“Look,” says Nizar El Ouardani, “Wilders has good and bad things. He is bad for Islam, but good for healthcare, housing and migration. And those are important things to me.” In his bakery in the Osdorp district of Amsterdam, El Ouardani explains why he, born in Morocco and a professing Muslim, does not see the enormous profits of the PVV as a threat – and even somewhat welcomes it.
“I have lived in the Netherlands for thirty years,” he says from behind the counter. “And now there are people coming from another country who have more advantages than I do. They get a good house and a school for their children. In the meantime they are not working.” El Ouardani is not worried about Wilders’ radical anti-Islam agenda. “The mosque is important, but not that important. If it has to close, I’m going to pray at home, right?” He hands five flatbreads to a customer. “If Wilders does well as prime minister, I will vote for him next time.”
How do Dutch Muslims view the resounding election victory of Geert Wilders, the politician who calls their faith an “ideology of hatred and terror” and who has been convicted of insulting Dutch Moroccans as a group? Prominent Muslims have expressed their concerns in recent days. For example, Mayor Ahmed Marcouch (Arnhem) wrote on the site Joop.nl about his eight-year-old son, who is now afraid that the PVV wants to deport them from the country. Lawyer Anis Boumanjal tweeted that he was reluctant to tell his children the news about Wilders. “The fact that ‘their’ Netherlands has opted en masse to exclude their identity will make them sad.” Mosque associations from The Hague and Rotterdam called the PVV victory a confirmation of an “Islamophobic climate”.
From dozens of conversations A different, more varied picture emerges on markets and squares, in shops and community centers in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The election results have indeed hit some people hard. Now it is clear, they say, what we always knew: that a large group of Dutch people would rather be rid of us than be rich. They wonder in despair what a Wilders cabinet will soon mean for the Dutch who are not “first” with him.
But a large proportion of the Muslims we speak to do not seem to worry much. With Wilders’ anti-Islam plans (close mosques and Islamic schools, ban the Koran), things will not progress that quickly, they think. His future coalition partners will not allow it and, moreover, “we have a constitutional state in the Netherlands.” And didn’t Wilders himself say that his Islam agenda is “not a priority” at the moment? “Islam,” says 32-year-old Ahmed on a shopping plaza on Beijerlandselaan in South Rotterdam, “is more of a side issue for him.”
Even more striking: many of the interlocutors, apart from the anti-Islam rhetoric, actually agree with the PVV’s positions. What Geert Wilders says about low incomes (must be higher), healthcare (must be better), the housing market (must be fairer) and criminals (severe punishment): he is right about that, they think. This also applies to Wilders’ views on migration. Asylum seekers, status holders and Ukrainian refugees – they receive the money and the houses that are actually intended for “the Dutch” – which they emphatically count themselves as.
A few have even seriously considered voting for the PVV, or actually did so. Like a Moroccan Dutchman in his fifties standing in line at the Marrakech bakery in a lively shopping street in Amsterdam-Osdorp. “Because of the asylum seekers, who come here in their thousands.”
Ukrainians
Across the street, Anisa Elmaach takes a stand when she is asked about the PVV. She is 19, from Eindhoven and wears a white headscarf. Wilders, she says, is now “focused on other things” than Islam. “People grow, people change.”
The PVV, says Elmaach, “has good points.” Take the Ukraine war, in which the Netherlands is one of the largest European suppliers of money and weapons. “Every country needs help, but sending Dutch fighter planes costs a few million. Wilders says: we want to keep out of it. I agree with that. We don’t send money and weapons to African countries where there is war, do we?”
Another point: the housing market. “Too much attention is paid to migrants,” says Elmaach. “We can’t even lose our own people. We Dutch simply have to be first.” She spreads her hands. “Full is full.”
This slogan is also heard in Rotterdam’s shopping streets. 33-year-old optician Amira believes that the Netherlands allows too many migrants. “While everything has become increasingly expensive for us, those people immediately receive benefits and priority on houses. Of course we must continue to accommodate the real refugees, but those fortune seekers… hello, that is not the intention.”
Amira finds it “creepy” that so many Dutch people have chosen a party that wants to keep Muslims wearing headscarves, like herself, out of government buildings. “Many Dutch people have two faces. When you work with them everything is smooth sailing. But in the meantime they want all foreigners out of the country, you hear through the grapevine from colleagues.” Still, says Amira, “without his anti-Islam views I would have voted for Wilders.”
Polderland
It is striking how often the word ‘Constitution’ is mentioned in conversations. It is the rule of law, people say, that will prevent Wilders from compromising their rights – and that rule of law is strong enough. “You cannot amend the Constitution in one term,” says Souhaila, a woman in her thirties who is drinking coffee with her friend Shira on a terrace in Amsterdam-Osdorp. “We remain a polder country.”
Souhaila says what many of the interlocutors say: now that Wilders has become the greatest, he should become prime minister. Let him prove what his rhetoric means in practice. With the buttocks exposed. Then it will become clear, she thinks, which agenda Wilders must implement from “his Zionist financiers”. Butcher Mohammed Elaf puts it differently: “A dog can bark. But if you give him a big piece of meat, he is satisfied.”
Not everyone has unconditional confidence in the constitution as a line of defense for Muslims and other minorities in the event of a PVV cabinet. There is a lot of naivety about Wilders, says criminologist Tasniem Anwar. “His message, which is diametrically opposed to the Constitution, has been accepted as something normal. Now Wilders has the opportunity to translate that message into new laws and policies. People underestimate the danger of that.”
Anwar (30) grew up with Wilders. When she was in high school, his controversial anti-Islam film was released Fitna. “We went to see him in social studies. In a predominantly white class, I already had to defend myself. For what you believe in, for who you are. You actually grow up with a feeling that you don’t belong here.”
Anwar’s experience is that of many Dutch Muslims aged thirty or younger: they have related to Wilders all their lives. First Fitna, then his ‘fewer, fewer Moroccans’ statement and the lawsuits that followed. Many Muslim Dutch people we speak to, especially young people, have adopted a laconic attitude towards the PVV leader. They joke about when they will be deported. Say with a shrug that Wilders “just likes to shock” or say that they send around the ‘less, less’ images as meme. Geert Wilders, a cartoonish figure in the setting of your life.
Are these ‘coping‘mechanisms, under which fear and uncertainty do indeed lie hidden?
Yes, says Imad Achatibi (33), who installs his son in a child seat in Rotterdam. “I tell myself that people voted for him because of the housing shortage. That it is not directed against Muslims, but that there are other motives behind it. That feels better.”
Tasniem Anwar has had few illusions since last Wednesday. Her newborn daughter, she says, will probably also grow up with Wilders. “I hoped it would be different for her. But it has even gotten worse.”
‘They don’t want us anyway’
In a light blue-painted meeting room in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, Sabi el Massaoui sits behind a cup of tea. The director of the Argan youth center has had an eventful twenty-four hours.
On election night, he says, the first phone calls from Muslim Dutch people started coming in. There were people among them “with high positions”: at university, in business, at banks. They were all worried about Wilders’ victory. “Then you have studied hard and got a good job, and you think: they don’t want us after all.”
El Massaoui, born in Morocco, is also overcome by despair. He has now been director of Argan for twenty years. His organization has always “fought”, he says: against racism and discrimination, but also against religious extremism in Islamic circles. When Theo van Gogh was murdered by a radical Islamist, almost twenty years ago, Queen Beatrix stopped by Argan to talk to Moroccan-Dutch young people.
“Since election night I have been wondering: are we back to square one?” says El Massaoui. “Were all those efforts in vain?” He fears the worst in a country under Prime Minister Wilders – especially for young people. “The polarization is going to cause psychological problems. A lost generation is coming.”