Tuesday, November 16, 2004
ONE OF THE MOST LIBERAL EURPOEAN CITIES, ROTTERDAM
appears to be about to erupt in violence against Muslims acording to a Telegraph article that was linked at Crux News:
...40 per cent of Dutch people "hope" that the Muslim population "no longer feels at home here". Eighty per cent of respondents, aged between 15 and 80, called for harsher measures to force immigrants to integrate.
Rita Verdonk, the immigration minister, had already responded to such fears with policies aimed at limiting the influx of immigrants and making them learn Dutch. Still the national mood has turned ugly. ...
At the Naser Mosque in West Rotterdam, they are in no mood for togetherness. As worshippers leave afternoon prayers, several broad-shouldered young men are deployed to guard the street.
They greet any questions with a suspicious glare. "We have been forced to protect ourselves," one of them says, unsmiling. "We show people respect, but we do not get that respect back."
In the most tolerant nation in Europe, it seems that tolerance is rapidly running out.
