The port city of Rotterdam in the last forty years, experienced a population exchange, who can overturn the city. The majority of the population is not more from Holland, but from Morocco, Turkey, Surinam and about 170 other nations. Two Blue Daffodil editors were there in search of clues and have a dialogue with Muslim representatives in mosques and universities looking for.
The largest mosque in Western Europe as a gateway to a neighborhood in the lives barely a native.
On 17 December 2010 it was time. Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb opened in Rotterdam, the largest mosque in Western Europe. It has room for 3,000 people and by the two 50 meter high minarets is already visible from afar. From the city center, cross the Meuse on the Erasmus Bridge, the symbol of the Seaport, and land in its southern part, which has seen over the last four decades, an unprecedented exchange of populations. Direction Stadion De Kuip, the home of the well beyond the borders known soccer team Feyenoord, and since it is a welcomed even this vast temple, which now is the stadium of over one hundred years of Workers' Association in the shade.
Rotterdam is tipped and is now the symbol of the new As-Salam mosque. In the metropolis with more than 600,000 inhabitants are the immigrants recently has the majority. People from more than 170 countries. Calculated that the situation in the coming years will continue a head. 2017 60 percent of the population have an immigrant background. The south of the Maas lying neighborhoods, such Feijenoord, Afrikaner and Tarwewijk are particularly affected. In a short flying visit we meet hardly any locals. At first glance, there is order, but just in a strange world with Turkish shops and some veiled people.
native of Morocco Mayor makes most pressure on immigrants
The Muslim mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb completes the picture of a big city that does not clearly determinable Own greater. The Social Democrat immigrated at age 15 with his mother and the brothers into the Netherlands. He is an example of successful integration, studied, worked first in television then and later moved to various high official positions up to the Secretary of State for Labour and Social Affairs. Since 2009 he is at the head of Rotterdam and is the first Muslim in Western Europe, holding such a high office. His Moroccan passport he has not given up today. The right-wing politician Geert Wilders therefore proposed cynical, Rotterdam renamed to "Rabat on the Maas". In this statement you Aboutaleb's credit that he does not want to transform under Moroccan Rotterdam model, as suggested by the saying of Wilders. Rather, he is a consistent advocate a tight social policy aims to integrate foreigners quickly and for non-compliance with sanctions on the labor market.
Unless marked to the facts. But what does this mean really - for the city, the daily interaction of people with each other and their identity? The policy attempts to wipe away the differences, and added to a so-called urban citizenship, with the slogan "We are Rotterdam" was introduced. "The guiding idea for Rotterdam's pride in the city, pride in diversity. We see diversity not as a problem but as a force for social, economic and cultural development of our city, "explained Aboutaleb this project shortly after taking office, to the Berliner Zeitung. But this is only cosmetic, to make the existing problems unrecognizable. In fact, Rotterdam Ten turbulent years behind. Several hundred million euros spent in the city this time for security and integration policies. While surveillance cameras have brought the desired results, the effectiveness of integration policies is doubtful.
backyard atmosphere in a social and cultural
The search for the nature of Muslims in Rotterdam starts with a wrong track, but maybe this helps more so. We want to visit the Islamic University, land But first a few blocks away in a dubious social and cultural center, named after the generals Iskender Pala. From a side entrance just a woman comes out in burqa. The main entrance, we take may seem to happen only men. The ground floor is a grocery store, travel agency and a laundry room. We take off our shoes to go one floor higher to the prayer room can. The Muslims, many with long beards and heavy coats eyeing us suspiciously. We come to talk with anyone. No one seems to speak English or have a conversation with us to do. On the second floor we find a boarding school for Students. What is taught in these rooms, we can not find out. Neither local nor the Internet are related to this information. The atmosphere of this institution leaves a bad feeling: Who actually checks this parallel society?
We ask that a little later the vice-rector of the University of Islamist, Emin Akcahuseyin. The professor teaches Islamic health care and devotes much time for us. There are some Turkish coffee and desserts. Akcahuseyin shrugs his shoulders. He did not know whether a few blocks away a terrorist preparing an attack. Excluding one could never do. "But we must Muslims do not ask why but under general suspicion. "At his university, there is every effort to inform on terrorism. He feel hostility towards members of other religious means. A natural
Islam in a secular world
we talking here so with an enlightened Muslim who wants just as many European intellectuals integration and a "Euro-Islam"? "No!" Can you imagine a secularized Islam? "No, I wish Islam a natural life in a secularized world," said Emin Akcahuseyin. Muslims should have their children participate in swimming lessons at school. The yes. But integration into the Western system? Why? [1] The past few decades, self-conscious in the Netherlands resident scientists out the essence of his religion. In the library, he proudly shows us the new publications of the University. All across the board in Turkish and Arabic. We understand a word in these books, but we also publish in Dutch, English and French, assures Akcahuseyin.
are at the state-recognized university currently has approximately 300 students enrolled. Learn how Islamic banking works and what rules the Islamic Law (Sharia) does. Study tours led by future academics in recent years, the United Arab Emirates and Syria. Except for a young woman wearing all that we encounter here headscarf.
A dialogue that takes place only as a pretext to "open days"
Akcahuseyin also stresses how important it is the dialogue between the religions. At his university, the various groups would demonstrate the possibilities of exchange, taking place in other places. The professor recommended that end, the meeting place of the Mevlana mosque. To further integrate the city and state there have a whole floor with a billiard room, Library (again, almost exclusively of works in Turkish and Arabic), computer cabinet with game consoles and subsidized community kitchen, where should the different cultures and religions come closer. Site visits, little is felt. We meet only to Muslim men. The chairman of the mosque-association leads us through the rooms and tried to score with misogynistic sayings.
In Rotterdam there are dozens of mosques. What is preached in it penetrates only a fraction of the public. It seems certain, however, that the hoped-for integration has failed through the establishment of meeting places, as the natives of the Islamic Worship away. They would not come there and get any love. Significantly, this is an incident from 2001, when the imam of Rotterdam An-Nasr mosque, Khalil el Moumni, homosexuals abused. While the controversy came out about him, that he preached in 1998 against the West: "Western civilization has no morals. Getting married in the Netherlands it is allowed homosexuals. Because they allow this, the Europeans are lower than dogs and pigs. "The indictment of el Moumni These kinds of statements was due, however, unsuccessful. He was acquitted in court and was allowed to preach on.
appear in a few days, the second part of this article. Then it comes to Reasons for the failure of integration and the anonymity of the city.
From: Felix Menzel
Source: The tilted Rotterdam - search for clues in a city überfremdeten
[1] As the integration in these neighborhoods look like the following video from the Muslim district of Molenbeek in Brussels. The district of Molenbeek in Brussels is so dangerous that it would rather not enter as a non-Muslim should be. Anti-Western sentiment and street crime are common in Molenbeek. Non-Muslims integrate into western society, but the native Belgians adapt to the demands of radical Islam.
My opinion: I think the Muslims will be restrained by public funds. How will it be when there is not enough public money available to meet the demands of the Muslims? As long as people vote in Rotterdam the Social Democratic mayor, who thinks that the local population and the Muslims should live peacefully together, is not likely to change in Rotterdam. Why must they live together? In the U.S. they would have long been recognized. Perhaps the people of Rotterdam, the party of Geert Wilders had to choose.
Tei II: The failed integration and the anonymity the city
familiar In the Netherlands the policy long in the concept of pillarisation prohibit any ideological or religious grouping has the right to its own institutions such as mosques and universities to build. But the concept is in dealing with Islam does not occur. The Amsterdam sociologist and journalist Paul Scheffer in his essay The multicultural drama (2000) and with the book The immigrants. Tolerance in a Borderless World (2008), the reasons presented. In the latter he writes: "For a religion which has always had a majority or a monopoly position in the countries of origin, the fact . To be a religious minority that religious practice must address under completely new conditions a new form "
Whether Islam in Europe, this new form actually finds doubts Scheffer:" This is the migration of Muslims makes it an unprecedented event, and it is no guarantee that Islam will find a natural place in the Western world. "Well, this constellation exacerbated by the fact that the Muslims in Rotterdam on their way to a clear numerical advantage, first and second, the majority of them lower-class belongs and disproportionately benefit dependency and crime notice.
De-assimilation of the longer-term residents strangers
Here comes into play a phenomenon that analyzed razor sharp Hannah Arendt in her Origins of Totalitarianism in relation to stateless persons the interwar years. She noted that a "de-assimilation of long ago resident alien" begins when a new wave of people of their original cultural group comes into the country. In Rotterdam, this is observed, as young Antillean and Surinamese, whose parents were long as well integrated, were drawn into the maelstrom of de-assimilation.
Anyone who thinks the problems are with the Rotterdam Regard to the immigrant underclass and those self-conscious, intelligent Muslims to establish their own institutions and their own culture, adequately covered, you are wrong. Paul Scheffer stressed that each city force "to a permanent deal with strangers." This refers not only migrants. "In an environment full of foreign people anonymity, and people are looking for ways to reduce the uncertainty."
Rotterdam is a prime example of an anonymous city. In the center you get from the skyline a stiff neck. Historic buildings must be sought with difficulty. Ever since 1940 the core of the downtown was destroyed by German bombing, was on the decades, a "Manhattan on the Maas to the highest offices in the Netherlands. In addition to these shape the temple of consumption of major global brands, the pedestrian zone. But this will constitute, a World Trade Center, and glass facades, transparency, cause no identity. The city with its glass business people have lost their face, because the locals occur in downtown like robots and disappear into the countryside after work in her doll, so she of the reality in the immigrant-dominated neighborhoods not notice. Even the emerging middle class of migrants is moving now and avoid certain districts.
Misguided City Planning: White enclaves in foreign ghetto
beginning of the new millennium saw the Government of the difficult situation: "The absorption capacity of certain districts to be somewhere else by the unrelenting influx of vulnerable groups and the exodus of higher income earners who can afford to to live exceeded. This, together with the harassment of illegality and criminality of the core of our problem. "Back in the 1970s tried to Rotterdam, a ceiling of five percent for migrants to enforce. But the Netherlands banned all its social tolerance awareness that legislation - Remarkably, after there were riots against Turkish guest workers in the Rotterdam district Afrikaanderwijk.
the past few years, then set for city planners because of the innumerable problems in the immigrant districts of the concept of "diversity" (diversity). In conflict-ridden areas should be put together cheaper rent and more expensive new condominiums a variety of social and ethnic groups through rehabilitation and demolition. In Charlois where this concept should be implemented, it failed. Residents reported that there was an "enclave of well-paid white man living in a de facto foreign ghetto" emerged.
No policy prescriptions - neither right nor left
Both the Netherlands and Rotterdam in particular because of the alienation experienced in the past decade, several political earthquakes. In the local elections in March 2002, the city's party "Leefbaar Rotterdam" with the right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn in the head at once the most votes and formed together with the Christian Democrats and Liberals coalition, in particular, security in the city with a "zero tolerantie - wanted to restore policy. With a lot of money, police presence, surveillance cameras for public spaces and private security services for central places like the Central Station was able to displace crime from the city as much as possible. Disappeared, but it is not long. It has merely shifted to more remote parts of the city.
Fortuyn even the realignment of the security and integration policies in his city no longer lived with. On 6 May 2002, he was shot by the radical animal rights Volkert van der Graaf for a media event. Two and a half years later shocked the once-proud country to its tolerance, a second political murder: The jihadist Mohammed Bouyeri in Amsterdam perpetrated the assassination of the director Theo van Gogh.
The excitement of these murders and the focus on the issue of security should However, one fact can not be forgotten. Even the supposedly "right" groups have in Rotterdam and the Netherlands developed a political program that allows the foreign infiltration and the independent existence of Islam to the teeth. Despite many well-intentioned efforts to achieve integration and dialogues, it is concluded in the port city tilted an open secret that week polygamous marriages (one man marries several women) and in civil law slowly established the Sharia as a parallel legal system. One has to wonder about not if allowed to be taught in state-recognized universities Islamic law.
Editor's note: appears in a few days the third and final part of this article. Then it comes to the evaluation of the tilted Rotterdam. Menzel's thesis: The expression of molecular civil war for cities such as Rotterdam is unfortunate, because this is prevented by the anonymity of the big city now. The conflicts break out, it creep into ever new areas of society and ultimately, institutionalized.
Source: The failed integration and the anonymity of the city
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