The Dutch that I know

[seems that I am keeping on breaking my record for putting big gaps between my posts. Nothing intentional.. for the record to remember my life in future I should note that it has been a rather stressful and restless period of my life..stress is not new but I would say that I have been rather restless more than often]

but after all this...

For a particular reason, I had my attention attracted to Netherlands during the past weeks and I got curious to know more than just the flowers, the sea dams and the international court. The land of the free as they may say so, appeared to have irregular and non-homogeneous details and maybe that is about the cheese :)

I know a couple of Dutch guys who live in Tripoli. I have known particularly one of them since a year ago when I started here and he soon appeared to be one of the greatest friends. The charming and amiable person with a constant smile on his face who always flattered me with all his kind gestures. I still could not make my peace with the language though as it sounds very far from the sounds that my ears can relate to. You always hear that Northern Europeans are strict and straight with low flexibility and less amiable character compared to other nations. Well, all the Dutch, Norwegians and Swedish fellows that I know are among the most fun people I ever known.

Browsing the news, I found the story about this Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a far right wing nationalist who they say has made a bad movie about the Quran. I searched him on YouTube and found a couple of his videos especially his interview with Fox News and to me he looked like just a blond version of Taliban who shaves. Taliban says there is no moderate Islam, extreme Islam is the right Islam and Wilders says exactly the same. Seems that the trap of dogma is not only in the religious schools of the Middle-East. Grown up in Iran and living now in Libya and despite the fact that I don't really connect with any aspects of any sort of religion as a whole, I should say that I have seen many moderate Muslims indeed. I have no idea why this guy wants to air such a movie. Does he think he discovered something really new there? I am sure he can find more bitter remain of bad religion in dark halls of Medieval castles in his own neighborhood.

I know that to many Muslims, Quran is special because it encourages thinking and learning the world and fights dogma in some aspects. To me, there are many detailed instructions there that do not make any sense after these years to so many people when it comes to what to wear and what to eat. Many moderate Muslims that I know consider the book as sort of a big picture and follow their everyday logic in life based on their common sense. Extreme Muslims on the other hand tend to focus on verses and paragraphs and they are indeed those who think of themselves as the true followers of the book. Same as in other religions...we still need to convince many religious people of the west that Earth is older than a couple of thousand years and evolution indeed happened.

I do not understand the aim of Wilders on this..if he wants to fight the extremism then he should stop being one and not to provoke people who are so into their own dogma already. Everyone laughed at Ahmadinejad when he said "there are no homosexuals in Iran" how about "there is no moderate Islam" of Geert Wilders?

And to the moderate Muslims, if you believe you really exist on the contrary of our Dutch politician, try to be like one and make another movie to respond. Make many movies and write many books. Condemnation ,demonstration and death threats don't go anywhere.

Just to finish, It was sad to see people were worried about reaction of Iranians to the movie...see this video a fun report from the blog of a Dutch in Iran.

Comments

[munir hassan]

salaamz hi
do visit my blog on islam, quran, tafsir, ijtihad, persecution...
http://munir123.wordpress.com
please pass around
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[spookywitch]

Well,It has been almost six months that I am living in Amsterdam.I am not sure if I am enjoying my time here because I have a crazy student life or it would be the same if I was having a family life.I am having fun with Dutch people but you know..you will never become one of them.They are fine when they are just friends but they keep distance on some certain levels.
And you begin missing the sun up there for quite some long time...weather is so shitti..