Ambassador Hoekstra Causes Controversy In The Netherlands Over Muslim "No Go Zones" (But Facts Prove Him Right)

By Brandon Hall
(Email Him At WestMIPolitics@Gmail.com)

Ambassador Pete Hoekstra has created a firestorm in the Netherlands after his 2015 comments have resurfaced regarding "no go zones," predominantly Muslim areas where Sharia is the defacto law of the land-or at least the desired goal-and police are afraid to patrol.

Hoekstra apparently forgot saying that the Netherlands had "no go zones," and the media is now attacking him for it.

If one looks beyond the cheap attacks though, Ambassador Hoekstra was completely correct.

The Netherlands has areas that are hotbeds of extremism, sympathy for ISIS, and Muslim immigrants trying to establish Sharia Law.

ISIS has even dubbed The Hague as "Jihad City," and they also have significant support in an area known as the "Sharia Triangle." 

Don't take my word for it, check out some excerpts from an Al Jazeera article on the issue. Al Jazeera is hardly a right wing, anti Muslim media outlet...

"Three Dutch citizens were arrested last week on suspicion of recruiting for the hard-line Islamic State (IS) group in its armed struggle in Syria and Iraq, as tensions between radical Muslims and Holland's far-right Pro Patria organisation continue to rise.

The men detained come from The Hague, the city that positions itself as an international city of peace and justice, and which Islamic State sympathisers have also named "Jihad City". Mayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen, said during a press conference that they had caught "big fish" who had "sown hatred and incited terrorism" on social media and news sites.

One of those detained is 32-year-old Azzedine Choukoud, known as Abou Moussa, a charismatic Dutchman of Moroccan descent. He has been involved in demonstrations in recent years, and has been in contact with fighters in Syria. In a YouTube video, he congratulated the Muslim community on the establishment of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. A few young men hold up a black IS flag in the background.

According to the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service, the Islamic State movement in the Netherlands amounts to a few hundred followers and several thousand sympathisers. Edwin Bakker, director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at Leiden University, estimated that The Hague's Islamic State supporters consists of 200 men.

They come from Schilderswijk neighbourhood, which the media have renamed the "sharia triangle". This neighbourhood primarily houses immigrants, as do many neighbourhoods in large Dutch cities - in this case more than 90 percent of the population are immigrants. Dissatisfaction is common and unemployment, crime, and poverty rates are higher than in the rest of the country.

Over the past few months, several pro-Gaza demonstrations have been held in the district, at which a number of people were seen waving IS flags...

Some 100 to 200 Dutch citizens have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight, and 33 of them come from The Hague. A few recently made themselves heard in a video, in which they reported on their "territory monitoring in the abandoned city of Aleppo". At least 14 Dutch citizens are known to have died in Syria.

Several dozen religious fighters have since returned and it is feared that they will carry out attacks in the Netherlands."

Al Jazeera points out that radical Islam has been a problem in the Netherlands for years.

"The Hague's problems with radical Muslims are not new. Since 2000, popular Syrian imam Fawaz Jneid has given fierce sermons from the Salafist As-Soennah mosque. He has called for the deaths of critics of Islam, such as the politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali and filmmaker Theo van Gogh. A member of a radical group in The Hague, de Hofstadgroep, killed the filmmaker in 2004."

Sympathy for ISIS is rampant in the Netherlands.

"Every Muslim is basically in favour of the establishment of an Islamic state," claimed the Salafist preacher known as Abu Hafs. He is the spokesman for the Bewust Moslimgroup. "But it is premature to judge whether the IS is the designated party," he continued. "Not enough is known about the organisation, and the opinions among Muslim scholars are divided."

Ali Abu Safiya, spokesman for Moslims in Dialoog, a similar platform, said only a small part of the Muslim community in the Netherlands supports the IS unconditionally and "applauds everything they do".

"A larger group condemns the IS entirely. Like the vast majority, we are not for or against the IS, but we have a more nuanced position," he said."

Let's go back to the area known as the "Sharia Triangle" for a moment. According to The Irish Times, police won't patrol the controversial region:

"There have been calls for an urgent debate in the Dutch parliament about the integration of Muslim immigrants amid claims that one area of The Hague, known locally as “the Sharia triangle”, is being run by a form of unofficial Sharia police.

The claims relate to the district of Schilderswijk, about two kilometres from the city centre, where an almost entirely Muslim population of some 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque, fuelling criticism that the government has failed to ensure a proper ethnic mix in schools and local housing. One recent investigation, in which local people were extensively interviewed, concluded that Schilderswijk had become “orthodox Muslim territory” which was now largely ignored by the city authorities, by politicians and even by the police, on the grounds that it had become self-regulating.

The investigation found that orthodox Muslims had become so dominant that they were dictating what people in the neighbourhood wore and how they behaved."

More on the Sharia Triangle from the BBC:

"Dutch counter-terrorism officials are talking of a "rebirth of jihadism in the Netherlands".

In the Schilderswijk district of The Hague last month, a group of some 20 men were captured on video waving the black flag of jihadist groups and voicing support for the militant group Islamic State (IS) that has seized broad swathes of northern Syria and Iraq.

In the footage posted on the internet, the demonstrators can be heard chanting slogans such as "Down with America" and "Death to the Jews..."

The idea of an Islamic state achieved by peaceful means appears to resonate with people in Schilderswijk. "We all want that eventually because it is fair and people look after each other, not like it is now," he adds.

According to the Dutch intelligence service, hundreds of Dutch nationals are considering missions abroad, and thousands more are sympathetic to the cause...The Dutch security services say the threat, currently seen as "substantial', is mutating and becoming harder to track. 

Islamic State supporters are using multimedia propaganda tools to proliferate their message and attract ever younger recruits.

"We have girls aged 16 and 17 and even some of 14 who want to go to Syria or Iraq," says Rob Bertholee, the head of the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Agency (AIVD)."

According to Free West Media, Dutch citizens are frequently attacked in the Sharia Triangle.

"Dutch-born citizens are repeatedly attacked by foreigners in these zones. The perpetrators are often so sure of their impunity that they publish online videos of their crimes.

Non-Muslim residents often say they feel harassed even in taking care of their pets. In Islam dogs are considered haram (impure), and dog owners are asked to keep their pets indoors."

A few years ago, the Dutch government even released a list of 40 "problem areas," many of which are Muslim "no go zones."

According to the Gatestone Institute:

"In the Netherlands, a Dutch court ordered the government to release to the public a politically incorrect list of 40 "no-go" zones in Holland. The top five Muslim problem neighborhoods are in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. The Kolenkit area in Amsterdam is the number one Muslim "problem district" in the country. The next three districts are in Rotterdam – Pendrecht, het Oude Noorden and Bloemhof. The Ondiep district in Utrecht is in the fifth position, followed by Rivierenwijk (Deventer), Spangen (Rotterdam), Oude Westen (Rotterdam), Heechterp/ Schieringen (Leeuwarden) and Noord-Oost (Maastricht)."

Last year, the Hungarian government said nearly 1,000 areas in Europe are "no go zones."

According to reports:

"London, Paris, Stockholm and Berlin are among the major European cities that feature on a bombshell list of 900 lawless zones with large immigrant populations.

The shock dossier, released by the Hungarian government, backs up claims made by Donald Trump in December that there are large swathes of Britain and Europe where police are now too afraid to patrol due to radical Islamist extremism.

Ministers from the central European nation wrote in their report that authorities had "no control" over residents in these neighbourhoods, adding that the growth of radical Islam is "increasing the terrorist risk and imperilling our culture."

Looks like Pete Hoekstra wasn't wrong at all!

 __________________________________________________________________
Brandon Hall is a lifelong political nerd from Grand Haven, and is the Managing Editor of West Michigan Politics.

>>>Email him at WestMIPolitics@Gmail.com
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