C L O S E R

Protected: C L O S E R – Radicaal Rechts en de moskeebrand in Rotterdam

Posted on July 2nd, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Misvatting over 'terreur' scholieren

Posted on July 2nd, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Some personal considerations, Young Muslims, Youth culture (as a practice).

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Protected: NRC Handelsblad – Misvatting over ‘terreur’ scholieren

Posted on July 2nd, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Some personal considerations, Young Muslims, Youth culture (as a practice).

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Protected: C L O S E R – De spin in het zelfmoordnet

Posted on July 2nd, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

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Protected: Elsevier.nl – Nederland – 'Hardere aanpak radicale leerlingen nodig'

Posted on July 1st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: Elsevier.nl – Nederland – ‘Hardere aanpak radicale leerlingen nodig’

Posted on July 1st, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Moslims op terreurtraining – telegraaf.nl

Posted on July 1st, 2005 by .
Categories: Religious and Political Radicalization.

In de Telegraaf: Moslims op terreurtraining

In een artikel in de Telegraaf staat dat drie jongens van Marokkaanse afkomst uit Amsterdam en een Surinaamse Nederlander, gerekruteerd zijn door het ‘jihad-pendelnetwerk’ van de Parijse imam Raouf Ben Halima, kopstuk van de beruchte Tabligh-beweging.

Voor dat we dit direct gaan koppelen aan de Tablighi in Nederland toch even de opmerking dat deze beweging in Nederland wel eens anders van karakter kan zijn dan in Frankrijk…

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Protected: Het Parool – Radicalisme bereikt Marokko via Europa

Posted on June 28th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Religious and Political Radicalization, Some personal considerations, Young Muslims.

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C L O S E R: De inkt van de geleerde en het bloed van de martelaar door Dick Pels

Posted on June 22nd, 2005 by .
Categories: Internal Debates, Islam in the Netherlands, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

Ontvangen via Tareq van de MoslimMedia Yahoogroep.

De inkt van de geleerde en het bloed van de martelaar

Dick Pels
Dick Pels over Azzam, de pen, het bloed, scheiding kerk-staat enz. Zeer de moeite waard!

De institutionele machtenscheiding tussen wetenschap en staat is dus niet hetzelfde als de filosofische scheiding tussen wetenschap
en politiek, of for that matter die tussen rede en geloof. Ook hier moeten de harde onderscheidingen door zachtere worden vervangen. De modernistische opvatting van wetenschap, die zich zo sterk tegen
zowel religie als politiek heeft afgezet, onttrekt gemakkelijk allerlei onderhuidse continu�teiten aan het zicht. Een meer postmoderne en reflexieve benadering van de kennisvorming staat in elk geval sceptischer tegenover de universalistische claims van waarheid, ethische neutraliteit en objectieve feitelijkheid die het
wetenschappelijk rationalisme zo dierbaar zijn (en komt daarmee in zeker opzicht tegemoet aan de islamitische kritiek). De westerse
wetenschap blijkt politieker van inslag te zijn en meer geloofselementen in zich te dragen dan door modernisten en Verlichters doorgaans wordt erkend (11). Wie hierin een heilloos
relativisme ziet, dient te bedenken dat deze sceptische benadering van de wetenschappelijke waarheid nog veel scherper gekant is tegen de absolute openbaringswaarheden van de politieke islam. Voor radicalen die m�t Azzam de inkt van de geleerde laten ineenvloeien met het bloed van de martelaar, is deze vorm van veelgoderij zonder meer een influistering van de Duivel.

Dit artikel verscheen eerder in Civis Mundi. Tijdschrift voor
politieke filosofie en cultuur 44(3), juni 2005.
(more…)

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Amsterdam University Press – Nederlandse moslims. Van migrant tot burger

Posted on June 22nd, 2005 by .
Categories: Important Publications, Islam in the Netherlands, Multiculti Issues, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, My Research, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Verschijnt binnenkort:

Nederlandse moslims. Van migrant tot burger onder redactie van Dick Douwes, Martijn de Koning en Welmoet Boender.

Nederlandse moslims is een prikkelend themaboek, over geloof, dagelijks leven en integratie van Nederlandse moslims en is geschreven als leidraad voor iedereen die een genuanceerd oordeel wil vormen in het debat over moslims in Nederland.

Het boek gaat over migratie en integratie, islamitische organisaties en geloofsbeleving, jongerencultuur en het islamdebat. De auteurs bekijken welke rol religieuze en andere waarden spelen en hoe deze veranderen.

Als aanvulling bevat het boek een cd-rom met geluids- en videofragmenten met onder meer Hirsi Ali en Ali B. Ook krijgt de lezer een kijkje in een moskee.

Om dit boek te bestellen, stuurt u een e-mail naar bestellingen@aup.nl
(more…)

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Protected: Binding met Nederland vermindert…

Posted on June 17th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, My Research, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims, Youth culture (as a practice).

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In the Aftermath of the Van Gogh Assassination: The Future of Islam in the Netherlands

Posted on June 17th, 2005 by .
Categories: Important Publications, International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

On ICT – Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism an article of one of my VU co-workers Jeffrey Schwerzel. He cultural anthropologist at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. He is currently working on his PhD thesis.

The assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh rocked Dutch society and politics. In the aftermath of the murder, the government has set about a process of fundamentally changing its policies towards Islam, Muslims, and integration. These issues have become issues of national security. Vice Prime Minister Zalm stated that �We will wage war against extremism.�[1] The impact of the new policies will be immense. Other countries in Europe are closely watching the Netherlands, and will likely follow suit with similar policy changes.

The preoccupation with security may skew the resulting policies in ways that may further antagonize groups in Dutch society. For example, the new legislation proposed will only be applied to Muslim extremists and this will confirm to some Muslims that these policies are targeted against them as a group. The processes the government has set in motion are not as predictable as the government may wish; integration can be stimulated but not enforced. The combined effect of the government�s policies may thus serve to speed up the rapid and unpredictable social changes in Dutch society, rather than calm tensions down. Further upheaval awaits us.

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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: de Volkskrant – Ronselen voor jihad gaat door in de cel

Posted on June 11th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: nu.nl/algemeen | Jongeren vervolgd voor racisme tijdens carnaval

Posted on June 7th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: nu.nl/algemeen | Jongeren vervolgd voor racisme tijdens carnaval

Posted on June 7th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Multiculti Issues, Murder on theo Van Gogh and related issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: nu.nl/algemeen | Hoge schadevergoeding voor 'Vierdaagse-terrorist'

Posted on June 7th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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Protected: nu.nl/algemeen | Hoge schadevergoeding voor ‘Vierdaagse-terrorist’

Posted on June 7th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News, Religious and Political Radicalization.

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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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Middle East Online: Radical Islamists use Internet to spread jihad

Posted on June 3rd, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Radical Islamists use Internet to spread jihad

Experts reckon there are 4,000 radical Islamist websites run by talented people, changing servers every day.

While he calls for a return to the Islam founded in the seventh-century, his communication methods are up-to-the-minute. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, turns to the Internet to spread his message of jihad, or holy war.

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Protected: Trouw, nieuws & achtergronden – Terreur / Franse AIVD vreest radicalisering

Posted on May 27th, 2005 by martijn.
Categories: Religious and Political Radicalization, Young Muslims.

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‘Misbruik’ van internet

Posted on May 24th, 2005 by .
Categories: International Terrorism, Multiculti Issues, Religious and Political Radicalization.

In de Tweede Kamer morgen een Publieksbijeenkomst over misbruik van Internet onder leiding van Francisco van Jole

Deelonderwerpen van dit thema zijn: het voorbereiden van terroristische activiteiten, het verspreiden van kinderporno, hacking, islamitisch-extremisme, etc. Deskundigen uit diverse betrokken sectoren gaan tijdens deze bijeenkomst met elkaar en met Kamerleden in debat over aard en omvang van dit probleem.

De bijeenkomst wordt georganiseerd door de themacommissie Technologiebeleid. Deze heeft als taak (mogelijke) toekomstige politieke, economische en ethische vragen die gerelateerd zijn aan technologische ontwikkelingen in samenhang te inventariseren en te behandelen.

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