Muslim Community in the City of Amsterdam
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Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Amsterdam Master thesis Political Science: International Relations Muslim Community in the City of Amsterdam Their role in countering radicalization 1 Supervised by: mw. Prof. dr. M. de Goede Second reader: mw. Dr. Anja van Heelsum Research project: European Security Politics Name: Skander Alexander Ghehioueche Student number: 11125144 Date: August 7, 2016 Abstract This thesis takes on the topic of identifying the role of the Muslim community in relation to counter radicalization efforts. The role is presented from two perspectives: the perspective of the local government of the city of Amsterdam and the perspective of the Muslim community itself. The topic is researched by having recourse to several sets of interviews with various actors that are directly engaged with counter radicalization initiatives from both sides of the spectrum in addition to analysis of sets of governmental grey documents as well as counter radicalization programs. The research resulted in identifying three roles that has been ascribed by the government which are the following: resilience to radicalization, cooperation with the government and finally alliance and actively engaging the radicalization threat. From the point of view of the Muslim community only two roles have been identified: passive participation or active participation or in other terms resilience to radicalization and engagement with countering radicalization. The roles that have been identified are relatively similar with the exception of certain minor differences but in general terms they seem to be aligned in terms of how to handle the threats of radicalism and terrorism. 2 Index Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Theory ................................................................................................................................................. 9 Concept of Radicalization .................................................................................................................... 9 Suspect Community ........................................................................................................................... 13 Conception of risk: Muslim community being at risk and risky .......................................................... 17 3. Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 22 4. Background ....................................................................................................................................... 28 Islam in the Netherlands .................................................................................................................... 28 Muslims/Islam in Amsterdam ............................................................................................................ 28 Muslim Organizations in Amsterdam ................................................................................................. 30 Relations with the government ........................................................................................................... 30 Identifying the Muslim Community ................................................................................................... 31 5. Analysis ............................................................................................................................................ 34 5.1 The role attributed to the Muslim Community by the City Council of Amsterdam ........................ 34 5.1.1 At National Level .................................................................................................................. 35 5.1.2 At the local level (Amsterdam) .............................................................................................. 41 5.1.2 Police force ........................................................................................................................... 47 5.1.3 Conclusion Part1 ................................................................................................................... 54 3 5.2 The role the Muslim community ascribe to themselves ................................................................. 54 5.2.1 The feelings concerning radicalism / terrorism....................................................................... 56 5.2.2 The relationship with the authorities ...................................................................................... 58 5.2.3 The communities counter terrorism efforts ............................................................................ 62 5.3 Synthesis of the findings .............................................................................................................. 65 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 68 References............................................................................................................................................. 79 4 1. Introduction The start of the Arab spring in 2011 was at first met with optimism as the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were toppled and an era of freedom and democracy was expected to take root in the region. However, with the exception of Tunisia that has somewhat managed a democratic transition all of the other revolutions seem to have failed as the authoritarian regimes seem to have been either replaced by states of chaos or failed states and a dramatic rise in Islamic Fundamentalism or violent Salafism. The ongoing crisis in the MENA region is not only disrupting the affected regions and their bordering countries but also Europe and the West as the sectarian wars on populations and faiths, in addition to the rise of the Islamic State, is raging through the region causing destruction, massive refugee flows in addition to political and religious motivated radicalism/terrorism. The latter has been gaining renewed public, media and political attention in the west as the consequences of the abovementioned events, in the form of terror threats and attacks for instance both Paris attacks of 2015, have increased the level of threat that is described as substantial in several European countries including The Netherlands (NCTV, 2015) in addition to creating tensions within western societies. It is worth mentioning that the terror threat is not only seen as an external threat but also as an internal one with the apparition of the so called foreign fighters as well as home grown terrorists. These Foreign fighters and the home grown terrorists represent nowadays a bigger threat due to the external situation in the MENA region and more commonly the civil war in Syria that provides them with sanctuary, training and financing that would be 5 used to perpetuate attacks on their country of birth or other in the Schengen space, due to the open borders and freedom of movement. Based on the current analysis of the terrorist threat, European governments present radical Islam as a risk to society and what is being described as the western way of life. In order to face the threat, several soft as well as hard measures have been used as methods to counter the radicalization of European youth, which are considered as the most vulnerable population within the community. The Netherlands is no exception, even though it has not experienced a terrorist attack on the same scale as other European countries such as the UK, Spain or Norway, it still had to deal with several radicalization and terrorism incidents (Eijkman et al, 2012). The most notable terrorism incident in recent years was the murder of the controversial film maker Theo van Gogh by the Dutch Moroccan dual national Mohamed Bouyeri in 2012 (BBC News, 2002). Even though the Netherlands have not suffered any major Islamist terror attacks the risk is still considered to be substantial as the threat posed by individuals travelling to Syria to fight in the civil war is considered to be real. The Dutch authorities fear that the traumatic experiences of the foreign fighters and their further indoctrination may result in further radicalization and thus potentially increase the eventuality of them returning to commit attacks domestically as it was the case in the Paris latest attacks (ICSR, 2013). In order to minimize the risk of Islamic terrorism the Dutch government has taken steps in order to prevent the radicalization of Dutch citizens with Muslim background in addition to disengaging those who already possess radical views to stay clear of turning to violence. 6 It is worth mentioning that radicalism is perceived by many scholars and security professionals to be the precursor to acts of violent radicalism or in other words terrorism. In an effort to counter radicalization, the Dutch government has opted for a combination of both hard and soft measures. The hard measures include punitive actions whereas soft measures are in the form of programs that aim in most cases at prevention. The hard punitive measures serve the purpose of punishing those who do not respect the rule of law and at the same time serve as a deterrent. When it comes to soft measures, several institutions,