AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Randa Atiya, an Egyptian researcher and writer, in an article, examines the process of formation and expansion of the Muslim community in the Netherlands, presenting it as one of the successful examples of integration in Europe.
Muslims in the Netherlands are distinguished by their ability to integrate rapidly into society, to the extent that despite their relatively small numbers compared to other European countries, they have become an essential component of the state. Despite some racist actions, practices, and incidents against the Muslim community, this community remains one of the most successful minorities in the country.
Muslims in the Netherlands constitute 5 percent of the country's 17 million population, approximately 850,000 people, based on 2019 data. According to data from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), most are Turks, numbering about 400,000, followed by Moroccans with approximately 390,000.
Muslims are scattered across industrial and rural cities and have achieved success at all economic, social, and political levels. There are now entire areas where Muslims form the majority, especially as some members of this community now trace their roots in the Netherlands to the fourth generation. They are concentrated in several strategic areas, particularly Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Haarlem.
Moroccans; The First Wave of Migration
The Netherlands' acquaintance with Islam dates back to before World War II, through migrants from Dutch colonies in Suriname and Indonesia who immigrated to this European country for work and to improve their income. By 1950, the number of Muslims had reached about 5,000, people who together laid the first bricks of the Muslim minority in this country.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the beginning of waves of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern migration to Europe—at a time when European countries, after World War II, had opened their doors to people from around the world for reconstruction—a large number of Muslims and Arabs migrated to the Netherlands and joined the agricultural and industrial sectors.
According to Marzouk Oulad Abdallah, former Vice President of the Islamic University of the Netherlands who migrated to Amsterdam in 1974, Moroccans were the first Muslim nationality to settle permanently and permanently in this European country, rather than staying for a short period and then returning to their homeland. They were followed by Turks and then other nationalities.
This minority, which was initially only a few thousand, increased rapidly by the end of 1979, reaching 260,000. In 1975, they built their first mosque in the Netherlands, specifically in Amsterdam, which remains the mother mosque to this day. This was the first step toward building hundreds of other mosques in various cities, divided according to the nationality of each community: Moroccan mosques, Turkish mosques, Pakistani mosques, and others.
In a qualitative development in the path of the Muslim community in the Netherlands, the Islamic University of Europe was opened in 1998 in the city of Schiedam in the west of the country, becoming the first Islamic university in Europe. Then in 2001, a branch of it was opened in Amsterdam.
This university teaches Islamic religious courses inspired by Al-Azhar's educational programs, including Quran, Hadith, Tafsir, Fiqh, history, and biography. The university has tried to help Muslims preserve their identity and learn their religious matters in a way that enables them to stand firm against the secularization of the state and the continuous missionary currents across Europe.
Integration; Government Flexibility
Dutch authorities over the past decades have implemented a series of decisions and laws to facilitate the integration of Muslims into Dutch society; an approach different from many other European countries that have tightened restrictions against minorities in general.
In 1990, the Dutch parliament passed a law allowing foreign nationals to participate in municipal elections, provided they had resided in the country for only five years. Only three years after this law was passed, Muslims won three parliamentary seats, and this number reached seven seats eight years later.
Furthermore, the government made the process of obtaining Dutch citizenship easier for newcomers. Language was no longer an essential condition, and the required period for obtaining residency and then citizenship was reduced to only five years. This encouraged the migration of Turks and Moroccans to this country in the late millennium and early new millennium, so that the number of Muslims increased from 13,000 in 1990 to 171,000 in 1999.
The government also supported organizations affiliated with Muslims through education and language courses that strengthened integration and reduced the gap between minorities and the Dutch, and opened job opportunities for young Muslims. These measures led to a decrease in the unemployment rate among Muslims from 18 percent in 1990 to 6 percent in 1998.
In the field of women, Muslim women received significant support from many Dutch social institutions. Various work fields were opened to them, and language courses and classes were held for them. This process even reached the presence of Muslim women in the women's police force, and a special Islamic uniform, the hijab, was designated for them.
In order to help the presence of Muslims in Dutch society and present a positive image of the Muslim community, Dutch television two years ago conducted a successful social experiment, bringing together eight Dutch Muslims in a house for a full week. This program, titled "Muslims Like Us," originally a British program, was conducted with the aim of showing that Muslims in the Netherlands have the same concerns as the Dutch themselves. This program was a response to far-right claims that labeled all Muslims with the same labels of strictness and extremism.
At the end of the seven days, this program was able to show that these eight Muslims, despite sharing one religion, had many differences in their personal views, while at the same time they were united in positions and national issues—the same issues that native Dutch of other ethnicities and religions also face. This had a strong reflection on the acceptance of Muslims by Dutch society as partners in the homeland, not a threat to it.
Concerns and Challenges
"We must first point out that our concerns as a Muslim community in the Netherlands, despite the relative increase in far-right influence in recent years, are much less than in other countries." These are the words of Hossam Issa, 50, a member of the Islamic Democratic Party of the Netherlands, when he began his remarks about the situation of Muslims in this European country.
Issa, who is of Egyptian origin, noted that the first family gatherings of Muslims in the Netherlands took place in the early 1970s, when Moroccans began bringing their families, followed by Turks and then Indonesians and others. Thus, the Muslim minority turned into family communities, an issue that meant the official declaration of the establishment of these families and the beginning of the first stages of adaptation and integration with Dutch society.
This member of the Islamic Democratic Party of the Netherlands, in an interview with Nunpost media outlet, said that education is the biggest concern for Muslims in this country, as they face problems of adaptation, academic backwardness, and language difficulties. However, the severity of this problem has gradually decreased, as Islamic organizations have held special classes and courses for Muslim students so that they can enter the educational system.
Education in the Netherlands is divided into two types: general education, which all citizens participate in, and religious education, which is separately dedicated to each religion, based on the constitution issued after World War II. Therefore, building Islamic schools is a legal and constitutional right. However, according to Issa, the main obstacle is the opposition of some individuals, citizens, and a number of officials. He said that four years ago they received a permit to establish an Islamic school in one of the cities affiliated with The Hague, but residents opposed its establishment, even though the permit had been issued.
Despite the existence of 47 Islamic schools in various Dutch cities, the Muslim community seeks more schools to preserve its identity. However, obtaining permits faces many difficulties. Between 2004 and 2014, Muslims received only one school permit in The Hague.
Regarding the reason for the delay in issuing permits, Issa said, "Our main problem is preventing the establishment of primary schools, which leads to preventing the establishment of secondary schools. If you have three primary schools in a city, you have the right to establish a secondary school. If you have 167 children in the fourth or fifth grade, you have the right to apply for a secondary school. For this reason, preventing the issuance of permits for primary schools has been focused on."
He added, "In The Hague, 20 percent of the population is Muslim. A study conducted by Utrecht University says there should be between 17 and 20 Islamic schools in The Hague, while we only have three schools."
Among the most important problems facing Muslims in the Netherlands are issues related to medical customs. Although the Netherlands has one of the best health insurance systems in the world, this system conflicts with a set of Muslim customs, especially in the fields of women's and elderly medicine. However, this problem has recently decreased with the emergence of the third and fourth generations and the increase in the number of Muslim doctors who understand these sensitivities.
This issue is separate from the unemployment problem, which has severely decreased compared to the past, a period when Muslims faced overt racist practices and were excluded from job opportunities because their full names revealed their religious identity. As a result, demands were made to not treat job applicants based on their names and to evaluate them with numbers and codes that reveal neither the applicant's identity nor name, nor anything but their qualifications.
In the field of political presence, Muslims in the 1980s and 1990s were more inclined toward the Labor Party, whether based on the personal preference of community members or on directives coming from the capitals of their countries of origin, namely Turkey and Morocco. However, according to the member of the Islamic Democratic Party, conditions have now changed somewhat, and many Muslim members are present in the major Dutch parties, at the forefront of which is the Green Party.
With the beginning of the new millennium, Muslims faced major problems in the field of integration, as racist literature increased. At that time, the idea of forming an Islamic political party to speak on behalf of Muslims took shape, and in 2005 the Islamic Democratic Party was established in The Hague, an action considered a powerful blow to the far right.
The existence of an Islamic party in a secular state was initially difficult to accept, but after intensive meetings between Muslims and members of other communities as well as the Dutch, this issue became familiar. They began to change the distorted image that existed about Muslims, in addition to a large number of Muslim members in the Nida party.
It is worth noting that Muslims in the Netherlands have also achieved great economic successes, with hundreds of projects and investments in various cities. Even some areas are almost exclusively dedicated to projects belonging to Muslims. The economic presence of Muslims is also quite impressive in some sectors, including commercial markets and restaurants, where Turks and Moroccans have extensive control.
Racism and the Far Right
The rise of far-right power since the beginning of the new millennium has affected the situation of Muslims in the Netherlands, just as it has affected other minorities in European countries. Geert Wilders and the Freedom Party have managed to achieve gains on more than one front to weaken Muslim influence, including preventing the construction of mosques and schools, and calling for their closure on the grounds that they are an obstacle to integration into Dutch society.
It is noteworthy that last Ramadan, supporters of Wilders and his party gathered in front of the Ahl al-Sunnah mosque, one of the largest mosques in The Hague, and grilled pork to provoke Muslims; Muslims naturally called the police, and police forces removed them from the area. On the other hand, according to statements by a number of Muslims to Nunpost, some Dutch families decided to support Muslims; they fasted for one day of Ramadan and participated in a collective iftar with the Muslim community.
The crisis between the Muslim minority and extremists in the Netherlands revolves around the fact that the Dutch do not live directly alongside Muslims. Therefore, many misconceptions and extremist perceptions about Muslims have been obtained indirectly through media aligned with populists.
For this reason, the Islamic Democratic Party in the Netherlands adopted the policy of "Hear from us, not about us," and held numerous meetings and visits with far-right supporters in the north and south of the Netherlands. In these meetings, they discussed tolerance, democracy, and civility in Islam, away from the distorted and incorrect image that had been spread for political and ideological reasons.
This narrative was also confirmed by a study by the European Center for Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Studies; in February 2021, the center published a study titled "Dutch Muslims' Perception of Islamophobia," based on the results of 15 in-depth interviews with figures from the Muslim community and a survey of 102 participants from eight mosques.
This study showed that the state of concern in Dutch society toward Muslims is primarily due to the media and education; through continuous warnings about Muslims and attempts to present a negative image of them as extremist groups.
An unjustified connection has also been made between Islam and extremist groups such as ISIS and others, and the perception has been promoted that the Muslim community as a whole is a nucleus affiliated with this organization. These perceptions have somewhat overshadowed the acceptance of Muslims by Dutch society, especially among those who have not lived alongside Muslims, particularly in the northern and southern cities.
Ultimately, the reality of the Muslim community in the Netherlands remains one of the most prominent successful models, especially after this community was able to establish itself as one of the fundamental pillars of the country in the economic and social arenas, while simultaneously expanding its political presence. Future estimates indicate that Muslims in the coming years may achieve an advanced position in terms of both quantity and quality.
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