Islam-hatred in the Netherlands spinning out of control

On Saturday April 6th, at 5.30 in the morning, a mosque in the Dutch town of Enkhuizen was found on fire. Firemen were said to  have been able to quell the fire quickly, but were apparently unable to save the building.

The mosque, housed in a former school building at the Tureluurshof, was targeted by arsonists before, in 2011. The mosque administration had plans last year to move to a larger building – also a vacant school – but that building was burned by arsonists in July last year.

Police are almost certain that Saturday’s fire was also the result of arson. Until now, police statements have indicated that it is not clear in which direction the perpetrators must be sought.

At a right-wing Facebook page called ‘Nederland mijn Vaderland’ (Netherlands my homeland), responders to the news of the arson exploded in a barrage of shocking hate-messages. No one was in the mosque at the time of the fire, a fact which seemed to be regretted by most of the responders.

A screenshot shows 351 likes to this post, and 23 shares. Examples of some of the responses, not captured in this screenshot, are ‘too bad it didn’t burn down completely’, ‘let this be an example to all mosques, praise to who did this’, ‘too bad no one was in there’, and other messages of this kind. Responses in this screenshot include: ‘Again, again!’ , ‘Burn that junk’,  and ‘It’s about time to clear out those damned hay barns!’

The arson came the very next day after Geert Wilders, foreman of the anti-Islam party PVV, managed to draw parliament into a debate that in its shameful racism was called ‘the debate on Moroccans’ (Marokkanendebat). The last time before this, that a parliamentary debate in the Netherlands was aimed at criticizing an entire ethnic group was in 1938, and was named the ‘debate on Jews’. Unfortunately, parliament had agreed to the debate instead of invoking Article 1 of the Constitution, which forbids discrimination.

Two days after the posts on Facebook, Geert Wilders published an article. He wrote: ‘It’s about time that we tackle the gravest disease that has hit our country in the past century: Islam.’ In the article, he draws a direct link to the ‘Moroccan problem’, making it clear whom he holds responsible for this disease.

The above illustrates clearly that there is reason to expect more problems in the Netherlands of this nature, with popular responses to Wilders’ hate-spinning and rhetoric becoming increasingly violent, and Dutch politicians locked in a collective failure to stem Islam-hatred at the level of parliamentary politics.