Amsterdam wants to be a city where LGBTI people are safe, but the draft statement states that they still have to deal with ‘discrimination, rejection and even violence’. This is mainly due to the ‘tough street culture’, but according to the municipality there are also perpetrators who ‘invoke their faith’.
The municipality therefore wanted religious organizations to speak out against violence against LGBT people. But the way she conveyed that request to mosque administrators led to resentment: they felt put in a corner.
Friday evening Halsema told in AT5 program The Conversation with the Mayor that she withdraw the statement. ‘Because it wasn’t a political statement for me. I wanted to step forward together with others, and I don’t feel the need to spitefully or otherwise push that in people’s faces. That was not the intention.’
The statement was “not a test, nor an assessment of good or bad behavior,” the mayor said. She therefore ‘does not understand at all’ why the mosque authorities feel attacked. Talks had been going on between the municipality and the Islamic community for some time. According to Halsema, it was established that the image prevails that the Islamic community is intolerant towards LGBT people. The idea of coming up with a statement would also have come up there.
The mosques found it especially painful that only they were presented with the statement. Other religious organizations only received the statement after the mosque authorities had protested. But according to Halsema, that was exactly the deal. ‘Agreements would first be made with the Islamic community, precisely because of the sensitivity. After that, with their consent, others could also join.’
Halsema regrets that the mosques sought publicity and polarized the subject. Ongoing consultations between the municipality and the Islamic community have also broken down. That, she says, makes it impossible to proceed with the statement.