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<\/p>\nBy STEVEN ERLANGER<\/p>\n
AMSTERDAM \u2014 Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe.<\/p>\n
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Albert Cuyp Market, on a popular street in Amsterdam. In light of the mass killings in Norway, the Netherlands’ population of Muslim immigrants from Morocco and Turkey has stirred debate.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe\u2019s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.<\/p>\n In Slotervaart, a majority immigrant neighborhood in southwestern Amsterdam, Maria Kuhlman and her friends watched Muslim families stroll by on a Ramadan afternoon, some of the men in robes and beards, the women wearing headscarves. A large blond woman shouted, \u201cGo Wilders!\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Wilders\u2019 Freedom Party, which combines racist language with calls for more social spending, won 15.5 percent of the vote in June 2010. He was recently acquitted of charges of hate speech for comparing the Koran to \u201cMein Kampf\u201d and calling mosques \u201cpalaces of hatred.\u201d Mr. Wilders has said that immigrant Muslims and their children should be deported if they break the law, or engage in behavior he has described as \u201cproblematic, \u201d or they are \u201clazy.\u201d He also warns of the supposed Muslim plot to create \u201cEurabia.\u201d He declined repeated interview requests.<\/p>\n While many Dutch recoil at his language, he touches on real fears. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m afraid of Islam,\u201d Ms. Kuhlman said. \u201cThey\u2019re taking over the neighborhood and they\u2019re very strong. I don\u2019t love Wilders. He\u2019s a pig, but he says what many people think.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, after Norway, the Dutch are taking stock. The killings frightened everyone, said Kathleen Ferrier, a Christian Democrat legislator born in Surinam, who had objected to her party joining a Wilders-supported government. \u201cNorway makes it clear how much Dutch society is living on the edge of its nerves,\u201d she said. \u201cWilders says hateful things and no one objects. We have freedom of speech, but you also have to be responsible for the effect of your words.\u201d<\/p>\n Taboos about discussing ethnicity and race \u2014 founded in shame about delivering Dutch Jews to the Nazis \u2014 are long gone.<\/p>\n via Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity – NYTimes.com<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amid Rise of Multiculturalism, Dutch Confront Their Questions of Identity By STEVEN ERLANGER AMSTERDAM \u2014 Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe. Herman Wouters for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":43906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284,609],"tags":[6531,1780,5984],"class_list":["post-43904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-norway","category-the-netherlands","tag-anders-behring-breivik","tag-mein-kampf","tag-wilders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}