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| Europe | |||
| Rights watchdog sounds alarm over Dutch Islamophobia | |||
| 2008-02-11 | |||
| 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.
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.
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.
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 |
| #4 Gotta make it look like they're doing something, anyway. And they are too afraid to go to SA, NorK, China, or Iran. So I guess that leaves them biting the hand that feeds them. |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-02-11 06:19 |
| #3 Is there any conceptual differnce betweeen islamophobia, catholicophobia, protestantiphobia, jewishophobia (the religion not for the simple act of being born a Jew), hillaryclintonophobia, obamaphobia, bushophobia, comunistophobia, KukluxKlanophobia, or naziphobia? While peoplle are not responsible for their race they are for their ideas. If I judge these ideas are evil (some of the above list but not all) I claim the right to hate them and the people who prophess them specially when there is a long trail of blood behind these ideas and when myself or some of my beloved ones have come close of being victim of one of the pratictioners of such ideology. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-02-11 05:17 |
| #2 I think someone should start targeting the "Rights Watchdogs" myself. These chattering weasels need to be silenced. |
| Posted by: Glomoque Prince of the Swedes6689 2008-02-11 03:56 |
| #1 No concerns about Christianphobia or don'tbelieveinanythingaphobia. It's racism, I tell ya! Well, no, it isn't, since religion is something you choose (usually) but you (prolly) get the idea... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2008-02-11 00:23 |