the original call).

On Ramadan’s website you can also find several comments already.
For the complete text in English and Dutch: (more…)

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Protected: Moslimstudenten worstelen met evolutie

Posted on March 31st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Young Muslims.

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Protected: De grote vergissing…./3

Posted on March 28th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, My Research.

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Protected: Er is leven, er is leven na de dood

Posted on March 26th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues, Religion Other.

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Hirsi Ali wins fight over Islam criticism

Posted on March 15th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Misc. News, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues.

Today a day in court: some Muslims wanted Hirsi Ali to be forbidden in making Submission II. They lost:
Hirsi Ali wins fight over Islam criticism

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Protected: Discussie en bezinning op het Driestar College

Posted on March 12th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Gouda Issues, Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Religion Other.

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Bin Laden is damaging Islam – Three imams for the Fourqaan mosque in Eindhoven

Posted on March 10th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

The dutch regional daily Eindhovens Dagblad has an interview with the three imams from the Fourqaan mosque who are on the verge of being expelled from the country.

Dhimmi Watch has the English translation of this interview(with comments, which you can read below as well): Dhimmi Watch: “Bin Laden is damaging Islam”
For my fellow Dutchies, you can read it in Dutch below.

It is difficult to assess what is really going there. I think I’m going to ask a few person for some clarification.

(more…)

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Dutch women’s rights activist says Islam dangerous to women

Posted on March 9th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Islamnews.

An article on Hirsi Ali in the Free New Mexican: Dutch women’s rights activist says Islam dangerous to women

“Muslim religion is many things but it’s certainly not friendly to women,” she said at the European Parliament, warning the West that it “shouldn’t indulge in and buy fallacies from Muslims.”

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Dutch women's rights activist says Islam dangerous to women

Posted on March 9th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Islamnews.

An article on Hirsi Ali in the Free New Mexican: Dutch women’s rights activist says Islam dangerous to women

“Muslim religion is many things but it’s certainly not friendly to women,” she said at the European Parliament, warning the West that it “shouldn’t indulge in and buy fallacies from Muslims.”

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Eindhovens Dagblad – Moslima’s krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee

Posted on March 5th, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Misc. News.

In Geleen is Leyla Cakir de voorzitster van een moskee Ihlas. In Helmond komen mannen en vrouwen nu samen in ��n bestuur. Niet nieuw dus, wel interessant.
Eindhovens Dagblad – nieuws, auto’s, banen, kleintjes en regiolinks in eindhoven en omgeving – Moslima’s krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee
Mannen en vrouwen samen in ��n bestuur
Moslima’s krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee

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Eindhovens Dagblad – Moslima's krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee

Posted on March 5th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Misc. News.

In Geleen is Leyla Cakir de voorzitster van een moskee Ihlas. In Helmond komen mannen en vrouwen nu samen in ��n bestuur. Niet nieuw dus, wel interessant.
Eindhovens Dagblad – nieuws, auto’s, banen, kleintjes en regiolinks in eindhoven en omgeving – Moslima’s krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee
Mannen en vrouwen samen in ��n bestuur
Moslima’s krijgen stem in Helmondse moskee

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Protected: Trouw, religie & filosofie – Interview / Lesbiennes voelen de afkeer van moslims

Posted on March 4th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands.

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Changing policies towards alleged extremist groups

Posted on February 23rd, 2005 by .
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

The Dutch government announced after the murder on Van Gogh to expel several extremist imams. The Dutch intelligence and security agency (AIVD) is keeping an eye on six
suspicious Islamic groups. This week three imams van Al-Fourqaan mosque in Eindhoven were given notice that they had to leave the country because they were, as minister Verdonk of Integration stated in the 8 o’clock news:

radicalizing Muslims and stimulating them to Jihad. They call for a holy war and in a war their will be victims and we can not tolerate that in the Netherlands.

The groups, of which the Al-Fourqaan mosque is one of them, have been earlier described as “mosque organisations with an outspoken Salafist character originating from a mission and finance from Saudi Arabia”. This can be read in a report by the AIVD, called Saudi influences in the Netherlands (PDF file). You can read the following in this report:

The Netherlands has several mosque foundations of a straight Salafist persuasion. These are the result of missionary and funding activities carried out from Saudi Arabia. These foundations are the El Tawheed Foundation in Amsterdam, the As Soennah Foundation � Centre Sheikh Al Islam ibn Taymia in The Hague, the Islamic Centre Al Fourkaan Foundation in Eindhoven, the Mosque Al Mouahidine Foundation (Omar ibn Khattab Mosque) in Helmond, the Foundation for Islamic Youth in Breda and the Islamic Foundation for Education and Transfer of Knowledge in Tilburg. The involvement of large Saudi missionary organisations can most clearly be seen with four of these mosques. At the Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam there is a financial, organisational and personal intertwinement with the organisation referred to above, Al Haramain, whereas in case of the Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven, the Al Mouahidine mosque in Helmond and the Foundation for Islamic Youth in Breda there is a clear intertwinement with the private (but, also, closely associated to persons within the Saudi establishment) missionary organisation Al Waqf Al Islami Foundation. Besides these mosques which can be characterised as explicitly Salafist, there are several others (probably up to several dozen) that are less easy to typify as such, but which also receive financial support from Saudi charities, private benefactors or government bodies. Although not explicitly Salafist, as a result of the very orthodox
message propagated these mosques attract certain groups of Muslims that can be characterised as Salafist, a designation which they often use themselves. This was for example the case with the Foundation Mosque Annasr in Rotterdam, to which Salafists are drawn because of the sermons and personality of the imam preaching there. As regards the financial support for these mosques from Saudi Arabia it should be noted that it is not necessarily a matter of formal financing of mosque foundations, but rather allowances to specific persons (in particular imams). Especially the large Saudi NGOs Muslim World League and Al-Haramain have �branches� in the Netherlands. These are the Muslim World League Foundation the Netherlands and the Al Haramain Humanitarian Aid Foundation in Amsterdam. The former head of the parent office of Al-Haramain in Saudi Arabia, Aqeel al Aqeel and his assistant Mansour al-Kadi, in the past also acquired board positions in the El Tawheed Foundation and the Al Haramain Humanitarian Aid Foundation in Amsterdam, in exchange for financing to build the Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam. The AIVD does not have any indications that the two board members actually used their influence to become involved in the daily running of the Tawheed mosque. In practice, the involvement of the two was restricted to formal yearly inspections.

To expel the three imams of Al Fourqaan can be seen as a first attempt to confirm the change of policies in the Netherlands. Their lawyer stated today that, according to him and what he has read in the AIVD-notes, these people are not accused of preaching Jihad and/or radicalizing young people. These AIVD-notes are not official judicial documents but experts expect that they will be allowed, the more because in this specific case they will not be tried in a penal court but in an administrative court because their permit to stay is the topic of discussion. This will shift the burden of proof more to the imams.

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Protected: De grote vergissing…./2

Posted on February 23rd, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Islam in the Netherlands, My Research.

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