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Monday November 8, 2004

The racist Left

European Union

Oh, oh, the Hague..

GroenLinks,de ChristenUnie,de SP,de PvdA en D66 zijn niet te spreken over de opmerking van vice-premier Zalm dat het kabinet "de oorlog aangaat om moslimextremisme en radicalisme te bestrijden".

Volgens GroenLinks-voorzitter Halsema suggereert de "oorlogszuchtige taal dat alles is geoorloofd". Dittrich van D66: "Je moet niet door grove taal alle moslims over één kam scheren."

Ook voormalig VVD-leider Bolkestein en oud-premier Van Agt zijn niet blij. "Ik betreur het zeer dat de regering de terminologie van Bush heeft overgenomen over de war on terror", aldus Van Agt.

The article is from Teletekst (no permanent link exists). The news service expires pages so no link is possible. A quick summary: Dutch VP Zalm (VVD) declared war on terrorism and islamofascism and the left is outraged at this alleged generalisation of muslims.

There's one problem however: Zalm did not generalise. He clearly wants to fight only the radical followers, the ones who translate religion into murder. By suggesting he wants a fight on the Islam or muslims in general, it is actually the left that is applying racist generalisations.

In the Netherlands, two words have been heard a lot lately: us and them. Most people use us for the Dutch people of various religions, Islam included, who live in harmony. Them refers to terrorists. But the left is convinced that them refers to all muslims and tries to copy the misinformational position of terrorism itself, hammering the right on an all-out attack on the Islam which is simply not there.

Van Agt even managed to criticise politicians for having a similar opinion as the Bush administration. Personally I don't see why it's such a problem to fight terrorism instead of legislating it and I suppose I have no option but to trade my libertarian vote for D66, for a national security vote for VVD.

Politics

European Union

Readers of my blog not used to having political views on here: for a long time I have been able to express my political views on , but recent events abrupted that option. I respect the view that some readers don't want to read about politics and that, with the US leading the war on terror, SA was the appropriate outlet.

But it would be foolish of me to continue such a policy now that murder and threats in the name of jihad take place in my home country.

I feel like I need to express my anger with terrorism as much as possible. I'm outraged that some people take the van Gogh murders as a reason to use explosives on Islamic schools which happened in Eindhoven this morning. To prevent such blind hatred, it's important that I continue to advocate a strong war on terrorism and make it very clear that terrorism is destroying all of us, both Islam and non-Islam. We must all fight it together. "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" holds up in the Netherlands as well. To single out the terrorists and destroy them is our best ticket to restore unity. Dutch Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, secularists.. together against terrorism. United we stand.

Wij en Zij

Personal

Inspired by my previous post, I wrote a poem on terrorism in the Netherlands. It does not happen often I feel like writing in Dutch, but I feel I can reach the target audience better this way. Een gedicht over Theo van Gogh, terrorisme, wij en zij. Feel free to copy/paste it on your blog or MSN.

Mohammed Bouyeri and Samir Azzouz

Anglosphere

Thanks to American media we can now give terrorism a name in Holland: Mohammed Bouyeri and Samir Azzouz. I have never understood the need to protect the identity of (alleged) criminals by trimming their last name. There must be several terrified Mohammed B's and Samir A's out there who will be happy to know that in sane countries, media and publications (Wikipedia included) use the full name for these Hofstad group members.

Next day: Tuesday November 9, 2004 Previous day: Friday November 5, 2004

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