It’s no secret that anti-Islamic populist parties have made a remarkable comeback, but what effects will this have on anti-Islam attitudes in the Netherlands?
According to a recent study conducted by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, the Netherlands is currently ranked as the second worst place to be a Muslim.
The study revealed that 42 per cent of Muslims experience discrimination due to their origin and 30 per cent feel discriminated against due to their religion.
Press speaker and ‘front man’ for the anti-Islam group Pediga, Edwin Wagensveld blamed the lack of transparency and failure to comply with what he described as ‘Western standards’.
“They don’t accept that the problem is their religion and ideology. When you don’t accept that, we can’t search for a solution…. how Islam is at the moment is not compatible with our life. Islam has to change,” said Wagensveld.
The organisation expanded to the Netherlands in 2015 and claimed to have 25,000 Facebook followers before the page was shut down last year.
Wagensveld told Euroscope Magazine that the organisation’s overall goal is to de-Islamise Europe, declaring that freedom of speech is at stake.
“Close your eyes and go back to the 80’s. Look at the shops and the streets. You don’t see headscarfs or anything about Islam. We have free speech and you can’t do that anymore, when you say something they arrest you. We must inform the people of what the media and what the politicians don’t show us,” said Wagensveld.
In her 2016 report on Islamophobia in the Netherlands, Dr Ineke van der Valk, specialist in intercultural studies and discrimination, explored attitudes held by the Dutch community towards the Muslim population.
“Recently I studied millions of posts and thousands of articles…and it is striking that about fifty mosques were burned between 2005 and 2015. It’s incredible that there was so little attention and concern towards the problem until I bought it up my in my Islamophobia research report,” she said.
“There has also been a rise in secularisation. About half of the population in the Netherlands are non-religious. For those people Islamophobia plays a role because in general they are anti-religious…this may be a bit more relative in the Netherlands compared to other countries”.
Dr Ineke van der Valk goes on to explain that political sentiment is a main driver of local opinion and says community awareness is key to successful integration.
“Traditionally right extremist groups are not very strong in the Netherlands. They have had very little support but this is different from these new populist parties like the Party for Freedom and now Forum for Democracy, which has quite a lot of support,” she said.
“The main topics talked about by Wilders are against Islam and Islamophobia. He is always producing Islamophobic statements so that influences a lot. People then feel encouraged to express themselves because if politicians do this, why can’t we?”
In response to the growing rate of Islamophobia, the Dutch government submitted the National Action Programme Against Discriminationearlier this year.
The programme is aimed at strengthening anti-discrimination policies and measuring their effectiveness.
“The Netherlands has antidiscrimination programmes all through the country and they are sometimes too passive, they register discrimination and they report it but they could be much more effective if they had a proactive role,” said Dr Ineke.
taylahtalks.com 