Dyab Abou JahJah

[Jörgen Noens]

Weer vallen de maskers af en komt de verdoken agenda boven.

Nogmaals wordt bewezen waar Dyab Abou JahJah in werkelijkheid mee bezig is. Eerst ons land overspoelen met illegalen en nieuwe-belgen (ik haat al de term belgen), dan meer en meer rechten eisen. En nu staan ze te springen om ons bestuur over te nemen zodoende we vreemdeling in ons eigen land worden.

Volgende uitspraak van JahJah staat vandaag op de 2de pagina van Het Laatste Nieuws:" Als het Blok aan de macht komt en haar ideeën uitvoert, krijgen we hier Joegoslavische toestanden. Wie voor het Blok stemt, kiest voor conflict. Wij zullen ons niet laten doen." Het ware gedachtengoed van deze Islam-leider komt boven. Vlaanderen innemen en overspoelen met de Islam. Laten we ons niet doen, dreigt hij met een burgeroorlog (dat kan ieder onder ons opmaken uit zijn bovenstaande uitspraak!). Mocht een Vlaams-Blokker of eender welke Vlaming deze uitspraak hebben gedaan, zou er al lang een proces volgen. 2 maten en 2 gewichten.

Vlamingen verenig u!

J.N.

[Pieterjan]

Woorden worden weer in de mond gelegd in de hoop dat iedereen met een mond vol staat. Het gegoochel is weer begonnen!!!


En nu staan ze te springen om ons bestuur over te nemen zodoende we vreemdeling in ons eigen land worden.

Wat een gezever alom. Er wordt inspraak gevraagd. Zo kunnen problemen opgelost worden en zo moet je de allochtonen niet steeds demoniseren. Zo worden de jongens van 15 misschien geen boefjes op latere leeftijd. Zo wordt voor de aanpassingsproblemen en integratiemoeilijkheden oplossingen gevonden.
Ze staan helemaal niet te springen om het land over te nemen. Maar de tegenreacties uit de islamitische wereld laat u waarschijnlijk makkelijkheidhalve weg om het ons niet té moeilijk te maken.



Volgende uitspraak van JahJah staat vandaag op de 2de pagina van Het Laatste Nieuws:" Als het Blok aan de macht komt en haar ideeën uitvoert, krijgen we hier Joegoslavische toestanden. Wie voor het Blok stemt, kiest voor conflict. Wij zullen ons niet laten doen." Het ware gedachtengoed van deze Islam-leider komt boven. Vlaanderen innemen en overspoelen met de Islam. Laten we ons niet doen, dreigt hij met een burgeroorlog (dat kan ieder onder ons opmaken uit zijn bovenstaande uitspraak!). Mocht een Vlaams-Blokker of eender welke Vlaming deze uitspraak hebben gedaan, zou er al lang een proces volgen. 2 maten en 2 gewichten.

Vlamingen verenig u!

J.N.


Misschien heeft die uitspraak ivm met Joegoeslavië geen betrekking op de burgeroorlog maar op het buitenwippen van andere entnische culturen. U probeert zelfs de lezer dingen te laten lezen die er bijlange niet staan. En hoe bepaalt u dat als een Vlaams-Blokker dergelijke uitspraak zou doen veroordeelt zou worden.

En roep de Vlamingen niet op aub, niet alle Vlamingen die trots zijn op hun Vlaanderenland stemmen Vlaams Blok!

[Jörgen Noens]

Ik raad u aan het artikel te lezen alvorens te reageren! Dan zal u duidelijk kunnen merken wat de onderliggende bedoeling van deze mijnheer is! En niet enkel dit artikel, ken je vijand en lees erover.

J.N.

[Truder]

... Zo kunnen problemen opgelost worden en zo moet je de allochtonen niet steeds demoniseren. Zo worden de jongens van 15 misschien geen boefjes op latere leeftijd.


Nu geloof jij dat zelf Pieterjan?
Hoeveel integratie pogingen hebben we al niet achter de rug, hoeveel vzw's zijn er niet dagelijks bezig, hoeveel miljarden zijn er al niet ingepompt?
Niets hielp, maar dit zou dan wel gaan helpen??
Je bent intelligenter dan dat, dat kan je toch zelf niet geloven.

[jimmyl]

Men moet nu ook niet gaan overdrijven he. Zolang deze meneer nog geen 'echte' macht heeft, blijft hij gewoon een of andere freak. Ik zeg wel zolang want indien deze kerel een partij zou oprichten? Trouwens ik dacht dat die moslimpartij waarover de rtbf sprak van een andere moslimvereniging uitging. Het is toch ook niet omdat morgen de voorzitter van de duivenbond zegt dat iedereen duifs moet gaan spreken dat we dat ook gaan doen he. :wink:

Toont wel aan dat de integratie voor sommigen compleet niet werkt. Als men na xx jaren nog maar enkel arabisch spreekt. Misschien dat men zulke fundamentalisten maar gewoon de belgische nationaliteit moet afnemen en het land uitzetten.

jimmyl

[thePiano]

Nogmaals wordt bewezen waar Dyab Abou JahJah in werkelijkheid mee bezig is. Eerst ons land overspoelen met illegalen en nieuwe-belgen (ik haat al de term belgen), dan meer en meer rechten eisen. En nu staan ze te springen om ons bestuur over te nemen zodoende we vreemdeling in ons eigen land worden.


Amaai, ik wist niet dat Jahjah zo'n bezig mannetje was: alle landen van de wereld afschuimen en de mensen vandaar in zijn Renault Vierken naar België smokkelen :O

Voor de rest slaap je toch nog goed JN? :D

[Jörgen Noens]

waaw wat een diepzinnige reactie. Tja sommige mensen willen voor de waarheid ontdoken blijven, alle begrip daarvoor!

J.N.

[S.]

Moest een politika van allochtone afkomst, een leider van een andere allochtone vereniging of pater Leman dezelfde uitspraken als Jahjah hebben gedaan, het zou altijd tot hetzelfde geleid hebben. De mening van diegene die de uitspraak doet wordt gezien als representatief voor de allochtone gemeenschap.
Kortom, het mocht nog de grootste loser zijn die deze uitspraak had gedaan, het Blok had de uitspraak toch misbruikt.

[Truder]

Bedoel je zoals jullie iemand gebruiken die ergens ooit eens een lidkaart van het Vlaams Blok heeft gehad, of erger nog gewoon wat inlichtingen heeft ingewonnen?

Die is een vertegenwoordiger van de moslimgemeenschap met aardig wat leden achter zich. Kijk maar naar de verwoesting van Antwerpen.

[S.]

Die is een vertegenwoordiger van de moslimgemeenschap met aardig wat leden achter zich. Kijk maar naar de verwoesting van Antwerpen.

Dus U zegt het zelf; hij is niet DE vertegenwoordiger, zoals velen laten uitschijnen. Ik denk dat als U eerlijk met uzelf bent, U ook weet dat Jahjah absoluut niet de ganse moslimgemeenschap vertegenwoordigt, hoogstens enkele gefrustreerden.

[Jörgen Noens]

En wat moest het Vlaams Blok een dergelijke uitspraak hebben gedaan mijnheer s.? Inderdaad het land stond op zijn kop en de klachten zouden binnen komen dat het niet gewoon is! Maarja in dit apenland wordt er zoals steeds met 2 maten en 2 gewichten gewerkt. Namelijk deze voor het Vlaams Blok en deze voor al de rest. Troost u ... één tegen allen heeft zijn nut al bewezen!

J.N.

[S.]

Het Blok lijkt mij iets gevaarlijker als een randdebiel die een paar gefrustreerden vertegenwoordigt.

[Jörgen Noens]

Het Blok gevaarlijker dan deze uitspraak: :" Als het Blok aan de macht komt en haar ideeën uitvoert, krijgen we hier Joegoslavische toestanden. Wie voor het Blok stemt, kiest voor conflict. Wij zullen ons niet laten doen." Tja, het is hoe dat je het maar bekijken wil!

Het Blok dreigt niet met een oorlogsverklaring als ze hun gelijk niet krijgen. Het Blok zal op een democratische wijze wel zijn gelijk krijgen!

JahJah houdt het liever bij oorlog als hij zijn gelijk niet krijgt (maw als wij als vlaming ons niet aanpassen aan de islam!)... kan hij eindelijk zijn droom realiseren en ons eigen volk uitmoorden en verjagen! De geschiedenis herhaald zich!

J.N.

[S.]

Ik bedoelde niet kwa ideeën, maar wat betreft ledenaantal...

Hun ideeën (bij allebei) zijn voor mijn part extremistisch en niet in de praktijk om te zetten.

[Jörgen Noens]

definieer mij eens het woord extremistisch! En ik denk dat we dan al zijn uitgepraat!

J.N.

[Truder]

Die is een vertegenwoordiger van de moslimgemeenschap met aardig wat leden achter zich. Kijk maar naar de verwoesting van Antwerpen.

Dus U zegt het zelf; hij is niet DE vertegenwoordiger, zoals velen laten uitschijnen. Ik denk dat als U eerlijk met uzelf bent, U ook weet dat Jahjah absoluut niet de ganse moslimgemeenschap vertegenwoordigt, hoogstens enkele gefrustreerden.

Wat een antwoord, kan jij DE vertegenwoordiger van de Vlamingen noemen, of DE vertegenwoordiger van de Belgen? Dat is iets dat niet bestaat.

Hij heeft een groot aantal moslims achter zich, groter dan u wil weten.
Maar de struisvogelpolitiek van onze linkse rakkers zijn we nu al gewend. Het is dank zij die struisvogelpolitiek dat het Vlaams Blok is kunnen groot worden (waarvoor dank).
Moest men niet zo krampachtig de handen op de oren houden en staan roepen "er zijn geen problemen, er zijn geen problemen.)
Dan had er nu geen sprake geweest van migranten problemen. Maar luisteren naar het gepeupel daar vinden onze linkse semi-intellectuele vrienden zich te goed voor. Zij hebben namelijk de waarheid in pacht.

[S.]

ex·tre·´mis·me (het ~)

1 het gaan, het voeren tot het uiterste op politiek gebied
(www.vandale.nl)

Ik weet dat voor U het Blok zo mainstream is als maar kan, maar vreemd genoeg komen de meeste mensen, de media en politieke wetenschappers tot een andere conclusie...

[Jörgen Noens]

De politieke wetenschappers ... diegene die politiek gebonden zijn zekerst. Ik ken profs die op de lijst van het Vlaams Blok stonden! Ga maar na, zo was er een rel op de KUL! Hoe komt het dat er dan profs werken bij het Vlaams Blok?

De media ... tja niet moelijk zo gepolitikiseerd als maar zijn kan. Dat moet toch ook jij kunnen en durven toegeven.

J.N.

[Darwin]

Het Blok lijkt mij iets gevaarlijker als een randdebiel die een paar gefrustreerden vertegenwoordigt.
Laten we even luisteren naar wat deze 'randdebiel' te vertellen heeft op de website van het AEL:


ASSIMILATION OR DEPORTATION:

ARABS IN EUROPE AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Dyab Abou Jahjah

paper presented at a symposium about terrorism and human rights organised by the CIHRS in Cairo end of january 2002


Introduction

In this paper I will present a view of the current situation of Arabs in Europe. My intention is not to elaborate on legal procedures or new legislation by the European union on "combating terrorism" nor I will be trying to define terrorism or propose strategies to deal with it, as I am sure many of the other papers in this conference will be doing that. Instead I will try to shed some light on the socio-political and cultural interactions between Arabs and Europeans and the socio-cultural context prior to the eleventh of September and what changes occurred after it. This is not an academical paper and was not meant to be one. My intention all through will be to reflect the situation out of an Arab-European perspective. The eleventh of September will not be the pivotal date in this paper nor its leitmotiv. I will try to sketch a more comprehensive image of the roots of Islamophobia and anti-Arab feeling in Europe with a political and historical approach. As an illustration case, I will examine closely the situation of the Arab community in the province of Flanders in Belgium, because it is where I live and therefore I would be more capable of giving a personal testimony on the situation there.

This paper is based upon the experience and day to day findings of the Arab European League (AEL), a Belgian based organization that is active in defending the civil rights of Arabs in Europe and a better understanding for Arab causes in general. AEL is more a movement than a lobby; it operates on the grassroots level and is widely represented among the second generation Arabs in Belgium.


1-The burden of history

Not many people in Europe today are aware of the way their role in history has been perceived and experienced by other peoples. Not many Europeans would like to enter a debate on the repercussions of their colonization on what they call the third world. Neither would they like to admit that many of the world’s conflicts today are a direct result of the mess Europe created wherever it passed. In Belgium for instance the colonization of Congo is barely mentioned in public debate, and the continuous interfering in the politics of that country even after direct colonization had ended (see the Belgian implication in the murder of Lumumba) is also not a favorite subject of discussion. The same goes for Rwanda and Burundi, and the relation between Belgian colonization of these countries and the creation of the division between Hutu and Tutsi. And the direct and indirect fueling of the conflict between the two groups that resulted in the Rwandan genocide and the death of more than a million people, all this is also a subject to avoid.

Europe suffers from selective amnesia, on the one hand it will never forget the Holocaust, never forget even the eleventh of September, but Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq are all too often forgotten.

The new Europe is trying, however, to cut a new deal with the world. It is trying to be the enlightened partner of the unique super power. It is always looking for nuances, for that good middle way, and often to the frustration of the American big brother and its loyal lackey in London. Europe is playing an important role in what it calls development cooperation, building partnerships with its southern neighbors that are useful, even though they are far from being a structural solution to any problem. That enlightened Europe that is propagated mainly through the institutions of the European union is supposed to bring a message of tolerance and broadmindedness to the world and help healing the wounds of conflicts and war. Nevertheless, one might wonder if this new message that Europe wants to bring to the world and the role that Europe wants to claim are not a modern-day version of the infamous "white man’s burden" of the past centuries. It is legitimate to pose this question since ethnocentrism still stains policies and minds in the old continent.


2-The apogee of fear

Europe has a problem with its own history, it is trying to forge an identity out of a conflictual past with as only tools: common interests and values. By doing so, the process of European integration is shaking the foundations of the old identities and making certain populations feel insecure, easily threatened or easy to perceive insecurity in its subjective form.

In a world globalizing and a Europe integrating, a peasant from the Flemish country side or a worker from the port of Antwerp or even a banker from Brussels will easily feel exposed to "external dangers" regardless of their factual existence or the lack of it. These dangers can take the form of economical competition like hostile takeovers by multinationals or European mergers accompanied by what is cynically called rationalization, which means sacking workers to cut down expanses in a more competitive environment. Sabena and Swiss air merged and then both went bankrupt short before Belgium replaced its national currency with the Euro. Economical mutations are being conceived not only as a source of instability on the employment market or a financial adventure in an unknown realm, but also as a loss of national symbols (national airline, national currency). The danger "that is coming from outside" can also be a disease (mad cow or foot and mouth) and once again be expensive to deal with. The threat can even take more modern and unfamiliar forms like a computer virus (you all remember the I love you virus coming also from outside, somewhere in cyber space). But the biggest threat of them all, despite all innovation and mutation, is the most ancient one of them all: fellow man.

People are more than ever afraid of other people, especially when that other is coming from outside. When he is a stranger, a foreigner. With a world losing its boundaries a foreigner has become more threatening for many reasons. He is more likely to come from "outside" to "inside" as boarders are becoming vague and redundant in Europe and people can travel almost as easy as goods. He is more likely to claim the same rights as local, European citizens can now vote in municipal and European elections in Belgium and discussions are ongoing to give even non-EU residents that same right. He might be more skilled and more capable of finding a job in the new economy that is based upon communication skills and technological literacy. He is very likely to take advantage of tax facilities while withdrawing money from the national market and transferring it to his home country. He will bring with him new ideas and new traditions that might not be consistent with the nature of the country and its people.

Cocooning within the safe boundaries of ones own community and country is no more a possible dream except in few cases.

These reasons make a Flemish individual from Antwerp mistrust and even dislike a priori any Dutch person who moved to live and work in Antwerp (thousands of Dutch people indeed took that step and are met with similar attitudes).

So here we are talking about what this situation can do between two white Europeans speaking the same language and very likely practicing the same religion and sharing similar values. Let us now imagine that this "other" is a bit more different than a Dutch man is. Let’s say he is dark skinned, with black curly hair, that he comes originally from Morocco, speaks Arabic and practices Islam. But also, that he is a manual worker, not very skilled and struggling to survive and forced often to use the welfare system and social security funds as finding a job is already more difficult than ever, even for more skilled people. It is needless to say that the fear and mistrust will be far greater.


3-Islam-phobia, racism or just xenophobia?

Xenophobia is not strange to human nature whether you are Arab, European or Chinese. Actually it is a natural reflex that has deep going roots in the human psyche since we first left our caves and took to the fields and steppes and started encountering other human groups. But in Europe it is accentuated by another more malice and less general attitude: racism. Racism is an ideology and a state of mind prescribing the supremacy of ones own race over all other races. A racist person does not believe in productive coexistence and interaction and can only conceive one relationship with people from other races and that is exploitation. In other words, if one can exploit or at least use another racial group than one can tolerate its presence and in all other cases that racial group has to disappear, because if it were useless than its mere existence would be harmful. Making another racial group disappear can be achieved through ethnic cleansing, deportation or even genocide.

No where in the world did racism flourish more than in Europe. Racist paradigms evolved and mutated but never disappeared. From slavery, to the "white man’s burden" and from "missionary evangelization" to the "message of Europe". From Hitler’s "final solution" to Le Pen’s "repatriation of all non European strangers".

Racism added to xenophobia is an explosive cocktail. If you want to make the equation even more complicated than you have to bring Arabism and Islam into the picture.

Europe has never digested its defeat in the crusades nor did the Arab world forget the atrocities committed by these "savages coming from the north" and their holy war to retrieve the tomb of what they see as their god. Islam for Europeans is not only another average unknown world; it is historically and psychologically a hostile one and a dangerous one.

In the middle-ages, the fear of a superior Arab-Islamic empire and civilization trying to expend its territory into the heart of Europe was more than just a phobia, it was a geopolitical reality. Nowadays, components of this same fear are still present in European popular culture and are more and more infiltrating the political spectrum. The only difference is that the image of the Arab-Islamic culture and world is not that of a superior foe but rather a weakened and wounded one. At the same time it is a foe contesting the status-quo and using the dynamic and mobilizing nature of its religion to revitalize itself and regain its ancient status.

This paper did not start with the buzz sentence "after the fall of the Soviet Union" because we all know that it is when the communist danger was defeated that Europe and the west started to be haunted by its old demons of Islam-phobia. And unlike anti communism, Islam-phobia could perfectly be combined with racism and xenophobia. The result was that in the beginning of the nineties anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discourse started to become trivial mainstream discourse in many milieus. And this all coincided with theories about an unavoidable clash of civilization that the west and Islam will be its main protagonists. The polarization of the world was then reestablished, with the West and its Judeo-Christian civilization on one side and the Arab and Islamic worlds and Islam on the other. It is the Middle Ages revisited.

Soon after, the west sent its first modern-day crusade to save a friendly vassal prince from the evil and madness of a megalomaniac and bloodthirsty Saracen dictator.


4. Paving the way of pain

Even though the Gulf war of 1991 was clearly an American war and that most European policy makers conceived it as such, and even defined their implication in it and their strategies in function of one goal: tempering the American outburst and ambitions. On the popular level the Gulf war was lived and experienced differently. If we put aside the traditional protest of pacifist and leftist Europe that is by no means representative of the main stream, the average European citizen bought the American version of the story and looked at Iraq as an empire of evil governed by a mad man plotting to control the world.

Reaganism is a very simplistic doctrine that can easily gain support among masses. Its populism is the key to its popularity, and this is true in Europe, as it is true in the U.S.

Bush senior, a loyal disciple of the third rank actor -who obviously acted good enough to make it to the white house but never to Hollywood- knew that very well and stayed loyal to the almost religious polarization methods practiced by his predecessor. The demonization of the enemy leader is an essential step in the process of dehumanization of his people. Both processes have been thoroughly executed during the gulf war in a way that allowed the murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians while only speaking of collateral damage. In the street of Brussels the polarization was strongly felt. On the one hand the Belgian population was completely terrified by the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack reaching to the heart of Europe while the Arab immigrant community, that is strongly present, was bitter about the war and did not hide its sympathy with Iraq and its despise of the Americans.

The Arabs in Belgium were then looked at as the "fifth column" of the evil enemy. These immigrants who were invited to come in the sixties when Belgium experienced a shortage in cheap labor, and who worked hard and helped building Belgium’s infrastructure and industry not to mention working in mines under barely human conditions, have became useless after the economical crisis of the seventies and early eighties. But what the Belgian government did not anticipate is that most of them decided to stay, especially since their children were born in their new country. And as we already mentioned while talking about racist mechanisms, a useless different ethnic group can not be tolerated or accepted, it has to disappear. This was exactly how Moroccans in Belgium were perceived, and unfortunately, this is still the case today. One might argue that this has to do with the racist white supremacy attitude of the average Belgian accentuated by the economical crisis, and that is indeed true. The statistics of the European Union (Euro barometer 1997) single Belgium out as the most racist country in Europe. But it is also true that the islamophobic reflex that was revitalized by the gulf war added extra fuel to the whole explosive equation. After the defeat of Iraq the bitterness of Arabs in Belgium turned into frustration and the fear of the fifth column did not vanish.

It is by no means a coincidence that 1991 is the year that witnessed the most violent clashes between the police and Arab youth in what looked like intifada scenes in the street of Brussels and that was only weeks after the gulf war ended. The reason of the clashes was that the far right racist party "Vlaams Blok" was allowed to hold a political rally in (b]Molenbeek, a neighborhood of Brussels where predominantly Arab immigrants live.[/b] Vlaams Blok was already campaigning on a strong anti immigrant platform very similar to that of Le Pen in France. Among its slogans one could read "Islam out" or even "halt Islamic invasion". To allow a party like this into the streets of Molenbeek in the spring of 1991 is definitely asking for troubles. The clashes were very violent and lasted for days and they ended only when the minister of interior issued an official apology to the Arab community and promised not to commit such mistakes in the future. A couple of months later the same racist party scored a sweeping victory in the national elections and even became the biggest political party in the important city of Antwerp.


5. The other side of the medal

It is because Europe has to do the most with racism that Europe talks the most about anti-racism. And it is there, in European anti-racist strategies, that the most dangerous mistakes were committed and that racism is building its most impressive shrines.

The electoral victory of Vlaams Blok shocked and surprised their friends and foes alike. No one could imagine that a party with such an archaic message "the immediate deportation of all non-white immigrants" could gain so much support. The whole political establishment felt the ground shaking under its feet, not only because the Blok was racist but also because the Blok is openly an anti-Belgian party and calls for the immediate independence of the Flemish provinces. An urgent need was felt to deprive this party of its main theme, namely the immigration issue. Solutions were supposed to be worked out in order to solve the existing problems among the various groups of the population.

Integration was all of a sudden prescribed as the magical remedy for all the illnesses of racism and hatred in society. A whole strategy of integration was prophetically revealed by two prominent individuals, Johan Leman and Paula D’hondt. But instead of looking at integration as a process involving the whole population, immigrant and indigenous alike, and that must lead to a multicultural organization of society and to the abolishing of discrimination, integration as understood by Leman and D’hondt was a process that must lead to abolishing all differences between the majority and the immigrant minority through the way of total assimilation of the minority. In other words, diversity was considered to be the problem and not the incapacity of Belgian society to deal with it. So instead of making a more diverse societal structure one must eliminate diversity and go back to a mono-cultural situation. This logic is the other side of the racist medal, it is also calling for the disappearance of the "other" through eliminating all what it makes him an "other", his culture, his language, and even his religion. The only thing that it is willing to accept is for him to have different physical characteristics, and even on that level they were not ashamed to say that "marrying a Belgian" was the "highest level of integration".

Not having a problem with a person of another race as long as he speaks your language, have your culture, and believe in your values is maybe not completely racist, it is just three quarter racist and one quarter hypocrite, and that was exactly what the integration policy of the Belgian government was.

Another very important characteristic of that policy is that it just doesn’t work.

Assimilation is now farther than ever, and let me be clear on the fact that this is a positive fact because cultural diversity and the right to preserve ones culture and language are sacred human rights. The immigrant community experienced the integration policy of the government often as an attack on its values and existence as a minority group. As a reaction to that it started to organize itself in self-organizations with as main task the promotion and preservation of the culture and religion. Mosques flourished and Arabic classes reached most of the young immigrants and gave them a necessary tool to keep the link with their culture. On the political level, the failure of the integration policies generated a false impression that no solutions are possible for the genuine problems facing any multicultural society, and that impression gave extra arguments to the Vlaams Blok that the only solution was and still deportation. After ten years, the immigrants are more Moroccan and Muslims than ever, the Belgian public is more Islamophobic than ever and the Vlaams Blok is stronger than ever with 15 percent of the national vote and 33 percent in the city of Antwerp. The Leman-D’hondt strategies did not only fail, they backfired.

In the neighborhoods where Arabs and Belgians live next to each other, the tension is raising and a storm is looming on the horizon. This time when the wind will blow, the 1991 riots will look like a fresh breath on a sunny morning.


6. Towards a human rights approach

Almost two years ago in may 2000, the Arab European League published two articles in one of the most respected newspapers in Belgium calling for a halt to the integration policies and to approach the whole issue of majority-minority relationship through a human rights perspective. We said that the concept of integration as applied in Belgium is undemocratic and racist, and that equal rights and multiculturalism are the only way towards harmonious coexistence. Putting integration as a precondition to basic rights is an outrage, the only condition to enjoy human rights is being human.

Our position at the time came as a shock to many people who still believed in the old paradigm and were unable to see that it is a fiasco. We were accused of being fundamentalists because we were in favor of preserving our identity, we were accused of being communists because we appealed for equal rights and we were conceived as being a danger because we declared that we are taking the matters into our own hands. But our articles did start a debate and provoked Leman and his disciples into admitting many shortcomings in their policy. They could call us "The Arab Panthers" but they couldn’t deny that what we were saying was true.

In Belgium, and especially in Flanders, an Arab can barely rent a house, and even social habitat firms who are linked to the state are operating with exclusion lists baring every Arab name. Arab children are rejected at schools and quotas are being implemented to limit their numbers. And the ones who do make it through the primary schools are canalized by the administration into technical branches. The ones who do succeed despite of all the obstacles to obtain a university degree find it impossible to find a job. The only jobs that are available are in the social sector, that is known to be more tolerant, and for the rest in the interim circuit.

With no proper housing, no proper schooling and no access to work, three of the most basic human rights are systematically violated. Discrimination is not an occasional malfunction of the system but a structural mechanism infesting a whole society. Second-generation immigrants who are born in Belgium and know no other place as their home mainly feel this situation. It has created a generation with no future and nothing to lose. And instead of dealing with the main problems that racism and discrimination are causing, government policy is a combination of assimilation-oriented action and police repression.

Professors Ludo Walgrave and Kris Kesteloot from the catholic university of Leuven concluded in a four years study over youth and urbanism that white Belgian youngsters have a ten time higher percentage among all drug dealers. Moroccan youngsters are, however, ten times more arrested than Belgians for drug dealing. This means that the police are ten times more likely to arrest a Moroccan than a Belgian for committing exactly the same crime. In the city of Antwerp, where 33 percent voted Vlaams Blok and a bigger percentage sympathize with that party, the police commissioner Luc Lamin admitted that his police corps is heavily infiltrated by far right militants. "One third of my policeman at least are Vlaams Blok sympathizers" he said to the media. Now please imagine how fair a police patrol would be when it comes across a group of Arab kids in the streets of Antwerp.

The term that Belgians use to describe an Arab is "makkak" which means "white ape", would it be a crime to contest the authority of a police officer calling you that? The answer is no. Contesting a discriminatory authority is not only legitimate; it is a democratic duty.

Two years after our first appeal to equal rights, we are still receiving, daily, tens of complaints and registered cases of racial abuse, mistreatment and discrimination. We try to use our good access to the Flemish press to confront decision makers with this fact, our lawyers try to pursue legal steps in some of the cases, but we are limited financially to the strict minimum necessary. Next to the complaint of a community looking more to us as its sole defender, we are receiving the hate mail of a majority that is unable to conceive that a makkak is just another human being. And of course the occasional life threat is a familiar guest of our mailbox or answering machine.


7. A day like any other

Let us put something straight, if there is something to conclude of all the former paragraphs it will be that Europe did not need the eleventh of September to be islamophobic or anti-Arab. Sure, right after the events we registered a higher frequency of incidents and racial abuse in most European countries. I was myself arrested on the 16th of September together with 50 other members of our organization. We were told by police officers things like "together with the Americans we will smash your brains", but I was also interrogated weeks before the events by an officer of state security who gave me his card and I was amused to read on it "Islam and terrorism cell". What happened in New York made it less politically incorrect to use terms as terrorist-Islam and allowed the far right parties to be more assertive in their discourse but it did not create the syndrome itself. The eleventh of September in Europe is an act of language more than action. It has taken the debate into another level, maybe sharpened an existing situation to a limited extent, but the situation was already dramatic enough before. After the eleventh of September an Arab has difficulties to find a job, to rent an apartment or to send his children to school, but this was exactly the case on the 10th of September.

For asylum seekers Europe was a fortress already and asylum policy was already designed to expel as many as possible and accept as few as possible. Security was the hot-item on the 10th of September and even a small gathering of Arab children on a sidewalk was considered a security issue, it still is.

New European policing measures are not of a magnitude that can be compared with what is going on in the United States itself. So does that mean that the situation in Europe has been stabilized? Or that the potential of islamophobia is exhausted? We don’t believe this is the case. The fact of the matter is that Europeans are very aware of why the U.S. have been targeted and not Brussels or Berlin, just like every body else is aware of these reasons. Europe does not feel the real urge to take similar measures as the Americans did, and will not risk destabilization by pushing a very young, dynamic and numerous Arab second-generation into a radical path. When in 1993 far-right extremists tried to start intimidating Arabs in the city of Antwerp, and burned a mosque and a tearoom the reaction was swift. Several cafés known to be far right minded were flattened and their headquarters in Antwerp a place called "the Lion of Flanders" was invaded by masked Arab youth and totally destroyed.

The Arab community in Europe is to be compared with the black minority in the US and not with the Arab community there. It is socially, politically and economically excluded, aware of the fact of discrimination and racism, feels exploited and used and has produced a futureless generation with nothing to lose. That generation also developed a sub-culture of rebellion and is ready to take its cause to the streets at any moment. In Paris, in Marseille, just like in Brussels and Rotterdam or London, Trying to oppress Arabs and Muslims will mean a street war that nobody wants.

We have succeeded in keeping our community relatively calm through the years, we are intending on continuing to canalize its legitimate grievances into political and civil action, but Europe must be willing to make our task easier, and till now we feel that they are aware of that.


8. Conclusion

I am aware that this paper did not sketch a very positive image of the interaction between Arabs and Europeans, but it is my deep conviction that it has sketched a realistic image. If we ever want a solution to these problems we have to start by naming things by their names. Political correctness is not a valid reason to avoid the naked truth, no matter how difficult and hard to bare that truth might be. Europe can have better intentions than the United States, and can have a more balanced stance on the middle-east conflict but this all will not change the fact that it is oppressing and discriminating its Arab minority. The situation I sketched is not exclusively Belgian, in Denmark the situation is even worse, in Austria and in France similar situations are lived by our youth. The latest outbursts of racial violence against Moroccan immigrants in the south of Spain testify of similar patterns. In Italy the government is in the hand of the Islamophobic Berluscuni and his far-right allies. In Britain the streets of Birmingham and Oldham witnessed recently very violent racial riots between Muslim Asian youth and white far-right extremists. In Germany racial attacks are registered daily especially in the east of the country.

America might be bullying the world on the international level but it had certainly a better approach to its own race relation problems. The events of the eleventh of September changed that for the Arab community there and forced them into a civil rights battle that they were never willing to enter. Arab-Americans realized lately that they need the support of other minorities when they never really gave these minorities their support because their socio-economical position allowed them to enjoy a better standard of living than them. In Europe our community is among the poorest and the most oppressed, we have always been in the thick of a civil rights battle and the eleventh of September has nothing to do with it. Since 1991 we are stigmatized as terrorists and a fifth column and screened and infiltrated by all kind of security agencies. Our mosques are monitored and our offices are bugged. The only difference is that Europeans know how to hide their Iron fist with a silky glove while Americans just wave it naked in the air. A question of more refinement one might argue.

But still, we believe in a solution and that is the respect of the international declaration of human rights and its application in a proactive and concrete way. We do not need our rights if we can not exercise them; the abstract form of a right has no value if it is not met with its practical fulfillment. Racism should no more be considered as an opinion but as a crime, and discrimination should be rooted out. The existing gap that is the result of years of discriminating policies on many levels should be closed by affirmative action policies, and this should not be mistaken for positive discrimination, it is just correcting what discrimination caused.

Culture should be considered a private matter just like religion is, law is the only set of rules and values that are binding to everybody in a modern society, and all the rest is a matter of individual choice. Multiculturalism should be the norm and all cultures should be treated equally and given the space to be promoted and preserved. Preserving ones culture is not limited to culinary art and music; it is also reaching every other aspect of life. Also all minority languages have the right to be taught and preserved regardless of whether they are an official language of the state or not. The existing of a lingua franca does not imply the disappearance of every other language. Political representation should be guaranteed to all residents, one could not have all the obligations without having all the rights. The concept of a citizen should become colorless and cultureless. Not only justice should be blind but also the police and the administration and school directors and employers and landlords.

At the same time, and on another level, Europe should exorcise its demons and deal with Islam like it deals with any other religion. Islam will make forever a part of European culture and it has contributed enormously to the foundation of European civilization and it still can contribute. Europeans from Arab and Muslim descent can and should become a bridge for a better understanding between two of the greatest civilizations in history. Europe needs our help to dissociate itself from American hegemonic ambitions and to sail on its own course. And we need Europe’s help to break the international isolation of our rightful cause in Palestine and to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people under the criminal and illegal embargo.

The academical community in Belgium is now reexamining the two articles that the Arab European League has published in May 2000, and that have caused a huge controversy. The University of Antwerp decided after taking our permission to publish them together with the other articles that came as a reaction to them in a special book in French and Dutch. What was politically incorrect less than two years ago is now becoming academical material, and even politicians are admitting that they have missed the point on certain issues. This gives us hope for the future and makes us continue to believe in dialogue. A dialogue that can not take the form of a dictate, and it can not be held while we keep on avoiding the facts whenever they are hard to assume. Only an honest and frank dialogue can lead to results. Only the truth can and will save us.



________________


Ophet VRT-nieuws bleek dat andere moslimorganisaties en partijen tot samenwerking met Jahjah bereid zijn.
Enkele geëmancipeerde arabische Belgen die zelfzeker een hoofddoek droegen zeiden op de partij van Jahjah te zullen stemmen omdat hij hén begrijpt en omdat hij de islam begrijpt.

[Vincent]

Meneer Djahjah moet zonder meer met het eerste vliegtuig naar z'n thuisland Libanon - waarvan hij trouwens nog een paspoort bezit - gestuurd worden. Daar mag hij z'n ideeën zoveel verkondigen dat hij wil, hoewel ik vrees dat hij er al lang geweest zal zijn. Ik hoop dat de staasveiligheid eindelijk eens nuttig werk levert - dan enkel het schaduwen van het blok. En dat geldt voor elke moslimfundamentalist - of zelfs crimineel: naar jullie land! En dit is geen extreem-rechtse uitspraak, want Mark Eyskens staat mij bij bij deze uitspraak.

[Jonas]

definieer mij eens het woord extremistisch! En ik denk dat we dan al zijn uitgepraat!

J.N.

Extremistisch: Vlaams Blok -> ijvert voor ongelijke rechten onder de bevolking (benadeling bepaalde groepen zoals vrouwen, homoseksuelen, arbeiders en migranten).

De Arabische Europese Liga (AEL) van Abou Jahjah ageert daarentegen tegen de stigmatisering van de migranten in ons land. Toegegeven: de punten van de AEL zijn op bepaalde vlakken achterhaald en ronduit conservatief. Extremistisch zijn ze volgens mij op dat vlak echter niet.

Jonas

[Jörgen Noens]

Ja Jonas ... ja ja. Jij weet inderdaad weer wat extremisme is. Jij weet dat beter dan om het even welk woordenboek ed. We zullen met zijn allen jou geloven ;-) En het ergste is dat je dan nog zegt AEL niet extreem is. Een groep die aanslagen als 11 september toejuichd, is niet extreem. Een partij die opkomt voor zijn cultuur, eigenheid en volk is dat wel. De logica zich zelve ... of net niet!

J.N.

[rope]

Wat een gezever alom. Er wordt inspraak gevraagd. Zo kunnen problemen opgelost worden en zo moet je de allochtonen niet steeds demoniseren. Zo worden de jongens van 15 misschien geen boefjes op latere leeftijd. Zo wordt voor de aanpassingsproblemen en integratiemoeilijkheden oplossingen gevonden.
Ze staan helemaal niet te springen om het land over te nemen. Maar de tegenreacties uit de islamitische wereld laat u waarschijnlijk makkelijkheidhalve weg om het ons niet té moeilijk te maken.


Inspraak? Ze eisen dat wij ons helemaal aanpassen aan hun cultuur en taal. Omgekeerde wereld volgens mij.

Trouwens diegene die later boef worden, zijn het nu al op hun 15 en vroeger. Dat zijn diegene die later de statistieken weer omhoog zullen duwen in de Belgische gevangenissen. De verklaring hiervoor was dat de arabieren zich onzeker voelen in België en daardoor agresief gedrag vertonen.



Misschien heeft die uitspraak ivm met Joegoeslavië geen betrekking op de burgeroorlog maar op het buitenwippen van andere entnische culturen. U probeert zelfs de lezer dingen te laten lezen die er bijlange niet staan. En hoe bepaalt u dat als een Vlaams-Blokker dergelijke uitspraak zou doen veroordeelt zou worden.


Wie gaat er wie buitenwippen uit België? Nee, over deze uitspraak van jahjah is er geen twijfel mogelijk. Hij waarschuwt simpelweg dat ze datgene dat ze eisen zullen krijgen. Is het niet langs de normale democratische weg, dan zal het met geweld zijn.



En roep de Vlamingen niet op aub, niet alle Vlamingen die trots zijn op hun Vlaanderenland stemmen Vlaams Blok!


Vlaams Blok is wel de enige partij die inziet en duft verkondigen (wegens niet politiek correct) dat we dringend een halt moeten toeroepen aan de verwatering van de Vlaamse waarden. Dat we al veel te veel toegevingen gedaan hebben om andere mensen (Walen en allochtonen) zich hier thuis te laten voelen.

[rope]

Wat een antwoord, kan jij DE vertegenwoordiger van de Vlamingen noemen, of DE vertegenwoordiger van de Belgen? Dat is iets dat niet bestaat.


Ten eerste zijn wij (nog) geen minderheid, dus spreken we niet van een vertegenwoordiger.

Ten tweede denk ik (als je toch persé namen wilt hebben) dat we, Patrick Dewael als vertegenwoordiger van de Vlamingen gekozen hebben en Guyke als vertegenwoordiger van de Belgen.

[zorlac]

Jonas schreef:Extremistisch: Vlaams Blok -> ijvert voor ongelijke rechten onder de bevolking (benadeling bepaalde groepen zoals vrouwen, homoseksuelen, arbeiders en migranten).

De Arabische Europese Liga (AEL) van Abou Jahjah ageert daarentegen tegen de stigmatisering van de migranten in ons land. Toegegeven: de punten van de AEL zijn op bepaalde vlakken achterhaald en ronduit conservatief. Extremistisch zijn ze volgens mij op dat vlak echter niet.


En uiteraard zullen alle vrouwen, homo's en niet-islamieten door de AEL in de watten worden gelegd moesten zij het voor het zeggen hebben, hé jonas. Of nee, dat is enkel dat onschuldig conservatisme zeker.
En met da stigmatiseren valt het allemaal nog wel mee, me dunkt.

zorlac

[rope]

Extremistisch: Vlaams Blok -> ijvert voor ongelijke rechten onder de bevolking (benadeling bepaalde groepen zoals vrouwen, homoseksuelen, arbeiders en migranten).

De Arabische Europese Liga (AEL) van Abou Jahjah ageert daarentegen tegen de stigmatisering van de migranten in ons land. Toegegeven: de punten van de AEL zijn op bepaalde vlakken achterhaald en ronduit conservatief. Extremistisch zijn ze volgens mij op dat vlak echter niet.

Jonas

Het is toch raar hoe sommige mensen die zich "politiek correct" durven noemen enkel het "slechte" in hun eigen volk zien, maar niet dat van een andere groep.

Volgens mij heeft Jonas nooit de moeite gedaan om eens op de website van het AEL te gaan zien. Hij zou nogal verschieten (als hij zijn oogkleppen laat vallen).

[vivanter007]

3-Islam-phobia, racism or just xenophobia?

Xenophobia is not strange to human nature whether you are Arab, European or Chinese. Actually it is a natural reflex that has deep going roots in the human psyche since we first left our caves and took to the fields and steppes and started encountering other human groups. But in Europe it is accentuated by another more malice and less general attitude: racism. Racism is an ideology and a state of mind prescribing the supremacy of ones own race over all other races. A racist person does not believe in productive coexistence and interaction and can only conceive one relationship with people from other races and that is exploitation. In other words, if one can exploit or at least use another racial group than one can tolerate its presence and in all other cases that racial group has to disappear, because if it were useless than its mere existence would be harmful. Making another racial group disappear can be achieved through ethnic cleansing, deportation or even genocide.

Hier wil ik mij volgende bedenking bij maken: volgens mij is "racisme" in hoofdzaak geen rationele toestand, en meestal ook geen ideologie. Meestal, want er bestaan misschien wel freaks die zich welbewust als racist hebben ingemetseld met allerhande theorieën. Maar ik denk dat het bij veel VB-kiezers bvb. gewoon een reflex is of het gevolg van een reflex, iets vanuit de onderbuik, ruw en onbeschaafd. Maar dat is wat hij misschien bedoelt met "state of mind", dus tot hier mijn bedenking.


No where in the world did racism flourish more than in Europe. Racist paradigms evolved and mutated but never disappeared. From slavery, to the "white man’s burden" and from "missionary evangelization" to the "message of Europe". From Hitler’s "final solution" to Le Pen’s "repatriation of all non European strangers".

Racism added to xenophobia is an explosive cocktail. If you want to make the equation even more complicated than you have to bring Arabism and Islam into the picture.

Europe has never digested its defeat in the crusades nor did the Arab world forget the atrocities committed by these "savages coming from the north" and their holy war to retrieve the tomb of what they see as their god. Islam for Europeans is not only another average unknown world; it is historically and psychologically a hostile one and a dangerous one.



Hier wordt al veel duidelijker vanuit welk standpunt hij schrijft (het Arabische), maar daar is nog niets mis mee.


In the middle-ages, the fear of a superior Arab-Islamic empire and civilization trying to expend its territory into the heart of Europe was more than just a phobia, it was a geopolitical reality. Nowadays, components of this same fear are still present in European popular culture and are more and more infiltrating the political spectrum. The only difference is that the image of the Arab-Islamic culture and world is not that of a superior foe but rather a weakened and wounded one. At the same time it is a foe contesting the status-quo and using the dynamic and mobilizing nature of its religion to revitalize itself and regain its ancient status.

This paper did not start with the buzz sentence "after the fall of the Soviet Union" because we all know that it is when the communist danger was defeated that Europe and the west started to be haunted by its old demons of Islam-phobia. And unlike anti communism, Islam-phobia could perfectly be combined with racism and xenophobia. The result was that in the beginning of the nineties anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discourse started to become trivial mainstream discourse in many milieus. And this all coincided with theories about an unavoidable clash of civilization that the west and Islam will be its main protagonists. The polarization of the world was then reestablished, with the West and its Judeo-Christian civilization on one side and the Arab and Islamic worlds and Islam on the other. It is the Middle Ages revisited.

Soon after, the west sent its first modern-day crusade to save a friendly vassal prince from the evil and madness of a megalomaniac and bloodthirsty Saracen dictator.



Deze analogie klinkt me een beetje dom, want ik denk niet dat de Golfoorlog (als het dat tenminste is wat hij hier aanstipt) veel culturele doelstellingen had, eerder economische belangen. Maar ja, hij zegt het dan ook zelf, dat hij hier niet de ambitie wil hebben om op academisch niveau te komen

.

4. Paving the way of pain

Even though the Gulf war of 1991 was clearly an American war and that most European policy makers conceived it as such, and even defined their implication in it and their strategies in function of one goal: tempering the American outburst and ambitions. On the popular level the Gulf war was lived and experienced differently. If we put aside the traditional protest of pacifist and leftist Europe that is by no means representative of the main stream, the average European citizen bought the American version of the story and looked at Iraq as an empire of evil governed by a mad man plotting to control the world.

Reaganism is a very simplistic doctrine that can easily gain support among masses. Its populism is the key to its popularity, and this is true in Europe, as it is true in the U.S.

Bush senior, a loyal disciple of the third rank actor -who obviously acted good enough to make it to the white house but never to Hollywood- knew that very well and stayed loyal to the almost religious polarization methods practiced by his predecessor. The demonization of the enemy leader is an essential step in the process of dehumanization of his people. Both processes have been thoroughly executed during the gulf war in a way that allowed the murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians while only speaking of collateral damage. In the street of Brussels the polarization was strongly felt. On the one hand the Belgian population was completely terrified by the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack reaching to the heart of Europe while the Arab immigrant community, that is strongly present, was bitter about the war and did not hide its sympathy with Iraq and its despise of the Americans.



Ik dacht nochtans dat Bush al herhaaldelijk gepoogd heeft om de lont uit het kruidvat te halen door te stellen dat de oorlog tegen het terrorisme geen oorlog is tegen de Islam, maar soit. De praktijk wordt dus blijkbaar door de Arabische bevolking al even irrationeel gepercipieerd als onze milieus dat doen t.o.v. van het "duivelse Irak". Interessant dat hij dat aanstipt. Voor het westen gaat het officieel nooit over een godsdienstoorlog voor wat hen betreft, maar omgekeerd lijkt het anders...



The Arabs in Belgium were then looked at as the "fifth column" of the evil enemy. These immigrants who were invited to come in the sixties when Belgium experienced a shortage in cheap labor, and who worked hard and helped building Belgium’s infrastructure and industry not to mention working in mines under barely human conditions, have became useless after the economical crisis of the seventies and early eighties. But what the Belgian government did not anticipate is that most of them decided to stay, especially since their children were born in their new country. And as we already mentioned while talking about racist mechanisms, a useless different ethnic group can not be tolerated or accepted, it has to disappear. This was exactly how Moroccans in Belgium were perceived, and unfortunately, this is still the case today. One might argue that this has to do with the racist white supremacy attitude of the average Belgian accentuated by the economical crisis, and that is indeed true. The statistics of the European Union (Euro barometer 1997) single Belgium out as the most racist country in Europe. But it is also true that the islamophobic reflex that was revitalized by the gulf war added extra fuel to the whole explosive equation. After the defeat of Iraq the bitterness of Arabs in Belgium turned into frustration and the fear of the fifth column did not vanish.

It is by no means a coincidence that 1991 is the year that witnessed the most violent clashes between the police and Arab youth in what looked like intifada scenes in the street of Brussels and that was only weeks after the gulf war ended. The reason of the clashes was that the far right racist party "Vlaams Blok" was allowed to hold a political rally in (b]Molenbeek, a neighborhood of Brussels where predominantly Arab immigrants live.[/b] Vlaams Blok was already campaigning on a strong anti immigrant platform very similar to that of Le Pen in France. Among its slogans one could read "Islam out" or even "halt Islamic invasion".


Dit lijkt mij pas gevaarlijk, omdat het om officiële partijstandpunten zou gaan.


To allow a party like this into the streets of Molenbeek in the spring of 1991 is definitely asking for troubles. The clashes were very violent and lasted for days and they ended only when the minister of interior issued an official apology to the Arab community and promised not to commit such mistakes in the future. A couple of months later the same racist party scored a sweeping victory in the national elections and even became the biggest political party in the important city of Antwerp.


We zullen dat maar het "thuisvoordeel" noemen ;-). Dan loop je tegen een muur...


5. The other side of the medal

It is because Europe has to do the most with racism that Europe talks the most about anti-racism. And it is there, in European anti-racist strategies, that the most dangerous mistakes were committed and that racism is building its most impressive shrines.


Bedoelt hij nu de heldhaftige capriolen van mijnheer Michel? ,-)


The electoral victory of Vlaams Blok shocked and surprised their friends and foes alike. No one could imagine that a party with such an archaic message "the immediate deportation of all non-white immigrants" could gain so much support. The whole political establishment felt the ground shaking under its feet, not only because the Blok was racist but also because the Blok is openly an anti-Belgian party and calls for the immediate independence of the Flemish provinces. An urgent need was felt to deprive this party of its main theme, namely the immigration issue. Solutions were supposed to be worked out in order to solve the existing problems among the various groups of the population.


Deze passage herinnert mij aan het ongelukkige feit dat de Vlaamse kwestie geaccapareerd wordt door het Blok. Op die manier verzekert het Blok zich niet alleen van een reeks zeer toegewijde en idealistisch ingestelde mandatarissen (wat haar voortbestaan nog extra ondersteunt), maar wordt al wat nog niet voltooid is in de staatshervorming en een eventuele verdere doorgroei naar Europees regionalisme toch ook maar mooi geblokkeerd, afgeremd of tegengewerkt.


Integration was all of a sudden prescribed as the magical remedy for all the illnesses of racism and hatred in society. A whole strategy of integration was prophetically revealed by two prominent individuals, Johan Leman and Paula D’hondt. But instead of looking at integration as a process involving the whole population, immigrant and indigenous alike, and that must lead to a multicultural organization of society and to the abolishing of discrimination, integration as understood by Leman and D’hondt was a process that must lead to abolishing all differences between the majority and the immigrant minority through the way of total assimilation of the minority. In other words, diversity was considered to be the problem and not the incapacity of Belgian society to deal with it. So instead of making a more diverse societal structure one must eliminate diversity and go back to a mono-cultural situation. This logic is the other side of the racist medal, it is also calling for the disappearance of the "other" through eliminating all what it makes him an "other", his culture, his language, and even his religion. The only thing that it is willing to accept is for him to have different physical characteristics, and even on that level they were not ashamed to say that "marrying a Belgian" was the "highest level of integration".


:lol:


Not having a problem with a person of another race as long as he speaks your language, have your culture, and believe in your values is maybe not completely racist, it is just three quarter racist and one quarter hypocrite, and that was exactly what the integration policy of the Belgian government was.

Another very important characteristic of that policy is that it just doesn’t work.

Assimilation is now farther than ever, and let me be clear on the fact that this is a positive fact because cultural diversity and the right to preserve ones culture and language are sacred human rights.


Ja, maar ge zijt er natuurlijk wel niks mee als de overheidsinstellingen en samenleving hoofdzakelijk nederlandstalig zijn. Dat vraagt natuurlijk om een tweede taal, gewoon om zich uit de slag te kunnen trekken. Ze kunnen moeilijk verwachten dat er bij elke dialoog een tolk wordt opgetrommeld, maar goed, dat schrijft of vraagt hij tot dusver nog niet .


The immigrant community experienced the integration policy of the government often as an attack on its values and existence as a minority group. As a reaction to that it started to organize itself in self-organizations with as main task the promotion and preservation of the culture and religion. Mosques flourished and Arabic classes reached most of the young immigrants and gave them a necessary tool to keep the link with their culture. On the political level, the failure of the integration policies generated a false impression that no solutions are possible for the genuine problems facing any multicultural society, and that impression gave extra arguments to the Vlaams Blok that the only solution was and still deportation. After ten years, the immigrants are more Moroccan and Muslims than ever, the Belgian public is more Islamophobic than ever and the Vlaams Blok is stronger than ever with 15 percent of the national vote and 33 percent in the city of Antwerp. The Leman-D’hondt strategies did not only fail, they backfired.

In the neighborhoods where Arabs and Belgians live next to each other, the tension is raising and a storm is looming on the horizon. This time when the wind will blow, the 1991 riots will look like a fresh breath on a sunny morning.

Dit is weliswaar zeer poëtisch en zeer vaag uitgedrukt, maar inderdaad, dit is een dubieuze passage die om meer verduidelijking vraagt.



6. Towards a human rights approach

Almost two years ago in may 2000, the Arab European League published two articles in one of the most respected newspapers in Belgium calling for a halt to the integration policies and to approach the whole issue of majority-minority relationship through a human rights perspective. We said that the concept of integration as applied in Belgium is undemocratic and racist, and that equal rights and multiculturalism are the only way towards harmonious coexistence. Putting integration as a precondition to basic rights is an outrage, the only condition to enjoy human rights is being human.

Our position at the time came as a shock to many people who still believed in the old paradigm and were unable to see that it is a fiasco. We were accused of being fundamentalists because we were in favor of preserving our identity, we were accused of being communists because we appealed for equal rights and we were conceived as being a danger because we declared that we are taking the matters into our own hands. But our articles did start a debate and provoked Leman and his disciples into admitting many shortcomings in their policy. They could call us "The Arab Panthers" but they couldn’t deny that what we were saying was true.

In Belgium, and especially in Flanders, an Arab can barely rent a house,


Dit kan heel goed mogelijk zijn. De verhuurder van mijn appartement in Borgerhout wilde niet aan Maghrebijnen verhuren, omdat hij bang was dat ze een beest zouden slachten op zijn koerke. En ook omdat ze door hun vaak grote aantal (grote families) teveel drukte zouden veroorzaken voor andere (bejaarde en in 1 specifiek geval bijzonder overgevoelige) huurders.



and even social habitat firms who are linked to the state are operating with exclusion lists baring every Arab name. Arab children are rejected at schools and quotas are being implemented to limit their numbers. And the ones who do make it through the primary schools are canalized by the administration into technical branches. The ones who do succeed despite of all the obstacles to obtain a university degree find it impossible to find a job. The only jobs that are available are in the social sector, that is known to be more tolerant, and for the rest in the interim circuit.

With no proper housing, no proper schooling and no access to work, three of the most basic human rights are systematically violated. Discrimination is not an occasional malfunction of the system but a structural mechanism infesting a whole society. Second-generation immigrants who are born in Belgium and know no other place as their home mainly feel this situation. It has created a generation with no future and nothing to lose. And instead of dealing with the main problems that racism and discrimination are causing, government policy is a combination of assimilation-oriented action and police repression.

Professors Ludo Walgrave and Kris Kesteloot from the catholic university of Leuven concluded in a four years study over youth and urbanism that white Belgian youngsters have a ten time higher percentage among all drug dealers. Moroccan youngsters are, however, ten times more arrested than Belgians for drug dealing. This means that the police are ten times more likely to arrest a Moroccan than a Belgian for committing exactly the same crime. In the city of Antwerp, where 33 percent voted Vlaams Blok and a bigger percentage sympathize with that party, the police commissioner Luc Lamin admitted that his police corps is heavily infiltrated by far right militants. "One third of my policeman at least are Vlaams Blok sympathizers" he said to the media. Now please imagine how fair a police patrol would be when it comes across a group of Arab kids in the streets of Antwerp.

Dit is licht overtrokken. Alsof ze over die kinderen zouden heenrijden met hunne combi...



The term that Belgians use to describe an Arab is "makkak" which means "white ape", would it be a crime to contest the authority of a police officer calling you that? The answer is no. Contesting a discriminatory authority is not only legitimate; it is a democratic duty.

Two years after our first appeal to equal rights, we are still receiving, daily, tens of complaints and registered cases of racial abuse, mistreatment and discrimination. We try to use our good access to the Flemish press to confront decision makers with this fact, our lawyers try to pursue legal steps in some of the cases, but we are limited financially to the strict minimum necessary. Next to the complaint of a community looking more to us as its sole defender, we are receiving the hate mail of a majority that is unable to conceive that a makkak is just another human being. And of course the occasional life threat is a familiar guest of our mailbox or answering machine.


7. A day like any other

Let us put something straight, if there is something to conclude of all the former paragraphs it will be that Europe did not need the eleventh of September to be islamophobic or anti-Arab. Sure, right after the events we registered a higher frequency of incidents and racial abuse in most European countries. I was myself arrested on the 16th of September together with 50 other members of our organization. We were told by police officers things like "together with the Americans we will smash your brains", but I was also interrogated weeks before the events by an officer of state security who gave me his card and I was amused to read on it "Islam and terrorism cell". What happened in New York made it less politically incorrect to use terms as terrorist-Islam and allowed the far right parties to be more assertive in their discourse but it did not create the syndrome itself. The eleventh of September in Europe is an act of language more than action. It has taken the debate into another level, maybe sharpened an existing situation to a limited extent, but the situation was already dramatic enough before. After the eleventh of September an Arab has difficulties to find a job, to rent an apartment or to send his children to school, but this was exactly the case on the 10th of September.

For asylum seekers Europe was a fortress already and asylum policy was already designed to expel as many as possible and accept as few as possible. Security was the hot-item on the 10th of September and even a small gathering of Arab children on a sidewalk was considered a security issue, it still is.

New European policing measures are not of a magnitude that can be compared with what is going on in the United States itself. So does that mean that the situation in Europe has been stabilized? Or that the potential of islamophobia is exhausted? We don’t believe this is the case. The fact of the matter is that Europeans are very aware of why the U.S. have been targeted and not Brussels or Berlin, just like every body else is aware of these reasons. Europe does not feel the real urge to take similar measures as the Americans did, and will not risk destabilization by pushing a very young, dynamic and numerous Arab second-generation into a radical path. When in 1993 far-right extremists tried to start intimidating Arabs in the city of Antwerp, and burned a mosque and a tearoom the reaction was swift. Several cafés known to be far right minded were flattened and their headquarters in Antwerp a place called "the Lion of Flanders" was invaded by masked Arab youth and totally destroyed.

Hij doet er weliswaar niet goed aan om dat zo jongensachtig heroïsch te zitten vertellen. Zo'n daad verdient geen eervolle vermeldingen, maar ofschoon onhandig, is dit op zich geen bewijs dat hij dat zou aanprijzen of aanmoedigen.

The Arab community in Europe is to be compared with the black minority in the US and not with the Arab community there. It is socially, politically and economically excluded, aware of the fact of discrimination and racism, feels exploited and used and has produced a futureless generation with nothing to lose. That generation also developed a sub-culture of rebellion and is ready to take its cause to the streets at any moment. In Paris, in Marseille, just like in Brussels and Rotterdam or London, Trying to oppress Arabs and Muslims will mean a street war that nobody wants.

We have succeeded in keeping our community relatively calm through the years, we are intending on continuing to canalize its legitimate grievances into political and civil action, but Europe must be willing to make our task easier, and till now we feel that they are aware of that.

Hij klinkt een beetje dreigend hier, zoals Filip De Winter dat zo goed kan, maar weerom bewijst dit niet dat hij het geweld goedkeurt. Integendeel, hij geeft aan dat zij er alles aan doen om het geweld te kanaliseren en om te vormen tot iets niet-gewelddadigs.


8. Conclusion

I am aware that this paper did not sketch a very positive image of the interaction between Arabs and Europeans, but it is my deep conviction that it has sketched a realistic image. If we ever want a solution to these problems we have to start by naming things by their names. Political correctness is not a valid reason to avoid the naked truth, no matter how difficult and hard to bare that truth might be. Europe can have better intentions than the United States, and can have a more balanced stance on the middle-east conflict but this all will not change the fact that it is oppressing and discriminating its Arab minority. The situation I sketched is not exclusively Belgian, in Denmark the situation is even worse, in Austria and in France similar situations are lived by our youth. The latest outbursts of racial violence against Moroccan immigrants in the south of Spain testify of similar patterns. In Italy the government is in the hand of the Islamophobic Berluscuni and his far-right allies. In Britain the streets of Birmingham and Oldham witnessed recently very violent racial riots between Muslim Asian youth and white far-right extremists. In Germany racial attacks are registered daily especially in the east of the country.

America might be bullying the world on the international level but it had certainly a better approach to its own race relation problems. The events of the eleventh of September changed that for the Arab community there and forced them into a civil rights battle that they were never willing to enter. Arab-Americans realized lately that they need the support of other minorities when they never really gave these minorities their support because their socio-economical position allowed them to enjoy a better standard of living than them. In Europe our community is among the poorest and the most oppressed, we have always been in the thick of a civil rights battle and the eleventh of September has nothing to do with it. Since 1991 we are stigmatized as terrorists and a fifth column and screened and infiltrated by all kind of security agencies. Our mosques are monitored and our offices are bugged. The only difference is that Europeans know how to hide their Iron fist with a silky glove while Americans just wave it naked in the air. A question of more refinement one might argue.

But still, we believe in a solution and that is the respect of the international declaration of human rights and its application in a proactive and concrete way. We do not need our rights if we can not exercise them; the abstract form of a right has no value if it is not met with its practical fulfillment. Racism should no more be considered as an opinion but as a crime, and discrimination should be rooted out. The existing gap that is the result of years of discriminating policies on many levels should be closed by affirmative action policies, and this should not be mistaken for positive discrimination, it is just correcting what discrimination caused.

Culture should be considered a private matter just like religion is, law is the only set of rules and values that are binding to everybody in a modern society, and all the rest is a matter of individual choice. Multiculturalism should be the norm and all cultures should be treated equally and given the space to be promoted and preserved. Preserving ones culture is not limited to culinary art and music; it is also reaching every other aspect of life. Also all minority languages have the right to be taught and preserved regardless of whether they are an official language of the state or not. The existing of a lingua franca does not imply the disappearance of every other language. Political representation should be guaranteed to all residents, one could not have all the obligations without having all the rights. The concept of a citizen should become colorless and cultureless. Not only justice should be blind but also the police and the administration and school directors and employers and landlords.

At the same time, and on another level, Europe should exorcise its demons and deal with Islam like it deals with any other religion. Islam will make forever a part of European culture and it has contributed enormously to the foundation of European civilization and it still can contribute. Europeans from Arab and Muslim descent can and should become a bridge for a better understanding between two of the greatest civilizations in history. Europe needs our help to dissociate itself from American hegemonic ambitions and to sail on its own course. And we need Europe’s help to break the international isolation of our rightful cause in Palestine and to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people under the criminal and illegal embargo.

The academical community in Belgium is now reexamining the two articles that the Arab European League has published in May 2000, and that have caused a huge controversy. The University of Antwerp decided after taking our permission to publish them together with the other articles that came as a reaction to them in a special book in French and Dutch. What was politically incorrect less than two years ago is now becoming academical material, and even politicians are admitting that they have missed the point on certain issues. This gives us hope for the future and makes us continue to believe in dialogue. A dialogue that can not take the form of a dictate, and it can not be held while we keep on avoiding the facts whenever they are hard to assume. Only an honest and frank dialogue can lead to results. Only the truth can and will save us.



________________


Ophet VRT-nieuws bleek dat andere moslimorganisaties en partijen tot samenwerking met Jahjah bereid zijn.
Enkele geëmancipeerde arabische Belgen die zelfzeker een hoofddoek droegen zeiden op de partij van Jahjah te zullen stemmen omdat hij hén begrijpt en omdat hij de islam begrijpt.

Wel euh, het was mij zeer boeiend om dit alles te lezen, bedankt voor de inzending.
Het heeft me wel flink wat tijd gekost, maar soit, dat was het wel waard.
Wel op het laatste heeft hij iets aangestipt waar ik zelf ook al toe ben gekomen in mijn redeneringen, nl. dat culturele aangelegenheden beter zoveel mogelijk privé-aangelegenheden zouden moeten zijn, met zo weinig mogelijk betutteling van de staat. In die zin heeft de integratiepolitiek destijds echt gefaald. Nl. het cultureel omschrijven van een geïntegreerd staatsburger. Om je krom te lachen eigenlijk, maar eigenlijk, het dient gezegd, wisten we toen misschien niet beter, althans, misschien wat mij betreft toch.
Kort gezegd: ik ben van mening dat op zijn minst godsdienst een volstrekte privé-aangelegenheid zou moeten zijn en dat ook taal dat is, maar daarentegen blijf ik wel bij mijn opvatting dat een administratie zich daarvoor niet dient aan te passen (niet voor minderheden) en dat men dus ergens wel verplicht is de lokale taal ook aan te leren. Om eigen bestwil en liefst gesponsord door de overheid, want het gaat hier om een sociale handicap en zoiets moet de overheid natuurlijk aanpakken, dat is hun taak: waken over het welzijn van haar onderdanen.
Dus mijn conclusie:
Tja, 1 keer liet in dit stuk Aboe Jahjah zich verleiden tot een vage, dubieuze uitspraak, omtrent die riots, (althans in mijn ogen), maar het kan zijn dat ik het verkeerd begrepen heb, of dat het een uitschuiver was zoals wel meer geemotioneerde politici in ons land zich dat kunnen veroorloven, men moet het zeggen zoals het is, ook een De Winter "verspreekt" zich van tijd tot tijd al eens. Om meer opheldering te bekomen omtrent zulke uitspraken zou ik hem vlakaf eens uitnodigen op een chatsessie bij politics.be, wat hopelijk niet teveel volk zal lokken zodat wij hem ook nog een fatsoenlijk vraagske zouden kunnen stellen. Ik heb trouwens nog andere vragen voor hem, reken maar.
Voor de rest: boeiend artikel.

[vivanter007]

Om meer opheldering te bekomen omtrent zulke uitspraken zou ik hem vlakaf eens uitnodigen op een chatsessie bij politics.be, wat hopelijk niet teveel volk zal lokken zodat wij hem ook nog een fatsoenlijk vraagske zouden kunnen stellen. Ik heb trouwens nog andere vragen voor hem, reken maar.


Het spreekt voor zich dat ik hier in eerste instantie Jahjah bedoelde en niet De Winter, om misverstanden te vermijden, wat niet belet dat we DW ook altijd nog wel eens kunnen uitnodigen voor bijkomende vraagstellingen. Of beiden, maar dat lijkt me niet opportuun, want dan gaan we niet genoeg gelegenheid krijgen om vragen te stellen.

[Darwin]

Hierna volgt een artikel uit De Standaard ivm de klacht die het Centrum voor Gelijke Kansen en Racismebestrijding neerlegde tegen Dyab Abou Jahjah :


Pro-Palestijnse betoging Antwerpen mag van rechter plaatsvinden
Centrum-Leman legt klacht neer tegen voorzitter Arab European League

BRUSSEL - De Antwerpse rechtbank heeft vanmiddag in kort geding besloten dat de pro-Palestijnse manifestatie zaterdag mag plaatsvinden. Intussen dient het Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen en Racismebestrijding klacht in tegen Dyab Abou Jahjah, de voorzitter van de Arabisch Europese Liga (AEL), op basis van de anti-racismewet. Volgens het Centrum-Leman wordt op de website van de AEL openlijk aangezet tot haat, discriminatie en/of geweld jegens de joodse gemeenschap.

De manifestatie werd eerst verboden door de Antwerpse burgemeester Leona Detiège. Ze had voor die dag ook een samenscholingsverbod afgekondigd voor meer dan vijf personen. In kort geding werden beide maatregelen vandaag opgeheven. De beslissing van de rechtbank wordt bevestigd door de woordvoerder van de burgemeester.


Centrum-Leman dient klacht in

Het Centrum is misnoegd over een persmededeling die gisteren op de bewuste webstek verscheen. Daarin roept de AEL iedereen op zaterdag in Antwerpen deel te nemen aan een vreedzame pro-Palestinabetoging.

De klacht draait rond drie passages in de tekst, stelt Goedele Franssens van het Centrum-Leman.

,,Het feit is dat in Antwerpen een gecombineerde lobby van extreem-rechtse extremisten en zionisten de burgemeester onder druk zetten om geen enkele pro-Palestijnse en anti-zionistische actie toe te laten''.

,,De maskers zijn weggevallen en we weten nu dat in Antwerpen de macht in handen is van de zionistische lobby en de extreem-rechtse racisten. De burgemeester is niets meer dan een zwakke en onbekwame politica die tracht de mensen die echt de macht in deze stad in handen hebben, tevreden te stellen door de meest verdrukten verder te verdrukken, met name de Arabisch-islamitische gemeenschap.''

,,Antwerpen is het bolwerk van zionisme in Europa, en dat is waarom het het Mekka van Pro-Palestijnse actie zou moeten worden. Er bestaat in Europa geen logischere plaats om te betoging voor Palestina dan in een stad waar de pro-Sharonbendes van zionistische fanatici de wet dicteren.''


Het zit het Centrum hoog dat in de tekst geen onderscheid gemaakt wordt tussen de joodse gemeenschap en radicalen, legt Franssens uit. ,,De tekst spreekt enkel over de joodse gemeenschap als een bastion van extreem-rechts en zionisten. Er is geen sprake van enige nuance. De tekst zet aan tot haat'', luidt het.

http://www.standaard.be/nieuws/binnenland/index.asp?ArticleID=NFLL06062002_001&Doctype=snelnieuws.asp

[vivanter007]

,,Het feit is dat in Antwerpen een gecombineerde lobby van extreem-rechtse extremisten en zionisten de burgemeester onder druk zetten om geen enkele pro-Palestijnse en anti-zionistische actie toe te laten''.

,,De maskers zijn weggevallen en we weten nu dat in Antwerpen de macht in handen is van de zionistische lobby en de extreem-rechtse racisten. De burgemeester is niets meer dan een zwakke en onbekwame politica die tracht de mensen die echt de macht in deze stad in handen hebben, tevreden te stellen door de meest verdrukten verder te verdrukken, met name de Arabisch-islamitische gemeenschap.''

,,Antwerpen is het bolwerk van zionisme in Europa, en dat is waarom het het Mekka van Pro-Palestijnse actie zou moeten worden. Er bestaat in Europa geen logischere plaats om te betoging voor Palestina dan in een stad waar de pro-Sharonbendes van zionistische fanatici de wet dicteren.''


Wie zegt er dat het centrum voor gelijke kansen en racismebestrijding ook niet in de macht zit van die zgn. "zionistische lobby"? Neen, ik speel hier even advokaat van de duivel, een uitspraak kan ik daar natuurlijk niet over doen. Maar in bovenstaande tekst is het enige wat mij bij blijft: Kan hij dat concreet staven, dat er in Antwerpen zoiets bestaat als een zionistische lobby? Het is natuurlijk alom geweten dat de Joden er een belangrijke economische groep zijn, door hun aandeel in de diamantindustrie, en dat op zich kan natuurlijk wel meespelen. Maar of het dan de schuld is van de Joden, dan wel van de grote angst van de Antwerpse politici om brokken te maken in de diamantsector, dat is nog maar dik de vraag. Volgens mij zou men er zich wel van kunnen gewagen dat de vrije meningsuiting van een groep mensen (pro-Palestijnen) hier wordt gemuilkorfd door economische belangen. Recht op protest en betoging geofferd aan diamanten, om het even zo cru te stellen. Maar of dat een bewuste politiek is van onze inlandse Joodse bevolking, dat kan ik niet zomaar beweren. Volgens mij zullen zij deze vraag even negatief beantwoorden dan Jahjah van zijn kant uit als je hem recht op de man zou vragen of hij de Joden echt zou willen verdrijven. Allicht krijgt u dan steevast vanuit beide kampen een zeer diplomatisch antwoord, of t moet zijn dat ze niet te snugger zijn. Bovenstaande tekst is dan ook nogal voortvarend, in die zin dat deze tekst mij niet vertelt wie of wat die Joodse lobby juist is en of hun doelstelling echt het zionisme is.
Dus als deze tekst inderdaad zo ongegrond opgesteld was als het uittreksel van hierboven, dan kan men dat voor mijn part aanklagen wegens laster ja, waarom niet. En dan moet Jahjah zich hier maar uitpraten, mocht hij zijn uitlatingen kracht kunnen bijzetten.
Bepaalde mensen slagen er blijkbaar in om velen tegen zich in het harnas te jagen, zoals blijkbaar Jahjah en het Vlaams Blok, de nadelen ondervinden ze zelf. Uwe kop uitsteken kost een inspanning. Als dan blijkt dat ge uwe kop hebt uitgestoken voor een ongegronde kreet, of ge hebt geen goede argumenten, dan moet ge een tijd op de blaren zitten (waarmee ik niet de gevangenis bedoel, om misverstanden bij hardliners te vermijden), niks aan te doen. En anders moeten ze hun mening maar staven. Wat ik wel grappig vind is dat fracties die voor een aantal zaken in hetzelfde bedje ziek blijken te zijn, zo lijnrecht tegenover elkaar komen te staan de laatste tijd. Ik zal maar denken: blaffende honden bijten niet.

[Jörgen Noens]

Simpel het centrum van ons paterke is in de macht van de paars-groene-regering! Dat staat als een paal boven water! En het heeft maar 1 doel ... het Vlaams Blok bestrijden! Bestrijden met het geld van elke burger ... met het geld van u en van mij ... ook dus met het geld van de meer dan 600.000 Vlaams-Blokkiezers! Weer maar eens het bewijs in wat voor een "democratie" we leven!

J.N.

[vivanter007]

Jörgen, ik begrijp niet wat het feit dat het centrum van Leman Jahjah heeft aangeklaagd te maken heeft met de oppositie tussen paarsgroen en het blok.

[Darwin]

Het zit het Centrum hoog dat in de tekst geen onderscheid gemaakt wordt tussen de joodse gemeenschap en radicalen, legt Franssens uit. ,,De tekst spreekt enkel over de joodse gemeenschap als een bastion van extreem-rechts en zionisten. Er is geen sprake van enige nuance. De tekst zet aan tot haat'', luidt het.
Als van Dyab Abou Jahjah kan gezegd worden dat hij een heel gevaarlijk persoon is, dan is het wel hierom.

Hij bespeelt heel handig de frustraties die leven in de arabische wereld in het algemeen (inferioriteitsgevoelens tegenover het materiëel succesvollere westen en Israël) en bij de Europese moslim-migrantengemeenschap in het bijzonder (botsing van waarden, zogezegde achterstelling door niet willen/kunnen integreren in de vijandige samenleving - "huis van het zwaard").

Zijn teksten staan bol van de dreigingen : in de stijl van "pas op als ..., want dan zou er wel eens ...", en "nu kunnen we onze mensen nog relatief kalm houden maar ..." etc. Tijdens de AEL-betoging in april in Antwerpen hebben we er een voorproefje van kunnen smaken.

Sterkste van al is dat hij helemaal geen reden heeft om zich hier te moeien, want hij is vanuit Libanon (niet Marokko of Turkije) hier komen studeren en hier blijven hangen en heeft zo 'per ongeluk' de Belgische nationaliteit verworven. Hij heeft dus totaal geen reden om zich verongelijkt te voelen zoals met de andere migranten eventueel nog wel het geval zou kunnen zijn.

Zijn kracht put hij voornamelijk uit de domheid van onze instellingen en van onze beleidsmensen.

Deze combinatie van autochtone domheid en allochtone frustratie wordt door hem aangewakkerd tot een klimaat van wederzijdse haat. En bij de juiste mix van politieke gebeurtenissen hier en elders in de wereld zal hij niet aarzelen om de explosieve gemoederen in brand te steken. En dan loopt het gegarandeerd heel fout af.

[rope]

Vandaag een interview gelezen met professor Urbain Vermeulen (islamoloog) in het Laatste Nieuws. Dit had hij te zeggen over jahjah:

Ik ken die man niet persoonlijk en heb alleen over hem gelezen en hem op televisie gezien. Ik kan alleen vaststellen dat hij zoals vele anderen, de scheiding tussen kerk en staat ontkent. Men beschouwt dat principe als een aanval op de islam. 'Als wij hier niet kunnen leven volgens onze wetten dan is de maatschappij waar wij in leven onwettig en moeten wij die niet aanvaarden', is de redenering. Niet-integreren zit fundamenteel ingebakken in de ware islam.

[Darwin]

Eén van de treffendste uitspraken op de site van het AEL vind ik toch wel deze :

“Make no mistake” we are no heart-bleeding softies wanting to save the dolphins, and we do not have a “turn the other cheek” value making us feel guilty whenever we don’t (Europe is so imprisoned in its guilt feelings since it NEVER turned the other cheek), our culture and religion both say “ you hit me on my cheek, I give you a blow in your face. You stay out of my way, I will not bother you”.


Dit is een zin die bijna letterlijk geciteerd is uit een interview met Ahmed Abdel Sattar (links op de foto), de rechterhand van Sheik Omar Abdel Al Rahman (rechts) die verschillende aanslagen tegen doelwitten op Amerikaanse bodem organiseerde.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/art/sattar2.jpg

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/investing/68672/643002


An Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, Sattar acted as a paralegal for the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Al Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks in the mid-1990s. Sattar explains why many in the Islam world agree with bin Laden and oppose the United States - either violently or peacefully. Sattar also answers questions about bin Laden's Egyptian allies and their alleged connections to terrorist events.

In early April 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Sattar was one of four people indicted for providing material support to the Islamic Group, an Egyptian terrorist organization. Ashcroft said Sattar had served as a "surrogate" for Rahman. In the video except below from FRONTLINE's 1999 interview with Sattar, correspondent Lowell Bergman asks him if it's true, as the U.S. government says, that Sattar speaks "with two faces," never revealing the face of someone who is willing to commit or promote acts of terrorism.



Most Americans watch television and remember Anwar Sadat as Barbara Walters' friend, who smokes pipes, speaks very good English, and who seems very civilized. But to you, how did you feel when he was assassinated?

I felt good. It was a shock to me at first because I never expected the pharaoh to be assassinated in front of his army.

The pharaoh?

Sure, the pharaoh, yes. And but really, after absorbing the shock, I said, "Well, that was well done."

Because?

Because of what he did. What the Western mentality does not understand that your measurement is different ... your measurement of good and bad. Yes, President Sadat was a media star as what you said. Civilized, smoking a pipe, always referred to Barbara Walters as "my friend Barbara," and "my friend Carter," ... they were all his friends. But what did he do to the normal man in the slums of Cairo or in upper Egypt? He deceived them. When he signed the peace treaty with Israel, he promised, "This will be the end of suffering ... Things will change dramatically for the Egyptian people." He promised democracy, freedom, and people believed him.

And Mubarak is more of the same?

Mubarak I believe he is worse. Sadat was a smart man. Mubarak is just a puppet. A military man, he does not think. He just takes orders and does it.

Does what? Repress the people?

Repress the people. What he does, you know, it's not necessarily in the interest of the people as whole. And when I'm talking about people, I'm not talking only about Egyptian. Egyptian is just a part of the Islam world or Arab world. He's not farsighted, he's just a near sighted man. He thinks by obeying Americans or taking American orders and just run on those, and that will take him somewhere. And unfortunately, it is not getting him anywhere.

One of the things that we've noticed in trying to make sense of the embassy bombings and the bin Laden story is that there seems to be a number of Egyptians prominently involved. There are Egyptian allies within who stand next to him when he's on camera and makes his statements. Why? Where do they come from?

Egyptian opposition to the Egyptian regime. Egyptian opposition to American influence throughout the Islamic world. Egyptian opposition to American occupation of Muslim land.

American occupation of Muslim land? Where?

Saudi Arabia. Anywhere.

You've been here for sixteen years.

Yes.

... Why would some of your fellow Egyptians resort to violence against the government of Egypt?

To answer this question, we have to go back to what happened in Egypt in the past ... twenty-five, thirty years. ... Right after 1967 war, people were into identity crisis. Looking for their identity. [Nasser] told us that we are Arabs. He told us that we are Egyptian, the grandson and daughters of the pharaohs, the great people. ... I'm talking about the government here.

This is the Arab Nationalist government of Nasser?

Yes, of Nasser. You impose socialism on us. Sometimes some kind of communism, when your relationship was good with the Soviet Union. [Then later it became] "This is all wrong, so let's just put capitalism in effect." this is all foreign ideas. This all imported ideas.

Socialism, capitalism...

Socialism, capitalism, communism. A man in the street, he does not understand what Marx said, or what Lenin said. But, you know, if you told him about what [Mohammed] said, he will totally understand and agree with you. So, why don't we try this? This was a trend in Egypt at this time. People started [to] resort to religion. . .

People were disillusioned with socialism, with communism, with capitalism, and they returned to the Muslim, Islamic roots that they came from.

Exactly, exactly. Now, [until] the mid '80s actually, it was very effective, with the whole Islamic activists were all over everywhere. And this posed a threat to the government of Egypt.

You were affected by this.

I was, definitely I was. As a younger man growing up in Egypt in the seventies ... in the '80s, looking around me, hav no hope in a country where I was born and raised, seeing things deteriorating to a level that will not be acceptable by anybody. There was no other way except [turning] to Islam ideology, to believe in it and to try to change things through it.

[b]When you say in ways that no one would accept, what do you mean? Give me an example.

... People graduating college cannot find a job. Hundreds of thousands, even millions. People who reach the age of thirty, thirty-five cannot find an apartment to rent. Poverty was everywhere. Dictatorship.

Even though that Mubarak was ... preach[ing] democracy ... in reality there is no democracy whatsoever. ... Absolute dictatorship. With only difference that [the US is] giving him $2.8 billion a year [to] oppress the people more.

The United States gives $2.8 billion in our tax money?

Yes.

So, to the people who are involved, let's say with bin Laden, ... they feel the United States is the friend of their enemy.

Yes, they do. ... The American government has one enemy ... the Islamic movement all over the world, whether it's armed struggle or peaceful ... . I mean, you can see it. You can see it from Algeria to Afghanistan.

United States is at war.

Yes, to a certain extent, yes.

With Islam.

Yes, even though that President Clinton would say differently. But who believes him? He said he never had sex with Monica, so I mean, you want me to believe that he's not at war with Islam?

The World Trade Center, the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, are really part of a war?

Yes. I look at it, yes, it is a part of a war. A war declared by the American government. And some people try to react. And their reaction comes out sometimes as acts like this. The World Trade Center, or the embassy bombing in Nairobi and [the assassination of] Sadat. ...

You're going to see the same feeling everywhere in a Muslim country toward Americans right now. In Syria, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, everywhere you go, you're going to have the same feeling that there is a war declared by the West on Islam, and in particular, the United States of America on Islam. And ... something has to be done about it. [The] reaction ... could be like the bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It could be some demonstrations in front of American embassies throughout the Islamic world that we saw before. Could be kidnapping of Americans.

In Yemen, for instance.

In Yemen, and let's not forget in Iraq. ... What bothers me really [is what has] happened to the relationship between America and the Islamic world. I remember as a kid in Cairo, 1973, when President Nixon came to visit Egypt for the first time. Thousands of people ... went out to greet him, and cheer him. ...

Because America was seen as hope?

America was seen as hope. America was seen as an oasis of democracy. ... It's preaching of freedom [of] religion, freedom of expression. [It was] the land of milk and honey to those people. People looked at you here, that you are the hope of the world. This picture, 25 years later, has changed dramatically. Now, the people, especially in the Arab and Islamic world, look at you the same way they look at the British and the French occupation forces in the mid-30s and '40s. You are an empire that will do anything to oppress people outside the United States borders.

How can you say that? When Iraq was going to invade Kuwait, a Muslim country, and Iraq threatened Saudi Arabia, we sent our troops to defend you.

Well, yes, we really appreciate it very much. You send your troops to defend us. Nobody asked for the American troops to go there. You went there to protect your own interest. You went there to protect some corrupted regimes that are working against their own people. You went there not to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and if you did, it would have been very, very nice of you. But you decided not to, so you can keep a foot and a hand into Syria. You did not go there for the people or for the Arabs or the Muslims. ... Why you didn't intervene in Kosovo where Muslims--not ethnic Albanians, this is not an ethnic Albanian thing, this is Christian crusaders against Muslim--when Muslims have been slaughtered like this? So, do not give me that you were there to protect the people. ... If you want to protect the regime of King Fahd, that's a different story. But your policy in this area has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the people.

To some people looking in, you would look ungrateful. We have our young people there in the middle of a desert in Saudi Arabia willing to give their lives. And you're saying you don't want them there.

No. We don't want them there. Get out. ... Leave us alone. ... For the longest time since 1991 'til now, [the US says], "We send our troops, we send our sons and daughters to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia. Once it's over, we will get out, once the threat is over, we'll get out." And you get on the other hand, some American officials like Defense Secretary Cohen, and Defense Secretary Cheney before him [saying] on American TV, "We will not get out as long as we have interest in this area." ... This is not a statement by helping force, this is a statement by an occupying force. ...

So, when bin Laden says these things, there are many people in the Islamic world who agree?

Absolutely. ...

When we were in the Sudan, Hussein al Turabi and other people said the reason the US can send cruise missiles to the Sudan, to Afghanistan, to Iraq is because the US government doesn't have to explain to its people that there are people who live here--"We're just dark skinned Muslims, we're not people to you."

True. ... To the average American on the street, they didn't care. It was like watching a movie. ... It was just like a video game, watching the smart bombs as they called them, going down from an airplane. ... It's like my kid, when he sits and plays a video game, he kills hundreds of people, and he does not get the sense of that he's doing anything wrong. Same thing ... . In the Gulf War, we took 250,000 people. And we did not feel ashamed of ourselves. That tells you that there's something is wrong here. Something morally wrong when you kill this many people, and you don't feel ashamed.

People listening will say the people who bombed the World Trade Center or Nairobi embassy killed or injured innocent people.

Yes.

Don't they feel ashamed?

I'm not going to say how the people who committed this act feel because I really don't know how they feel, okay? But what I am going to say ... [is] the World Trade Center bombing became an excuse ... to oppress Muslims here, at least in this country.

Yes, but this is a personal question. You are a Muslim, you have sympathy for the people who feel alienated from the United States. You feel some solidarity with the Islamic opposition [in Egypt]. When something like the World Trade Center happens, or the Nairobi bombing or the Dar es Salaam bombing, do you feel ashamed?

I will condemn it, and I did. Because you know, killing innocent people, it's not the way. Even though I might agree with your ideas of opposition and the principle. But killing innocent people is not going to be the solution. [In the] same way that I condemn the killing of Iraqi children, of Sudanese in the Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Company ... . Killing is killing, it doesn't matter where it happened. I will condemn it to the full extent.

When the US government says that the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam have been masterminded by a man named Osama bin Laden and his worldwide network--you're smiling...

I have a smile, because it seems like this is the same old story happening again, and again, and again. American government don't get it. ... The American government [is] deceiving the American people. They're not telling them what's really going on. You can kill Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow. You can arrest him and put him on trial in New York or in Washington. ... Tomorrow you will get somebody else, his name probably will be different, Abdullah, or Muhammad. ... It's not going to end. Until you, take a hard, and a good look at your policies in the Islamic world and the Muslim world, as long as you're supporting dictators like Mubarak ... as long as you are giving aid to regimes that [are worse] to their people than Saddam Hussein, things will get ugly, and you cannot control the emotion of people when you are tortured in Egyptian prison by an American trained Egyptian officer. He is torturing you, and he is bragging that he was in the United States getting his training, when the equipment that he is using is American made. ...

You've been close to the [Muslim] community here. Is there the feeling that bin Laden has a network of people? Or, is he just a symbol of an inspiration to these people?

I believe that he is just a single inspiration to people. I believe that you give him an image of an activist all over the world. You know, his network is working here, and his network is working there. And he will do this, and he will do that. He's the most dangerous man in the world ... .This is nonsense. The man is hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. And you're still making a big deal out of him.

Have we made him into sort of a folk hero?

I believe you did. ... Last year, if you asked the average man on the street of downtown Cairo ... who was the son of bin Laden, he would have not known. Now, ask a five or six year old, who's Osama bin Laden, they'll tell you exactly who is Osama bin Laden. He is our hero. This is how he is going to put it to you. A man, a single man is standing up to the only super power in the world. You made a hero out of him.

I sense you have some admiration for him.

I have an admiration for anybody who will stand up to a tyrant and tell him, "You are a tyrant" whether this tyrant [is a] man named [Mubarak] or [the] government of the United States of America.

Of course, he had some reputation in Saudi Arabia before because of his activities in the Afghan War.

Yes.

How important was the Afghan war to this movement of Islamic liberation?

It was very important. ... There [was] a Muslim country occupied by another power and thus the Muslim people who need[ed] ... help, and [the young people] flew there, and they fought side by side, and ... they put this idea into practice, that we are Muslims before anything else. ...

You're one religion, one country, one government, one society. The Afghan War put that into practice.

Put that into practice. So, people from all over the Arab world, especially the Arab world, went there and fought there side by side for the Afghanis. ... And that was a great thing. That gave them a sense of pride. "Well, we can do things. We can achieve things." ... The Afghan mujahedeen ... were fighting [an] occupying force, ... the Soviet Union, the second military power in the world, [and] some people ... were fighting with AK47s and some hand grenades, and defeated them. Nobody can imagine this. ... It was a dream come out to life. And why not do it somewhere else?

You mean, if you can defeat the evil empire. . .

Yes, if I can defeat the evil empire, I can defeat anybody else. ...

You've told us that you have a very close relationship with the "blind sheik."

Yes.

[i][Note: Interviewer is referring to Sheik Omar Abdel Al Rahman who was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks. Al Rahman is serving a life sentence. Investigators also suspected him of being involved with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, but did not have sufficient evidence to charge him in that case.]

He is your friend, your associate?

My friend, my mentor, my sheik, my imam, my father...

That [relationship] must make you a suspect...?

It does. I've been pointed at, or suspected of being a terrorist. I've been called that by law enforcement agencies in this country. I've been followed days and nights, under surveillance 24 hours a day sometimes. I've been visited by FBI agents in my job trying to prejudice my co-workers against me. My life was dramatically changed because of my relationship with the sheik. To me, am I a terrorist? Nope. I am a father. I am a man who believes in his religion. ...

But you believe, as does the sheik, that armed opposition to the government of Egypt, the friend of the United States, is justified.

When it is in self defense, yes. The young people in Egypt did not raise the arms except to defend themselves. From 1984 to 1991-92, more than 80 of Egyptian or Islamic leaders in Egypt were assassinated on the streets of Egypt by the government. It was a broad daylight assassination. And when you take arms in your hand and defend yourself, this is legitimate. But the problem is now where can we go from there. Because once the genie out of the lamp, there is no control on it. You cannot control it.

It would be correct to say that, as does the sheik, you have sympathy for those who conspired to bomb the World Trade Center or the embassy in Nairobi?

I cannot say that I have sympathy for the bombers. I never said that. The sheik never said that. I have sympathy for the people who show hate, or let's say I have some kind of understanding of why people show their hate toward the United States, for the government of the United States.

But I would suspect that law enforcement in the United States, the counterterrorism task force here in New York, believes that you know a lot.

They do?

That you know a lot of people who also know a lot.

I do.

And that you could help them figure out who has been involved in these various acts.

This is where we don't agree. ... An act like the World Trade Center or Oklahoma City Bombing or the bombing in the embassy in Nairobi does not need many people to do it. Could be Joe Shmoe and another person with him, like in Oklahoma City. Could be four or five people like in the World Trade Center.

So, acts like this, nobody will walk on the street and say, "Yeah, I'm going to do such and such." The law enforcement thinks that everybody, if you have an association with Mahmoud Abouhalima, oh, you know Mahmoud Abouhalima, so you have to be part of the conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center. ...

... Some of the people who have been identified as suspects in Nairobi, some of the Egyptians whose names we've seen who have not been apprehended--it seems to be a whole group of people who have not been apprehended who were a step above the people who were on the ground.

I'll tell you something. When the World Trade Center occurred here, the American government released a list. 173 names. And they called them co-conspirators of people who were living in this country, and people living abroad. 173 names. So, let's not just jump to conclusions because the American government, you know, released a name that he must be a part of it. 173.

Ramzi Yousef, the American government does not know until now what's his real name. The reports you guys made, about him, that he was in the Philippines, going to bars and drinking and going out with women. This is not an Islamic act, if you know us, the so-called fanatics, or fundamentalists or whatever you want to name them. We don't do that. ... You don't know his real name until now. You don't know where he came from, whether he was born in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Kuwait. Is he an Iraqi citizen or Kuwaiti or Pakistani? And money-wise ... they don't know where Ramzi was getting his money from. The thing is to convince the American people that this person is dangerous. This is one person you have to make a connection, you have to make a whole group so you can sell the idea. So, everybody knows everybody, everybody cooperating with everybody, to destroy us, and to destroy our way of living.

Well, one of the things that's come up is that there was a bombing in Nairobi, and a bombing in Dar es Salaam on the same day, similar kinds of bombs, showed some coordination, more than three or four people involved. And it turns out, a large number of the people identified are Egyptians. When we ask the question, "Why Egyptians?" we are told because the Egyptian opposition, the Islamic Jihad of Egypt and other organizations, have a lot of experience. More experience probably than most organizations in armed resistance.

No, I can't say that. ...

Well from the Muslim Brotherhood to the present, they have been in struggle with the secular governments of Egypt. They've managed to survive through all kinds of repression. They've managed to inflict casualties ... on the street in Egypt.

That's just recently. I really don't know how to explain why too many Egyptians--if what you're saying is true by the way--why too many Egyptians' name[s] appeared [in connection with the embassy bombings]. ... Amar Zorohi. ... He's in Afghanistan with bin Laden, does ... this make him anything? That makes him guilty of blowing up?

No, but newspapers in the Arab community in London and elsewhere report that there is some discussion amongst the Islamic opposition in Egypt about whether or not they should stay alive with bin Laden. This has been a controversial decision because it makes the United States their direct enemy.

That's true, and I told you before, when bin Laden formed his front to fight the crusaders and the Jews, the Islamic group said, "We are not part of it." ... And they pulled out of it completely. This is the biggest opposition group in Egypt. They said we are out.

Out, but sympathetic.

Out, but of course, sympathetic. But I'm not going to use or to agree about the methods or the things that you are doing.

Would you condemn it?

Do I condemn the bombing in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam? Of course I do.

Would you help the authorities to figure out who did it?

If they want the truth, yes. And I told them this long, long time ago. I said, "If you want the truth, yes, we will help you as Muslims in this country." But unfortunately, you don't want the truth. You want somebody to [lie] to you and deceive you. And then, give you at the end, you know, what you want to hear. I'm not willing to sell myself and my soul to you. ...

Just for the record--Ahmed Salem is the informant?

Ahmed Salem is the informant, yes.

He's Egyptian.

Yeah.

Former military man.

A double agent, if you want to put it this way.

Who helped put the sheik away in the [New York City] landmarks case?

Yes.

Some would say he created the [New York City] landmarks plot.

Absolutely. He wrote the story, made the scenario, and directed the whole show, and there's a profit, a million and some dollars. And unfortunately, they just were so dumb. It's unbelievable.

You mean, the guys we saw on the video?

No, no, ... I'm talking about the FBI agents. They were so stupid. I mean, at the beginning, the guy was just playing them anyway he wants. And right after the World Trade Center, just, they said, "Hey, you have to come and save us here." He was just, you know, feeding them information that did not exist. ...

We did hear that you were the real thing. I mean, when I asked about you, I was told you were right on the edge of the whole thing. I don't know if they're convinced that you're a conspirator or what you are--this is the government of the US--they said that you would speak to us with two faces, articulate, intelligent, peaceful, but that beneath that is another face that is willing to commit acts of violence or promote them, but that you would never show that to us.

The American government, or the intelligence community, can think whatever they want. If you're not with them, you are against them. I was offered to work for them. [They] tempted me with money, and tried to put the fear in me by [saying], "We're going to send you to prison for the rest of your life." It didn't work. I will show you that I don't believe in killing innocent people. And I truly don't. Last time I had a gun in my hand was in 1981 when I left the Egyptian army, never had anything to do with guns after that.

Do I plead in self-defense? Yes, I do. Do I promote in self-defense? Yes, I do. I'm not going to stand up or sit down and you smack my right cheek, and I give you the left one. No, you smack my right cheek, I will punch you right in the face. This is it. And if you see something wrong with that, that's too bad... Keep away from me, and I will keep away from you. This is the way I believe. Many people don't like that; that's their opinion, too. They're entitled to it. They say many things about me. ... You have something against me, come forward with it. You have something else, that you don't like, that I practice my rights as an American citizen in this country, you did not give me this right. There is people before you who fought in this country, and were called terrorists. They fought, and gave me and gave you that same right. And I will practice it so full. And I will protect it also when it comes to the time when I see somebody is trying to take it away from me and my kids.

What is a terrorist?

There is a very thin line between a terrorist and a freedom fighter. ... A terrorist who, somebody does something that you don't agree with, a freedom fighter is somebody who does something that I agree with. ... George Washington was called a terrorist. Menachem Begin, originally who was wanted by the British government, [was] called a terrorist. Anwar Sadat, your hero, was called a terrorist by the British. You know, he actually spent a months or years in prison. So, today's terrorist is tomorrow's freedom fighter. Or today's freedom fighter could be tomorrow's terrorist. And it's proven by the Afghanis' experience. During that year, they were freedom fighters, now they are terrorists. ...



:roll:

[vivanter007]

Eén van de treffendste uitspraken op de site van het AEL vind ik toch wel deze :

[...]

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/investing/68672/643002


Kan u nog wat meer bronvermeldingen doorspelen?
Meerbepaald: de link tussen het AEL en bovenstaande link, www.suite101.com/ enz.
Evenals: de naam van de auteur van uw eerste citaat (achter "make no mistake") en eveneens de naam van de geïnterviewde (want dat is toch niet helemaal duidelijk).

[Darwin]

Kan u nog wat meer bronvermeldingen doorspelen? Evenals: de naam van de auteur van uw eerste citaat (achter "make no mistake")


De eerste tekst komt van de site van Abou Jahjah http://www.arabeuropean.org
Bij "publications" vind je dan onder volgende link http://www.arabeuropean.org/Documents/ourcollateral.html deze tekst :


Our Collateral damage, and theirs!

By Dyab Abou Jahjah


Almost two months have passed since the eleventh of September, and now we can start reflecting on this whole issue with the necessary rationality and distance. The first thing that comes to our mind is trying to understand our own reactions and emotions in relation to that event. And when I say ‘our’ I’m thinking of us Arabs whether living abroad or in our homeland. I do realize that we did not have a unanimous way of reacting that day, but there was something in common. Most of us –except a small percentage of exceptions that confirm the standard as such- felt that day something that can not be described as joy, or as happiness, but rather as that sweet revenge feeling. We all had – except that small minority- a “what goes around comes around’” attitude.

Seeing people jump out of the windows of the WTC, was a very disturbing sight for all of us, we all felt bad about that, and sorry for these people. That sorrow feeling was also very present whenever we tried to think of how it would have been for the poor passengers on these planes. But then, we remembered, Iraq, Beirut, Palestine, and the millions of Arabs who perished under American-Israeli aggression over the last 50 years, and that bitter sweet feeling would come back “hell, let them feel one day what we were feeling for half a century because of them”, you would hear that everywhere, and above all places in your own mind.

Once someone told me that the toughest meeting a person might have is that with himself. And it was very difficult for us to realize that we are able of experiencing a feeling of satisfaction after such atrocity, it was very disturbing indeed. We started wondering, “what is going on with us” and almost everybody would answer “ look how far did they bring us” everybody also said “ they were killing us, humiliating us and oppressing us for so long that we lost a part of our humanity, that part that cherishes human life unconditionally”. We tried to understand our reactions, why didn’t we mourn the dead, why didn’t we feel as terrified as the rest of the world did? Well maybe because, no one mourned our dead, no one stood even a second of silence for the half a million (and some say one million) Iraqi children slaughtered (albeit very neatly) by the American-British embargo. They taught us by killing us over and over again that human life is so cheap, that thousands and thousands of us scattered by their “smart” bombs are nothing but regrettable “collateral damage”, regrettable but acceptable. So one day we saw them being slaughtered and we found ourselves thinking and talking like that, we caught ourselves feeling that all these innocent civilians in the planes and at the WTC were just regrettable collateral damage.

But now after two months an alarm is ringing inside, and we are starting to realize a lot of things. There is something in our Arab-Islamic culture that can not sink that low, that rejects to become as barbaric as our enemy.

“Make no mistake” we are no heart-bleeding softies wanting to save the dolphins, and we do not have a “turn the other cheek” value making us feel guilty whenever we don’t (Europe is so imprisoned in its guilt feelings since it NEVER turned the other cheek), our culture and religion both say “ you hit me on my cheek, I give you a blow in your face. You stay out of my way, I will not bother you”. But at the same time, we have a very deeply rooted value, both religious and cultural, that a “soul” is sacred and should never be killed unless in self-defense or when executing a criminal murderer.

Our nation was not build through a process of genocide and ethnic cleansing like the United States or Israel. So the value of mass murder is not own to our heritage. Our heroes are not Indian-killing cowboys, or criminals like Begin, Shamir and Sharon, and we would not give a medal to someone after burning a whole city with all its men, women and children with an atomic bomb.

So whenever criminals among us (because like any nation of humans, us Arabs have also criminals among us) commit a horrible act of genocide or even a small attack against civilians, we are unable to behave like Americans and Israelis and applaud it feeling that it is a heroic act. We might applaud it yes, because once again I remind you that we are humans, we bare grudges and we are vulnerable to the seduction of revenge. But while applauding we will be feeling bad, and knowing how terrible it is.

Now, almost two months after the eleventh of September, we see things clear(er). It is terrible how criminals can cause by their acts the misery for so many people, people of their own kind and people of their alleged enemy. How violence will breed violence that will breed more violence. It is really terrible that criminals keep on killing civilians in name of avenging the civilians that other criminals killed.

Why don’t Doctor Frankenstein go after its created monster, and withdraw into a top of a mountain in a cave somewhere to either kill each other, or to contemplate about who is the monster and who is the victim, and over who started it first. But please, stop causing “collateral damage” it is like the pest, if you start it, it will definitely come back to your home.

[Darwin]

Kan u nog wat meer bronvermeldingen doorspelen?
en eveneens de naam van de geïnterviewde (want dat is toch niet helemaal duidelijk).
De geïnterviewde is Ahmed Abdel Sattar (links op de foto). Het interview werd ondermeer op de vlaamse tv uitgezonden.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/art/sattar2.jpg


Interessant bij het ontwarren van Abou Jahjah's hersenkronkels en denkrichting, is na te gaan wat hij met de woorden van Ahmed Abdel Sattar (die de boodschap van het evangelie met de islam vergelijkt) aangericht heeft :


Ahmed Abdel Sattar :

I'm not going to stand up or sit down and you smack my right cheek, and I give you the left one. No, you smack my right cheek, I will punch you right in the face. This is it. And if you see something wrong with that, that's too bad... Keep away from me, and I will keep away from you. This is the way I believe.


Dyab Abou Jahjah :

our culture and religion both say “you hit me on my cheek, I give you a blow in your face. You stay out of my way, I will not bother you”.


Abou Jahjah veralgemeent de persoonlijke uitspraak van de islam-extremist tot de gehele arabische cultuur en de islamitische godsdienst. Waarmee hij nogmaals toont waar het hem om te doen is : de tegenstellingen tussen moslims en Europeanen verder aanwakkeren en de reeds verhitte gemoederen nog meer opzwepen.

[merel]

Maar de struisvogelpolitiek van onze linkse rakkers zijn we nu al gewend. Het is dank zij die struisvogelpolitiek dat het Vlaams Blok is kunnen groot worden (waarvoor dank).
Moest men niet zo krampachtig de handen op de oren houden en staan roepen "er zijn geen problemen, er zijn geen problemen.)
Dan had er nu geen sprake geweest van migranten problemen.
(intruder 23-08)


Wees nu eens eerlijk met jezelf, het blok is niet groot geworden door links struisvogelpolitiek, het blok wordt groot door struisvogelpolitiek. Niemand erkend dat er een probleem is, of spreekt er op een deftige manier over, want niemand weet hoe het op te lossen. Het blok ook niet als je het mij vraagt, alleen laten ze het uitschijnen en geven de erkenning aan de bevolking dat er een probleem is. Dat en volgens mij niks anders maakte het blok groot.[/list]

[Jörgen Noens]

Dat het VB oplossingen in de kast heeft, zal moeten bewezen worden door een beleidsdeelname (al dan niet plaatselijk). De meningen verschillen daarover, maar volgens mij zullen ze hier zeker in slagen! Vele oplossingen die het VB trouwens voorsteld, zijn nu reeds in praktijk in andere Europeese landen !!!

J.N.

[Stefanie]

Heb daarnet Jajah in Netwerk gezien. Een aantal opmerkingen: eerst en vooral: hij had het over rellen bij Vlaams Blok betogingen. Daar heb ik niets over gehoord, of toch de laatste tijd niet. Waar heeft hij het over? Ik ben precies niet mee. Ik wist helemaal niets over Vlaams Blokkers die tijdens of na hun betoging rel schoppen. En dan hadden ze 't over de burgemeester van Antwerpen. Maar dat was Leona niet! Nog iets dat ik niet snap. Ze zeiden ook dat Filip een slecht verliezer was. Ze hebben die Knackjournalist in Terzake getoond, maar zijn uitspraak over vingers in de neus en handen op de rug hebben ze niet getoond. Ze hebben er in geknipt. Nu leek het alsof zijn kommentaar niet zo erg beledigend was. Maar dat die netwerkjournalist sprak over de burgemeester van Antwerpen terwijl ze in plaats van Leona dienen anderen tonen, snap ik helemaal niet.

[Duym]

Jahjah???????????????????

www.Vlaams-Blok.be

Standpunten - Persberichten: de waarheid over Jahjah (8/10/2002)

[bartje]

Een beleidsdeelname van het Blok op plaatselijk vlak moet te doen zijn op federaal vlak heb ik eerder mijn twijfels

[Duym]

Leg uit Bartje, wij luisteren.

[bartje]

Op federaal vlak zal eerst en vooral geen enkele partij met hen willen samenwerken omwille van hun standpunten (gemeentelijk is helemaal anders). Ze willen een compleet onafhankelijk Vlaanderen , als ze alleen omwille van dit in een regering willen stappen, de ontbinding van BelgiË dus (is toch hun doelstelling hé!) zal hen dit niet lukken, hooguit om een confederaal BelgiË te bereiken zal het misschien wel lukken.

[Duym]

Bartje, ik geef hierop mijn persoonlijk en huidig gedacht over:

Als het van politieke welwillendheid afhangt, komt er inderdaad nooit een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen. Maar ik vergelijk het met de aandacht die naar de milieu- en criminaliteitproblematiek uitgaat (let wel, geen enkele vergelijking gaat volledig op).
Soms worden problemen van dien aard dat zij niet langer tot het exclusiviteitdomein van een tegenpartij behoren, maar dat iedereen er stilaan oren naar heeft. Wanneer? Op het moment dat een Jan met de pet, zoals ik, begint in te zien dat we niet langer onze gezondheid op het spel mogen zetten en dat er in elke familie wel iemand is, die weet te vertellen hoe het voelt om overvallen of bestolen te worden.
Ik meen inderdaad, dat de economische en maatschappelijke drama’s, tengevolge van deze artificiële staat, nog echt moeten beginnen.
De arrogantie van de Waalse prominenten, die alsmaar vaker bepalen hoe wij moeten leven, en de niet aflatende geldstromen naar Wallonië zijn niet langer vol te houden.
Dat het afkopen van Verhofstadts schijnbare communautaire vrede, ons miljarden heeft gekost en nog zal kosten, mag niet geweten zijn.

Vijf jaar geleden, ik was toen al 5 jaar een Vlaams Blok lid, kon al dat Vlaams gedoe me worst wezen. Ik kwam niets te kort en al dat gelul over faciliteitengemeenten, onafhankelijk Vlaanderen dat ne scheet groot* is, transfers (‘k wist zelfs nog niet wat het woord betekende), onze Nederlandse taal… pffff.

* zie: www.Vlaams-Blok.be Standpunten – Veel gestelde vragen

Tot ik niet langer ongelezen de bladzijden omsloeg die over deze zaken handelden, maar las wat het Vlaams Blok en anderen hierover te zeggen hadden. En als het over Vlaamse aangelegenheden ging in een politieke uitzending, bleef ik al eens zitten, in plaats van de hond uit te laten.
En wat het Nederlands betreft, nu doe ik mijn best om zo weinig mogelijk fouten te schrijven, alhoewel me dat niet altijd lukt. Vroeger was het voldoende dat men wist wat ik bedoelde. Als ik schreef dat het me verraste, kon het me niet schelen of dat nu met één of twee letters ‘r’ moest geschreven worden. Onduidelijkheid kon er immers niet bestaan, tenzij die man in geesten geloofde.

Er komt een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen, daar ben ik 100% zeker van. En niet om het Vlaams Blok terwille te zijn.
Ik meen gisteren of eergisteren, hoorde ik terloops op de radio dat iemand van Agalev (Mie Vogels geloof ik) het had over ‘moeilijk te overbruggen cultuurverschillen’ tussen Ecolo en haar partij, en dat toen een journalist Mie opmerkzaam maakte, dat haar Waalse zusterpartij haar in iets (?) niet in volgde.
Ook zij beginnen het te begrijpen, het kan zo niet langer.

België valt uitéén, zelfs…… zonder hulp van het Vlaams Blok.

[Knuppel]

Bartje, ik geef hierop mijn persoonlijk en huidig gedacht over:

Als het van politieke welwillendheid afhangt, komt er inderdaad nooit een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen. Maar ik vergelijk het met de aandacht die naar de milieu- en criminaliteitproblematiek uitgaat (let wel, geen enkele vergelijking gaat volledig op).
Soms worden problemen van dien aard dat zij niet langer tot het exclusiviteitdomein van een tegenpartij behoren, maar dat iedereen er stilaan oren naar heeft. Wanneer? Op het moment dat een Jan met de pet, zoals ik, begint in te zien dat we niet langer onze gezondheid op het spel mogen zetten en dat er in elke familie wel iemand is, die weet te vertellen hoe het voelt om overvallen of bestolen te worden.
Ik meen inderdaad, dat de economische en maatschappelijke drama’s, tengevolge van deze artificiële staat, nog echt moeten beginnen.
De arrogantie van de Waalse prominenten, die alsmaar vaker bepalen hoe wij moeten leven, en de niet aflatende geldstromen naar Wallonië zijn niet langer vol te houden.
Dat het afkopen van Verhofstadts schijnbare communautaire vrede, ons miljarden heeft gekost en nog zal kosten, mag niet geweten zijn.

Vijf jaar geleden, ik was toen al 5 jaar een Vlaams Blok lid, kon al dat Vlaams gedoe me worst wezen. Ik kwam niets te kort en al dat gelul over faciliteitengemeenten, onafhankelijk Vlaanderen dat ne scheet groot* is, transfers (‘k wist zelfs nog niet wat het woord betekende), onze Nederlandse taal… pffff.

* zie: www.Vlaams-Blok.be Standpunten – Veel gestelde vragen

Tot ik niet langer ongelezen de bladzijden omsloeg die over deze zaken handelden, maar las wat het Vlaams Blok en anderen hierover te zeggen hadden. En als het over Vlaamse aangelegenheden ging in een politieke uitzending, bleef ik al eens zitten, in plaats van de hond uit te laten.
En wat het Nederlands betreft, nu doe ik mijn best om zo weinig mogelijk fouten te schrijven, alhoewel me dat niet altijd lukt. Vroeger was het voldoende dat men wist wat ik bedoelde. Als ik schreef dat het me verraste, kon het me niet schelen of dat nu met één of twee letters ‘r’ moest geschreven worden. Onduidelijkheid kon er immers niet bestaan, tenzij die man in geesten geloofde.

Er komt een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen, daar ben ik 100% zeker van. En niet om het Vlaams Blok terwille te zijn.
Ik meen gisteren of eergisteren, hoorde ik terloops op de radio dat iemand van Agalev (Mie Vogels geloof ik) het had over ‘moeilijk te overbruggen cultuurverschillen’ tussen Ecolo en haar partij, en dat toen een journalist Mie opmerkzaam maakte, dat haar Waalse zusterpartij haar in iets (?) niet in volgde.
Ook zij beginnen het te begrijpen, het kan zo niet langer.

België valt uitéén, zelfs…… zonder hulp van het Vlaams Blok.

Of zoals ik al zei: Vlaanderen wordt niet onafhankelijk dankzij de Vlaams-nationalisten maar ondanks hen.

[bartje]

Een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen waarin België verdwijnt zie ik niet zitten en denk ook niet dat het gaat gebeuren, maar een onafhankelijk confederaal Vlaanderen is al héél wat meer denkbaar en dat zal zich de komende jaren steeds meer en meer uitbreiden.

[Knuppel]

Een onafhankelijk Vlaanderen waarin België verdwijnt zie ik niet zitten en denk ook niet dat het gaat gebeuren, maar een onafhankelijk confederaal Vlaanderen is al héél wat meer denkbaar en dat zal zich de komende jaren steeds meer en meer uitbreiden.

Wat moet komen komt toch, hoe er ook tegen gevochten wordt. België is gedoemd om op langere termijn te "verdampen". Het confederalisme is daar de laatste, bijna vanzelfsprekende stap naartoe.

[De_Vlaamse_Nationalist]

Dat hij doodvalt, hij moet toch serieus zot zen als hij denkt dat ik en de meeste Vlamingen ons gaan aanpassen aan hun cultuur, gewoon dat zij zich goed voelen hier.



Totale immigratiestop voor Moslims, de enige oplossing!!!







Voor huis, familie en Vlaanderen!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Moi]

Een Vlaamse patriot die ook nog eens gelijk heeft! :lol:

[De_Vlaamse_Nationalist]

Dank u!

[Kotsmos]

Dat hij doodvalt, hij moet toch serieus zot zen als hij denkt dat ik en de meeste Vlamingen ons gaan aanpassen aan hun cultuur, gewoon dat zij zich goed voelen hier.



Totale immigratiestop voor Moslims, de enige oplossing!!!







Voor huis, familie en Vlaanderen!!!!!!!!!!!!

:lol:

en die smiley krijgt ge alleen omwille van uw avatar!

[Swakke]

Hun ideeën (bij allebei) zijn voor mijn part extremistisch en niet in de praktijk om te zetten.

Hebt u al eens gehoord over landen waar de saria, de wetten van de Koran, worden toegepast?
Zegt het woord "Taliban' u iets?
Hebt u enig idee wat de grondregels van de Islam zijn?
Wist u dat Kosovo 40 jaar geleden bijna volledig Servisch was en dat deze oorspronkelijke bevolking op dit ogenblik virtueel verdreven is door ingeweken Moslims?
Ik veronderstel dat u dat inderdaad weet. Maar één ding zal ik u er bijvertellen: dit is mogelijk gemaakt door zgz politiek-correct denkenden die nooit de moeite deden om de Islam eens van dichtbij te bestuderen en meenden dat ze er zelfs persoonlijk beter konden van worden om als meer ontwikkelde te leven tussen een groot aantal amper-ontwikkelden. De Serviers zijn niet meer thuis in Kosovo door verraders van hun volk en hun cultuur.
U bent nu identiek hetzelfde aan het doen in Vlaanderen ( of België, als u dat liever hoort.)

[Kotsmos]

what's your point? Omdat we toevallig op dit onooglijke lapje grond geboren zijn, moeten we onze levens inzetten ter uitdraging van de edele Vlaamse cultuur, want anders zijn we barbaarse landverraders, nestbevuilers, profiteurs die hier niet mogen leven? Vertel me het als ik het verkeerd geinterpreteerd heb, maar zo komen uw slogans -een tekst is het amper te noemen- wel over.

[S.]

Hun ideeën (bij allebei) zijn voor mijn part extremistisch en niet in de praktijk om te zetten.

Hebt u al eens gehoord over landen waar de saria, de wetten van de Koran, worden toegepast?
Zegt het woord "Taliban' u iets?
Hebt u enig idee wat de grondregels van de Islam zijn?
Wist u dat Kosovo 40 jaar geleden bijna volledig Servisch was en dat deze oorspronkelijke bevolking op dit ogenblik virtueel verdreven is door ingeweken Moslims?
Ik veronderstel dat u dat inderdaad weet. Maar één ding zal ik u er bijvertellen: dit is mogelijk gemaakt door zgz politiek-correct denkenden die nooit de moeite deden om de Islam eens van dichtbij te bestuderen en meenden dat ze er zelfs persoonlijk beter konden van worden om als meer ontwikkelde te leven tussen een groot aantal amper-ontwikkelden. De Serviers zijn niet meer thuis in Kosovo door verraders van hun volk en hun cultuur.
U bent nu identiek hetzelfde aan het doen in Vlaanderen ( of België, als u dat liever hoort.)

Dat is nu telkens weer dat bepaalde figuren mensen schrik willen aanjagen met de 'moslim-invasie'. Maar nog nooit (jamais) heb ik daar cijfers van gezien. Kan iemand toch gewoon die cijfers geven, dat we weten waarover het gaat en niet met idiote spookbeelden all�* Taliban afkomen.

[Knuppel]

Als er iets is waarmee we ons kunnen laten bedotten dan is het wel met cijfertjes. Cijfers geven haast altijd de machten gelijk. Desnoods verzwijgen ze de cijfers of manipuleren ze! Ja, ook de zogenaamd "democratische" machten!
Doe jullie ogen en oren zelf open en er zijn geen cijfertjes van anderen nodig om de realiteit te kunnen zien. Er zijn signalen genoeg om die realiteit te kunnen opvangen. En ja! Ook 11 september was er daar één van. Die daar zijn ogen voor sluit is pas een idioot!

[Moi]

Dat is nu telkens weer dat bepaalde figuren mensen schrik willen aanjagen met de 'moslim-invasie'. Maar nog nooit (jamais) heb ik daar cijfers van gezien. Kan iemand toch gewoon die cijfers geven, dat we weten waarover het gaat en niet met idiote spookbeelden all�* Taliban afkomen.

Ooit al eens buiten gelopen?

[Kotsmos]

Ja. In tegenstelling tot wat sommigen beweren valt het daar heel goed mee. Ik zou het zelfs leuk durven noemen, moest er wat meer iets te beleven vallen. Maar ik kan het verder iedereen aanraden.

[Darwin]

Dat is nu telkens weer dat bepaalde figuren mensen schrik willen aanjagen met de 'moslim-invasie'. Maar nog nooit (jamais) heb ik daar cijfers van gezien. Kan iemand toch gewoon die cijfers geven, dat we weten waarover het gaat en niet met idiote spookbeelden all�* Taliban afkomen.
Die cijfers zijn heel moeilijk te vinden S. Ik heb zelf een tijdje geleden een oproep naar cijfers over de evolutie van de moslimbevolking in de Europese landen gelanceerd op een "bevriende site" en kreeg weinig respons. Dan ben ik zelf maar wat beginnen zoeken op het internet en heb met die getallen ook eens enkele heel simpele en rechtlijnige denkoefeningen gemaakt. Voor wat ze waard zijn, zijn ze in mijn ogen wel veelzeggend.

Wie nog in getallen omtrent moslims geïnteresseerd is moet maar eens een kijkje gaan nemen op http://www.politicsinfo.net/nl/forum/redirect.php?http://www.politicsinfo.net/nl/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=5266&forum=1

[S.]

Geen cijfers? Dat vind ik maar zwak hoor! En die cijfers moeten bestaan hoor. U maakt mij echt niet wijs dat er geen enkel onderzoek is dat naar de godsdienstovertuiging van mensen pijlt, of dat nu zou zijn door een universiteit, een onderzoeksbureau of de overheid. Tenzij er natuurlijk een groot complot aan de gang is... (Heb ik meteen een post bespaard voor de paranoïden onder ons). Het argument 'kijk rond U' is al helemaal idioot. Migranten leven immers geconcentreerd, zodat een globaal beeld krijgen zeer moeilijk is, zelfs voor volbloed sociologen als 'Moi'.

Neen serieus, ik vind het echt ridicuul dat jullie hier over de Islam liggen te schreeuwen zonder enige achtergrond.

[Duym]

'Kijk rond u' een idioot argument?

Straks mag iemand enkel en alleen nog maar klappen over datgene waarover hij een diploma heeft, of over die zaken welke hij tot op het bot uitgepluisd heeft.

Toen ik jaren geleden van iemand zonder reden een 'mot op mijn bakkes kreeg' (verontschuldig me voor het taalgebruik), moest ik het resultaat van deze persoon zijn psychotechnischeproef niet afwachten, om te weten dat die man een agressief ventje is dat men beter kan mijden.

[S.]

"Migranten leven immers geconcentreerd, zodat een globaal beeld krijgen zeer moeilijk is, zelfs voor volbloed sociologen als 'Moi'."

Daar heeft U niet op gereageerd...

Maar bon, de discussie is elders al bezig met cijfers: moslims maken zo'n 3 percent uit van de bevolking. Maar dat wist 'Moi' natuurlijk al. :lol:

[Knuppel]

Weet iemand ook uit hoeveel % moslims van de wereldbevolking het Al Caida-netwerk bestaat?

[Kotsmos]

Dat is nu telkens weer dat bepaalde figuren mensen schrik willen aanjagen met de 'moslim-invasie'. Maar nog nooit (jamais) heb ik daar cijfers van gezien. Kan iemand toch gewoon die cijfers geven, dat we weten waarover het gaat en niet met idiote spookbeelden all�* Taliban afkomen.
Die cijfers zijn heel moeilijk te vinden S. Ik heb zelf een tijdje geleden een oproep naar cijfers over de evolutie van de moslimbevolking in de Europese landen gelanceerd op een "bevriende site" en kreeg weinig respons. Dan ben ik zelf maar wat beginnen zoeken op het internet en heb met die getallen ook eens enkele heel simpele en rechtlijnige denkoefeningen gemaakt. Voor wat ze waard zijn, zijn ze in mijn ogen wel veelzeggend.

Wie nog in getallen omtrent moslims geïnteresseerd is moet maar eens een kijkje gaan nemen op http://www.politicsinfo.net/nl/forum/redirect.php?http://www.politicsinfo.net/nl/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=5266&forum=1

uw omvangrijke post vol cijfers is mij daar meteen opgevallen, alsmede het feit dat uw "berekening" van het aantal moslims in België in 2150 (aangenomen dat België dan nog bestaat) bezwaarlijk realistisch te noemen is. Moest demografie zo simpel in elkaar zitten, het zou mij heel wat tijd besparen op school dit jaar 8)