Ahmed Aboutaleb is the mayor of Rotterdam. Mr. Aboutaleb was born in Morocco, and holds dual Moroccan and Dutch citizenship.
In the following TV panel discussion, Mayor Aboutaleb discusses death threats he has received due to his granting a permit for a PEGIDA demonstration in Rotterdam. It’s a peculiar situation, because the threats are coming from Muslims who accuse him of betraying his Islamic faith.
I can’t tell how much of a Moroccan accent he has, but in translation he sounds like any other Dutch socialist politician. He’s of Berber heritage, not Arab — that may be a partial explanation.
Many thanks to C for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
00:00 | The substitute player from Sweden, Jimmy Durmaz, is of Turkish descent. | |
00:03 | He caused the foul that allowed Toni Kroos to make the winning goal. | |
00:08 | He posted a photo on Instagram yesterday, | |
00:12 | “game day”; like a lot of players do, he posed in front of a bus. | |
00:15 | Usually he receives a few hundred reactions, this time he got 36,000 | |
00:20 | many very aggressive, some racist, and there were even death threats. | |
00:26 | Today, before training, he read: “This is completely unacceptable. I’m Swedish and proud,” | |
00:35 | in which he says the following: “Criticism is all in the game, but a line has been crossed. | |
00:38 | When you call me an Arab devil, a terrorist, Taliban, you’re way out of line. | |
00:44 | and worse, when you threaten my family and children. Who does that? | |
00:48 | This is completely unacceptable. I’m Swedish and proud to play for the Swedish team. | |
00:53 | I’ll never let racists take that away from me.” | |
00:57 | You were talking about crying and emotions before. | |
01:01 | I think we can all agree this is a bridge too far. | |
01:04 | Of course we all agree this doesn’t belong in soccer. Still I wonder, Mr. [Mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed] Aboutaleb, | |
01:08 | How do you deal with this? The world has become small; everybody can tweet | |
01:14 | or DM everybody else. | |
01:17 | This player apparently wants to publicize this, talk about this; what do you think? | |
01:23 | I don’t do this very often, but the last death threat I received is from last week. | |
01:28 | These are unpleasant things. | |
01:32 | The cause was a debate with DENK in the Rotterdam city council about Pegida. | |
01:37 | I had decided not to ban Pegida’s protest, | |
01:41 | and the same afternoon I received a serious death threat. | |
01:46 | For some people, apparently, this is an acceptable way to express | |
01:50 | their frustration about a player or a politician. | |
01:54 | So, alas, I’d like to say, “Welcome to my world”. It has now happened to him once, | |
01:58 | but unfortunately I have to deal with this a lot. | |
02:01 | Do you often think about whether to talk to the press about this? | |
02:08 | We’re talking about this now; every TV program in the world will talk about this. | |
02:12 | Maybe it achieves something, but it could also be too much. | |
02:16 | You have to be very careful about this. What I do is: | |
02:19 | My head of security files complaints on my behalf. | |
02:24 | People are always prosecuted and frequently sentenced. | |
02:29 | This is when it’s publicized; I try not to do it before this time. | |
02:34 | How does it affect you? It’s not exactly the first time. | |
02:38 | Last week one was convicted. —Yes, very unpleasant. | |
02:42 | I went home from a council meeting for personal business | |
02:46 | and decided not to go back to work that afternoon; I stayed home. | |
02:51 | Does you family have security? —Umm, no. I shouldn’t say much about that; | |
02:55 | we’re talking about how it affects me. So I decided not to | |
02:59 | go back to the council that day. It’s just very inconvenient. | |
03:02 | When you’re confronted with something like this. You’re just trying to do your job, in my case | |
03:08 | to do the right thing and be sincere; those two things | |
03:12 | are apparently not what some people want, and if they don’t like your decisions, | |
03:17 | in this case there’s context that people should be aware of | |
03:22 | a remarkable statement by a minister from Turkey, the minister of European affairs | |
03:27 | who did not address me as mayor but as a Muslim: | |
03:31 | “How can a Muslim allow such a Pegida protest in front of a mosque? | |
03:35 | So I think, deal with your own country, the developments over there. | |
03:40 | Protect human rights over there. | |
03:44 | All the journalists who are in jail there; there’s a lot to do there. | |
03:47 | Even my prime minister didn’t call me to tell me what to do, let alone that I’d accept | |
03:53 | orders from a Turkish minister. And it’s things like these that create a climate | |
03:56 | in which some people find it a good idea to utter death threats. | |
04:02 | And it seriously affected this man. | |
04:08 | He gets blamed for the [soccer] defeat of a nation. |
Don’t trust him. Don’t trust any muslim. Don’t be fooled. He himself once blurted out on Dutch radio or TV that at heart he’s a little bit a salafist. And he never revoked what he said.
The Aboutalebs are far more dangerous than the jihadists. With the latter, you see islamization coming. With the former, you wake up one day in a thoroughly islamized cou ntry.
Don’t trust him. Don’t trust any muslim. Don’t be fooled. He himself once blurted out on Dutch radio or TV that at heart he’s a little bit a salafist. And he never revoked what he said. The Aboutalebs are far more dangerous than the jihadists. With the latter, you see islamization coming. With the former, you wake up one day in a thoroughly islamized cou ntry.
Wonder if first comment came through?
In respect to the question above regarding the mayor’s accent in speaking the Dutch language…he is very articulate, has full command of the Dutch language and speaks virtually accentless
Jimmy Durmaz is an Assyrian Christian, which many of his detractors didn’t/don’t know. He is an Aramean, not Arab or Turk. Turkey has been killing Assyrian Christians for more than a century. They were murdered along with the Armenians. I think he is a real refugee and not those fake ones that are invading Europe and elsewhere.
GatesofVienna:
He’s of Berber heritage, not Arab — that may be a partial explanation.
That doesn’t explain anything, excuse me, the occupation of the Iberia was maintained for 700 years because of the Berber (Kabyile aka Amazigh) .. Musa iben Nusair the Arab had on the top of his army which invaded southern Spain for first time a Berber man called Iben Ziyad Tariq.
Today some Islamists are mixed if Arabs and Berbers and Morocco’s secularists are majority Arabs with some Berbers probably because it is an Arabized country, nothing else.
I’m always trying to understand why in the Alternative media the Kurds, Berbers, Bahai’s are so praised and hailed for just being non-Arabs and consequently a western man would think, “oh yeah, they must be less religious than Arabs”.
Arabs were not so brave or strong, but they’re not stupid, they build their empire by the teeth and sweat of those minorities, as a Coptic myself I know in history that thousands of Copts converted to Islam and became a tool for Muslims, some just to avoid head-tax others for the love of power that Muslims granted them after conversion.
Even in today’s Muslim Arab apologists-towards-foreign-Muslim-mentality, they praise the non-ethnic Arab jihadists and non-Arab muslims in general, both who lived in ancient times and now because they think that their belief is stronger than them and they don’t fall for temptations although they, the foreign muslims, live in a very tempting lustful community.
Kurds by the way- backed by the Turks- committed the genocide against Armenian, Assyrians and Chaldeans.
the anti-Russian rhetoric of most Alternative media wants you to believe that Kurds – because backed by Americans- were the only ones who fought and won the war against Daesh or the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria. so the Arabs – represented by Assad’s Army and Hizbullah militants – had no hand in this victory, although the latter ones are Daesh’s first enemy for they are Shiites and Alawites despite seeing themselves as pan-Arab nationalists and anti-imperialism, not a religious group.
Im not endorsing Arabs nor am i defending them, I have my own battle with them too .. I’m setting facts and you may check them if you want .
Athanasius, on behalf of many readers, I’m sure, I thank you for the insight of your perspective – both individually and as a member of the Coptic community. I have no doubt that one day Western Christians will wish they had done more for their persecuted brothers and sisters in the oldest Christian communities. Perhaps your voice will speed that process along. May God bless you, your family, and the Coptic community throughout the world.
@Athanasius: “I’m always trying to understand why in the Alternative media the Kurds, Berbers, Bahai’s are so praised and hailed for just being non-Arabs and consequently a western man would think, “oh yeah, they must be less religious than Arabs”.
Great powers e.g. USA are interested at all times in using minorities with real or unjustified grievances within the borders of their enemies e.g. Uighurs in China or Kurds in Saddam’s Iraq to weaken or destroy that enemy.
So the praise and covert or overt support for those minorities fluctuates according to the great power’s political needs of the moment.
China is currently offering Assad first-time military help in Idlib to complete victory in that part of Syria. Why? Because thousands of Uighur Islamist fighters are there and China does not want them coming back to China.
MI6 and CIA have been encouraging non-Iranian minorities in multi-ethnic Iran for years, e.g. down in Baluchistan. QED.
I have yet to see any national interest that rationalizes, let alone compels, the US intervention in Syria, causing a highly toxic civil war resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. What is the “need” of the US that justified destabilizing the region and causing the death and dislocation of hundreds of thousands?
I think the US would be far better off to simply disband the intelligence deep state, and rely on military intelligence for what we really need to know strategically. The CIA is a rogue instrument of destruction, probably akin to ISI in Pakistan. And yes, I’m making a blanket statement about the “dedicated” line employees of the CIA. We’ve long since passed the point where the liabilities of the agency far outweigh any possible benefits.
The difference between a rogue, unaccountable agency such as the CIA and military intelligence is that military intelligence is closely aligned with a real mission: assess the factors possibly involved in real military operations, whereas the rogue CIA considers the political milieu of a country the appropriate field for disruptive operations which may or may not be related to real US interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_the_Iberian_peninsula
http://agilewriter.com/History/Vandals.htm
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/exploring-origins-vandals-great-destroyers-004307
“son of a Riffian Amazigh Sunni imam”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Aboutaleb
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/rich-mythology-and-megalithic-culture-ancient-berbers-lords-desert-003216
http://jilliancyork.com/2009/01/21/morocco-disappearing-the-amazigh/
https://womenintheworld.com/2016/03/24/matriarchal-traditions-in-north-africa-under-threat-from-islamists-and-arab-elites/
“Amazigh and Muslim identities are irreconcilable.”
https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/you-have-to-choose-islam-secularism-and-amazigh-identity/
https://rehmat1.com/2010/10/01/israels-berber-amazigh-card-to-fight-islam/
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/israel-adopts-abandoned-saudi-sectarian-logic/
Taqiyya.
“Every Magian (eg Islamic) consensus is non-territorial and geographically unlimited… (it) views Western conflicts and ideas of fatherland, mother tongue, constitution as meaningless… (as) alien… and even when (the Magian eg Muslim) does sense some kind of belonging, he supports that expression of it whose aims are most compatible with the Magian (eg Muslim) essence.”
Think globalism.
The quote’s quotation marks should themselves be in quotation marks – not a perfect quote but I think I got the essence.