Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Alienation in an Alien Nation

At left, a screen shot from the film Submission. It's director, Theo van Gogh, was consequently murdered by the Dutch born Moroccan Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri.

How do young Muslim men, born and bread in Europe, become fundamentalists? We discuss in this week's EuroQuest.

Segment 1 - Muslim Radicalization Expert Atef Handy: Part 1
Jonathan Groubert interviews Muslim Radicalization Expert Atef Handy, who wrote a report on how Dutch born Muslims turn against society and embrace Muslim fundamentalism.

Segment 2 - Ahmed Dadou Pleads the Case of Holland’s Young Moroccan Male
No part of the Dutch Muslim community is more maligned that the young Moroccan male. Jonathan Groubert asks Ahmed Dadou, an articulate spokesman for the Dutch Moroccan Community, what he thought was alienating his peers.

Segment 3 - Muslim Radicalization Expert Atef Handy: Part 2
Jonathan Groubert interviews Muslim Radicalization Expert Atef Handy: Part 2

Segment 4 - German Islam Summit/Mozart Opera
The German government met Muslim community officials for the first Islam summit. It was billed as a rational discussion meant to enhance relations and improve the integration of Muslims into German society. And then, it all got a bit weird.

Segment 5 - Indigene
A new film telling the story of North Africans who fought to liberate France in World War Two, is opening up a forgotten chapter in French history. Alasdair Sanford went to see the film.

Download the program as an mp3

2 Comments:

At 6:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am writing you this from Canada, as a Canadian of Muslim background. In regrad to your programme, I would like to point first of all to a factual element regarding this piece of Dutch-Moroccan rap you played. The music of the piece is actually entirely taken, without attribution I suppose, no, it is exactly the musical introduction and refrain of a song by the great Lebanese singer Faïrouz, composed by the Rahbani Brothers (her husband and brother in law). There is nothing, therefore, Moroccan, or rap-like or rap-worthy about it. To appropriate it the way some of your victimsed urban Moroccan's do to protest their fate in the Netherlands is therfor an act of theft and piracy. But to go back to your piece, I find it utterly amazing that you still provide an uncritical forum for the tired and patently false cliché about how bad Eurpeans and the Dutch are, and how victimised the residents and citizens of the Netherlands who are of North African, Arab, or Turkish origins, in short Muslims, really are (to cut a long story short, that is). The lawyer you interviewed noted that after the horrific assassination ov van Gogh (a rather unpleasant character himself but that is another story) "no muslim in the Netherlands approved of the killing". You are kidding me! Big bloody deal! I was horrified to realise that days and weeks after the murder there was no massive demonstration by loyal Dutch Muslim citizens going down in the streets of Masterdan, Den Haag, and elsewhere to say "Not in our name!", exactly the way the citizens of Spain of Basque origin do when ETA commits yet another horrible crime, in their name. That is what horrified me, the total absence of a massive, clear, and disciplined expression of disapproval of this heinous crime by the Muslims of the Netherlands who pesumably, citizens who prsumably care about their country and its civic character. That the announcer did not challenge the good lawyer on this point is truly scandallous. Tell me something, Holland has had first and second generation post-colonial residets and citizens from Sout-East Asia and the Caribeans, how come these post-colonial communities are not associated with the sort of sociopathies and delinquent behavious that young Muslims in Dutch and other West European cities seem hell-bent on cultivating in the name of their "victimisation", real or imagined. The worst thing Europe does to these people is what you are actualy doing: comforting their objectionable sociocultural behaviour, and there total disregard for the cultural roots of their adopted countries in the name of a "progressive" civic culture of rights and "diversity" gone truly "bonkers". When Europe, as a cultural phenomenon in the world history ultimately shrivels and dies, history will identify the authors of its demise: its own children.
Wassalamu Alaikom warahmatu Allahi, wa barakatoh

ps: Could you please next time interview for balance's sake an artculate critical voice who does not espouse these underlying theses that it is all the Eurpeans and the Dutch's fault!...please?

 
At 12:21 PM, Blogger Jonathan Groubert said...

I think you make a very long but relevant point. I'll take it on board.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home