livingzuid increasing Muslim immigration It would take me two guesses from your username as to where you originate from. I live in a part of the Netherlands with a very high ethnic, predominantly Muslim population. The only problems I have ever experienced have come from white men. So you're talking rubbish.
Congratulations on your guessing as "where I originate from". What a nice way to put it. I don't believe you. I think you are trying to make yourself sound like an expert on the Dutch or something, but I don't think you are Dutch.
Because this is nothing that most people here don't talk about. Not because we are racist, but because its an issue.
The only problems I have ever experienced have come from white men. So you're talking rubbish.
That's absolutely not true. Particularly if you are a female student, trying to go about your business in a Dutch city centre, you will be harassed, hissed at (whats with the hissing? are you meant to hiss back or something?), followed and so on. If you make the mistake of making eye contact or engaging with the man who is staring, whistling, hissing or muttering to you, you will never get rid of him. They will literally follow you along the street, asking you to come with them. So you don't engage. You keep your eyes down, you avoid eye contact, you avoid standing still or reading a map or sitting in a partly empty train carriage or going to a partly empty train spoor. Given that most Dutch female students look like a blond dreamwoman to many men who aren't Dutch themselves, its something that its impossible to conceive if you are a middle aged expat living in a suburb of Eindhoven or Venlo or Helmond or wherever. You have absolutely no idea what you are trying to talk about.
I live in a part of the Netherlands with a very high ethnic, predominantly Muslim population.
Every city and large town and many villages in The Netherlands have a large ethnic, predominately Muslim population.
But if we disagree with you or pick apart the glaring holes in your argument, of course, we become bullies.
I'm not actually making an argument. I'm pro-immigration. If I was to "make an argument" rather than raising issues, which is what I am doing, it is that simply vastly increasing immigration without looking at ways of increasing integration commensurately is likely to cause problems for that half of the population which is predominately sidelined by the prevailing culture and religion of the countries those immigrants mainly originate from.
I worked in the voluntary sector for sixteen years before I fell pregnant and did work for a number of refugee organisations both in the Netherlands and the UK, so I am well aware of what I am talking about.
If your main experience is within refugee organisations, probably in the Randstad, then I hardly think you are qualified as some expert to speak on Dutch society, and how Dutch women feel about being harassed (and worse) in the streets. Its very rare for white Dutch men to do it, much rarer than for British men in the UK.
I'm sure you'll aggressively correct me in some way or other, but that's par for the course for mumsnet. The Netherlands was even more tolerant perhaps twenty years ago but in recent years its become slightly less so. I think failing to realise that there are sound reasons for this is dishonest.
I think immigration is great, and I look forward to those who will inherit our society one or two hundred years from now, when the descendants of those who had no choice but to leave their country of birth are more integrated into western societies and for whom concerns such as the above seem a bit of a old fashioned irrelevant thing.