Immigrants, A Disaster

Three days ago I waked down to the entrance of the building where I live, when I saw on advert-board a big peace of paper printed on it "Immigranten een Ramp", which means “Immigrants, a disaster”.

I don’t know if the person who hang that piece of paper meant a certain ethnic group or is he generalizing to include all non-Dutch citizens, especially that there in addition to me there are Asians, Indians, Spanish and even Albanians living in the same building! Or is it targeted as the case now (by some) towards Islam and Muslims in particular?

In the evening, when I came back home from work, that piece of paper was taken off!

There are many changes within the way the Dutch conceive immigrants, this started by the late 1990s, but it reached its climax after the death of the famous film director, Theo van Gogh by an extremist who thought that he could change things with a knife, a sword, and a pistol! Since then the smile I used to see on street from the by-passers has diminished. There is fear, and fear leads to rejection – and for many to hatred. This is among other reasons why one and a half million people voted in the last general election for someone yet with another extremist ideology i.e. Geert Wilders

Yet, it is not that immigrants living in the wet green low land must pack their stuff and leave, because doom’s day for them is near due to this kind of behavior by some. There are a lot efforts clearly witnessed to bridge the ever expanding gap between the two: It is like some “forces” trying their best to lay down a sort of a status quo of hatred towards Muslims living the Netherlands (which in no way that is going to impact other ethnic groups), however, there are who counter attack (or defend) these forces.

It is very interesting to see a documentary the other day about a couple of interviews with Jewish scholars and academics who gave their opinion about Muslims in the Netherlands, mainly, when they resembled them with the Jewish during Nazi Germany, when the whole situation began with hatred within the one society, and gradually developed into a mass humiliation, deportation, which ended up towards mass concentration camps for them. I won’t ask if this would happen in the Netherlands, and see Muslims are relocated in such camps, but as one friend of mine once told me: “Unfortunately, any major event similar to the death of Gogh would take place in the future, accusations will be directed to ALL Muslims in the country and not only to the one who committed that crime”.