En dansk mand er træt af, at selv hans højtuddannede venner taler om ’disse muslimer’ overfor ham – som om de havde horn og hale eller på anden vis skilte sig ud.
En hollandsk kvinde er chokeret over, at hendes gamle skole nu er raceopdelt: Nogle klasser til hollandske børn, andre til børn med anden etnisk baggrund.
I en ny rapport om islamofobi bliver der givet tal og fakta om den diskrimination, vi jo alle nok et eller andet sted er klar over.
Tallene er vigtige, men mere interessant er næsten vidnesbyrdet fra 58 europæiske muslimer, som er et bilag til rapporten.
Her kommer nogle uddrag:
“A few years ago the youth felt as if this was their country. When we went, in my case, to Morocco, I say, ‘this is a country for vacation; this is not my country. I don’t feel at home here’. This [the Netherlands] is where I felt at home. … But what happens in the four or five years until now, especially at this moment, is they don’t let you feel that this is your country. You know, Morocco is not my country because I didn’t live there. I lived here all my years.” (Young female, Netherlands)
“Some years ago, when we asked the young people here, especially in the Turkish community, there was a protest where the young people said ‘We are part of this society and we will stay here and we think of us as part of this society.’ But this position is not a position for the young people of today. They have changed. They are upset at the policies; at the way the majority of people are treating them”. (Male, Germany)
“All the legislation that is coming out, like the immigration stuff and the citizenship stuff, it's all targeted at Muslims. I'm sorry to say it but it is. No one goes on about how the Australians will have to take citizenship tests. …” (Female, United Kingdom)
“I am amazed that in my own circle of friends, very educated people, they start off saying ‘you Muslims’ and I always say to them ‘excuse me? Who are you talking about?’ Do we have two horns and one tail? Who am I? I don’t pray or keep Ramadan, so why are you calling me ‘you Muslims’… well, there is in Danish mind no difference between Turk, Moroccan or anybody, they are all Muslim, and as such, a problem for society. … So in these debates,
and they have many, many debates, where you know they always say,’ these Muslims’, and I always ask them ‘who are you talking about? Are you talking about Pakistanis, the Turks, the Moroccans, the Bosnians, the Bangladeshis? They put everything in one big box and on the top of the box is written ‘trouble’”. (Male, Denmark)
The interviews suggest that most Muslims see the second and third generation as, in many ways, more integrated into society than the first, in terms of communication skills, knowledge and understanding of society. However, the
expectations of second and third generations are also greater.“… (they are) more angry than the elders, because the elderly were thankful to mind their own business and the young people are very vocal and they want to have their rights.” (Male, Denmark)
“I have been born and brought up here … I tell you, from a very early age, I wanted to be part of this society, but in the end I found out that it is not me who decides. Even if I decide for myself to become part of this society, I can’t as long as they don’t accept me. In the end, many of the young people, the second generation, the third generation, have a huge problem about feeling part of
society.” (Male, Germany)
“I, again and again, talk about the media, because it is from the media that Mrs Jones gets her information. She doesn’t know her neighbour, she doesn’t say hello, but she reads the newspaper which says a man looking like that is a dangerous person. So then the neighbour also becomes a dangerous person. So that way the political statement to the media has a lot to do with that perception…They consider Islam as punitive, as violent, as militant, as unadaptable to the western way of living and also a threat. It is not only that they consider Islam as incompatible but also as a threat, a cultural and social threat to the whole fibre of Danish society.” (Male, Denmark)
“I think about a survey at our school. The people asked the pupils in our school ‘What do you connect with Islam?’ and I think 80 per cent of the pupils say they connect the suppression of women with Islam. And I and my sister, we are the only people with headscarf in our school and I say ‘Look at me! Am I a woman who is suppressed?’ and they say ‘No, you are an exception’ … I’m disappointed and helpless, because we are not suppressed. I try to show them that, but most of them don’t want to understand.” (Young female, Germany)
“There is a bishop in Berlin, who says we can't talk to Muslims unless they make an expressed statement against terrorism. That's an assumption… By saying that, he kind of communicates the assumption that Muslims generally don't mind terrorism.” (Female, Germany)
“My personal experience is that when you sit with Danes and discuss things they try to ignore you if you are not white… and speaking like a Dane. So, there have been some examples where people took part in political discussions or in the local levels and they left, because they thought that nobody was listening to them.” (Male, Denmark)
“One example, a question that I get often … is a simple question and I have heard it many times – 'Are you going back?' 'When are you going back?' It implies many things this question. And I ask 'Where would I go?' and they don't really have an answer to that and so they ask 'Where did you come from?' and I say I was born in
Rotterdam so where would I go? … It is really a painful question, I think, and it makes you feel like you are a foreigner, and I think you accept that you are a foreigner at some point.” (Young female, Netherlands)
“The first thing about the culture of my forefathers that was mentioned in school, when I went to a German school, and we were talking about the Ottoman Empire, the way it was explained was that the Ottomans marched to Vienna. Then the teacher took a deep breath and said, ‘Thank God we beat them because otherwise you guys would have big problems.’ He looked to all the boys and said ‘You all would have been circumcised’. Next, he looked to all the girls and said, ‘You all would have to wear headscarves.’ Then,
finally, they looked at me altogether and said, ’It's very good that your boys lost the war, otherwise then we would have had a problem.’ When I went home I had a guilty feeling about what a bad culture I come from and I always had this feeling that I’d have to excuse myself because my parents come from Turkey.” (Male, Germany)
“At my school where I went to, my high school, at this moment they have classes for just Dutch students and for foreign students. There was a father, a friend of my husband, who asked “why are you doing this? I have taken my son to school to be mixed with Dutch people”
and their answer was 'We want to keep the Dutch students, and they won’t come to this school if they are going to be mixed with the foreigners.' This is in Rotterdam. It is a big school. They have six classes. They segregate the children of different nationalities, so
Dutch are in one class and foreigners in another. It's an ethnic division. If the Dutch family was Muslim, which is rare, even if they are born here it doesn't matter, if you are a foreigner, if you have a name that implies you are a foreigner… you are put in that class…” (Young female, Netherlands)
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