Muslim groups slam Wilders’ ‘Moroccan scum’ remarks
THE HAGUE — Muslim organisations in the Netherlands on Sunday criticised disparaging comments about Moroccans made by antiIslam lawmaker Geert Wilders, but say they are just the latest in a long string of insults.
Launching his campaign on Saturday for the Netherlands’ March 15 parliamentary election, Wilders criticised Moroccan youths for making the Netherlands unsafe, although he qualified the comments by saying they didn’t apply to all Moroccans.
“If a Dutch person driving in a car drives five miles too fast he will be fined within a minute whereas the Moroccan scum in Holland — once again, not all are scum, but there is a lot of Moroccan scum in Holland who makes the streets unsafe mostly young people and they are not taken seriously,” Wilders said at his first campaign event in the blue collar town of Spijkenisse.
Ebubekir Ozture, director of the Muslim umbrella group Contact Organ Muslims and Government, called Wilders comments “reprehensible,” but added that Moroccans and Muslims are accustomed to such outbursts from Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is riding high in opinion polls less than a month from the election.
“It is not the first time and probably won’t be the last time,” that Wilders has used such language, Ozture said in a telephone interview. “He has said worse things about Moroccans and Muslims. As crazy as it sounds, people are a bit used to it from him.”
Wilders was convicted late last year of inciting discrimination and insulting a group for anti-Moroccan comments he made before and after local elections in 2014. He branded the conviction “political.” Wilders is appealing the conviction, which centered on comments he made before and after Dutch municipal elections. —