Dutch Islamophobic newspaper ‘news’ turns out to be lies

This video from the USA is called Bush Talks about Crusade on September 16 2001.

Trouw is a Dutch daily newspaper. It was originally founded during the nazi occupation of the Netherlands, as a clandestine anti-occupation voice of Protestant Christians. It has a better reputation than, eg, a daily like De Telegraaf, a rightist paper which during World War II collaborated with the nazis and now has a reputation of xenophobia, sensationalism and being ‘economical with the truth’.

So, when earlier this year, Trouw published a series of articles about the Schilderswijk neighbourhood in The Hague city, these articles looked credible to many people. Most Schilderswijk people are immigrants. The Trouw articles claimed that fanatical Muslims had managed to make the Schilderswijk into a ‘Sharia triangle’; where Dutch laws did not apply any more, and had been replaced by extremely strict Muslim Sharia law rules. Other corporate Dutch news media reproduced this uncritically.

Today, Trouw writes that they now doubt seriously the truthfulness and existence of so-called sources of some of the articles in their paper. These articles are by an editor who has meanwhile been sacked. Trouw refuses to say which articles these are, and what is the name of this (ex-)editor.

There are strong suspicions in the Netherlands that the name of this (ex-)editor is Perdiep Ramesar. And that the untruthful articles are his writings about the so-called ‘Sharia triangle’ in the Schilderswijk. After the ‘Bermuda triangle’ myth, the ‘Sharia triangle’ myth.

So, not just one daily, but big parts of the Dutch corporate media, believe Islamophobic lies. Why? To understand, we have to go back to 2001, when George W Bush and Tony Blair abused the 9/11 atrocities for starting war first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. Wars based on lies. The wars were not really about religion, more about oil and other economic factors. Still, George W Bush referred to his ‘Global War on Terror’ as a ‘crusade’, giving rise to war propaganda depicting Islam as the enemy.

Recent atrocities by ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq, and the re-start of the Iraq war by NATO governments (officially against these atrocities, but, again, more about oil and other economic factors; and in alliance with regimes with links to ISIS, like in Saudi Arabia and Turkey) revived Islamophobia in war propaganda.

In such a climate, the lying Trouw articles contributed to making the immigrant people in The Hague and their Schilderswijk neighbourhood a target of the violent extreme Right. A loose alliance of various Islamophobic extremists, called Pro Patria, tried to march to the Schilderswijk. Then, the Hitler admiring Dutch party Nederlandse Volksunie (a component of the earlier Pro Patria march) tried to march to the Schilderswijk again.

Both the publishing of the earlier lies, and today the secretiveness about the name of the editor and the articles, are not good for the reputation of Trouw. One should hope they won’t be good for the reputation of Islamophobic war propaganda in the Netherlands and elsewhere in general.

Islamophobia at Dutch schools: here.