Netherlands: Mosque suspended after BVD intervention
01 March 1999
Plans to build a new mosque in Tilburg have been suspended after the Binnenlands Veilgiheids Dienst (BVD, the Dutch security service) sent an internal memorandum to the local council claiming that extremist groups dominated the local community. The memorandum, jointly compiled by the BVD and the local police force, stated that existing mosques were controlled by the Grey Wolves or fundamentalist Islamic groups. Other local Turkish institutions such as the Turkish Youth Association and the Turkish Cultural House were also targeted as being front organisations for far-right Turkish groups. As a consequence the council has decided to postpone any decision regarding a new mosque. Suggestions that threats from Dutch far-right groups against both the council and the local Turkish community were the real reason for the delay have been denied by the council. A spokesperson for the mayor did agree "that tensions could arise from this."
This is not the first time that the security services have attempted to link Dutch muslims with extremist groups. The 1997 annual report of the BVD claimed that anti-western currents and opinions were gaining ground within Dutch Islamic circles whilst a supplemental report in May 1998, entitled "Political Islam in the Netherlands" stated that "Political Islam offers a religiously based universalism in which the individual is ranked below the collective interest, or absolute submission to the will of Allah." The BVD's obsession with Islam has been criticised by academics. Professor van Koningsveld called the 1997 report "demagogic" whilst Dr van der Valk of the University of Amsterdam suggests in a critique of "Political Islam in the Netherlands" that the BVD perspective "harks back to the view of Islam as warmongering aggressive all-destructive conquerors dominant during the crusades."
Alert March 1999.