Dragonlich

Okay, here goes.

The Muslim community started in the 1970's, when we needed a lot of extra workers. We basically said: anyone is welcome. Most immigrants were poor, under-educated men from the hillbilly areas of Turkey and Morocco. Nobody asked them to learn our language (they were supposed to go back anyway). Their culture was interesting and deserved to be celebrated.

After the economic boom times, a lot of them became unemployed, and, naturally, we decided to let them stay and share in our wealth. In fact, we let them bring their family (poor guys must have missed them!).

Fast forward 20 years. The immigrant families are generally poor, under-educated, very traditional in their (Islamic) views, and passed all of that on to their kids. A large subgroup still focus on their former home countries, and mainly watch Arabic satellite television. In their home countries, especially in Morocco, society was responsible for raising their kids (if you did something wrong, anyone could and would stop you). Over here, we don't have that system - the Moroccan parents are very strict, but the Dutch police is *not*.

More and more of the immigrants start living in the big cities (Amsterdam amongst them), while a lot of natives leave for the quiet towns surrounding them. Add to this equation the higher rate of reproduction of Muslim families (4+ kids as opposed to 1 or 2), and we see a problem beginning to emerge.

I'd say you can compare the Islamic youths of today with the US' Hispanic minority. They even use the same images and music to express themselves. The main difference is that they're Muslims, not Christians. And a difference is that we in the Netherlands have had *very* left-wing governments (especially by US standards). Political-correctness and a climate of ignoring problems led to the current situation. At the moment, an overly large part of the prison population is from Moroccan descent, but that's not the only minority that's over-represented, so it's not out of the ordinary.

Some recent situations that led to mutual anger:
- Occasional riots between Moroccan kids and Dutch police, with the police being accused of instigating the riots with their very presence...
- More and more stories about Moroccan youths attacking/robbing poor old Dutch people, all of which get a lot of media attention. Naturally, Muslims see this as one-sided, which is true to an extend.
- More and more stories of Moroccan youths abusing Dutch girls verbally and physically. Everyone claims to have seen it, and every Muslim claims it's isolated incidents by annoying youths.
- After 9/11, there are rather embarrassing reports of (duh!) Moroccan kids celebrating. The Muslim community denies this incident happened, or says it's an isolated incident.
- Pim Fortuyn, outspoken Dutch politician, says a lot of bad things about Muslims (in their view). Most Dutch people agree with what he says, because he's basically telling the truth. Most Dutch politicians are angry at his attack at them and their politically-correct world-view. Fortuyn is murdered by a left-wing animal rights activist, for being a danger to society.
- Last year, we had the whole Remembrance Day situation, with some Moroccan kids playing soccer with wreaths placed at historical sites. The reason is that they're angry at the Jews/Israelis for their actions, and they see the day as a remembrance of dirty Jews. It also emerged that Dutch school teachers have a hard time giving classes about the Holocaust, because Muslim kids tend to protest too much.
- A school decided to ban head-scarves because it interfered with the teaching - it was a school for sociology, teaching people to deal with kids. They said that someone wearing a headscarf wasn't going to be able to relate to Dutch kids. Muslims were outraged, Dutch people were outraged at that.
- A Moroccan guy was shot by a Dutch-Turkish policeman, for threatening him with a knife. Muslims claimed this was a clear case of racism, Dutch people were outraged at the claim.
- After the murder of van Gogh, news emerged that Muslim youths are not getting their extremism from Dutch Mosques, but are getting it directly from... Saudi-Arabia.

Well, the list goes on and on. All isolated incidents, all getting nationwide press coverage. A lot of Dutch people are starting to feel like strangers in their own country (especially in the big cities), and want to go back to the olde days. A lot of Muslims want the government to intervene, to stop the annoying youths from ruining their reputation. A lot of Dutch people see all Muslims as being the same as that annoying youth, while a lot of Muslims see all Dutch as being racist.

As for the role of the far-right: there's pretty much no such role. There *is* no far-right in the Netherlands. The "worst" (or best) we have is people like van Gogh or Fortuyn, who aren't right-wing at all, but don't like political-correctness, and state the obvious. I'd say the lack of right-wing politicians led to the situation in the first place...