Dutch Islamphobia spreads to Belgium

It started in the Netherlands, but Dutch bigotry has spread to the Flanders section of Belgium society. Just like the Spanish Inquisition was not confined to Spain–it spread to wherever the Spanish were present–Goa (India), Philippines, South Africa and so on and so forth. Similarly the hateful message of Geert Wilders and his cohorts the Neo-Nazis has spread like wildfire to neighboring regions where the Dutch are present. This dangerous trend is similar to the pogroms against the Jews in Weimar Germany and then Nazi Germany. The Dutch were allies of the German Nazis and they surely did commit the same egregious acts that the German Nazis committed against a vulnerable population.

 

Now the same history is being repeated in Europe.

. Reuters. 700 Belgian schools to ban headscarves

BRUSSELS: About one fifth of all schools in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region will ban pupils from wearing Muslim headscarves, the schools said on Friday. “This decision promotes the feeling of equality and prevents group formation or segregation on the basis of external symbols of life philosophy,” said a statement from the schools, which number about 700. Most schools in Flanders are Catholic. Two schools in the northern city of Antwerp and nearby Hoboken introduced such a ban at the start of the school year last week, arguing that Muslim girls were being pressured to wear headscarves by their families and peers. Angry pupils have protested outside the two schools, and one girl

filed a complaint in court to contest the ban. The protests, with banners reading “No headscarves, no pupils” and “Everybody free except us”, have been front-page news in Belgium. One of the schools was vandalised, had slogans sprayed on its walls and its director received a death threat. France passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class

Posted in Current Affairs Tagged: Dutch, Europe, Islamphobia, Neo-Nazis, Netherlands