Netherlands: Intelligence report attacks muslim organisations
01 July 1997
Muslim organisations have been targeted in the 1997 annual report of the Binnenlands Veiligheids Dienst (BVD), which claims that Islamic groups are opposing their community's integration to Dutch society. According to the report anti-western currents and opinions are gaining ground within Islamic groups operating within the Netherlands.
The annual report, which was published on July 16, states that:
"disappointment concerning the social and economic malaise that has affected large groups within ethnic communities provide an important reason for the growing aversion towards Dutch society". The report goes on to claim that many muslims feel disorientated "by their search for their own religious identity in a secularised - and sometimes disapproving - society."
The BVD annual report goes on to claim that "the international dimension" within its work has become more and more important. The BVD mentions two groups as examples of the rejectionist attitude of muslim organisations, the " Milli Gorüs movement", which according to it has links with the Islamic Welfare Party in Turkey, as well as the "Islamitische Schoolbesturen Organisatie", which the BVD claims is funded by Saudi Arabia. The BVD also mentions a group which they claim are supported by Iran, which they describe as being "rabidly anti-western by tradition".
The BVD also targets Turkish and Kurdish opposition groups, in particular the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Party (DHKC-P, formally known as Dev Sol) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It claims that DHKP-C supporters were involved in a shooting incident in Bergen op Zoom. It also refers to a link between the PKK and a satellite television company, MED-TV, whilst admitting that a Belgian judicial inquiry into the TV station found no evidence to prove this link.
Dutch academics specialising in the study of muslims within the Netherlands have disagreed violently with the BVD's conclusions. Professor van Koningsveld, who specialises in the religious history of Islam within Western Europe, has called the report "demagogic". According to van Koningsveld there are traditionalist streams within muslim communities in the Netherlands "but it is incorrect to state that these groups are gaining the upper hand."
The BVD is not the only security service to pick on ethnic groups within their own country. A Belgian army report caused uproar last year when it was revealed to be making to plans to wage war on its own black and migrant population, describing them as "forming a clandestine threat with a permanent character"(see Statewatch, vol 6 no 4).
NRC Handelsblad Weekeditie, 22.7.97.