While Mayor Ahmed Marcouch (PvdA) said a day earlier that he hoped that his city would not turn bluer than usual, in practice there is no escape. Police on horseback, on mountain bikes and vans full of officers equipped with long sticks and leg protectors. A platoon of press photographers circles around it, cameras at the ready. Marcouch spoke afterwards about the use of such a machine 600 agentsa cost of more than one million euros.
This overwhelming police force is on its feet to prevent a repeat of January 13 this year. Then there was a clash after Pegida leader Edwin Wagensveld wanted to burn a Quran. A group of furious counter-protesters tried to prevent that.
Wagensveld's demonstration was banned this time by Marcouch, due to the fear of serious disturbances. After Wagensveld announced that he would not be concerned about this ban, he was given an area ban that denies him the right to move within the municipal boundaries of Arnhem for six months.
“Ahmed, see you later”
After he announced with great bravado on Saturday that he would not worry about that either (“Ahmed, see you later,” he wrote on X that morning), the big wait begins in the city center. A day earlier, a similar action in Rotterdam, like Arnhem, a city with – in Wagensveld's words – a “Muslim mayor”, had passed off peacefully. According to the competent authority, this could not be counted on in Arnhem.
Groups and individuals who linger on Willemsplein are immediately approached by officers and asked for their identity papers. Two demonstrators unfurl a banner under the watchful eye of police officers to express their objections to the announced Quran burning. The police make one arrest: a 38-year-old woman from Vorden tries to burn a Koran she brought with her. This is prevented by invoking the APV (General Local Regulation).
At the end of Saturday afternoon, arms dealer Wagensveld, who lives in Germany, but is currently mainly active on Dutch soil, makes himself heard again. In a video on XStanding in front of a traffic sign indicating the beginning of the built-up area, he says he has found a legal way to burn a Koran in the Gelderland capital. “This book will burn down in Arnhem,” he announces grimly, waving a copy.
Arnhemmistan
That evening, during an iftar for neighbors, in the Islamic Cultural Center Nour-al-Houda, on the other side of the Rhine, the response to Pegida's botched action was mainly a shrug of the shoulders. “Look, he's talking about Arnhemmistan!” two mosque members say to each other when they watch Wagensveld's video. “It should be possible, Arnhemmistan.” And: “We laugh at ourselves often enough here. For example, if someone passes wind after washing before prayers and has to wash all over again.”
Ashraf, a 21-year-old social work student, is wearing traditional prayer clothes this evening. After iftar he prays – during the evening prayers the community reads the entire Quran in one month. “When Wagensveld was here in January, we made a mistake by demonstrating against his action,” says Ashraf. “We gave him exactly what he wanted: attention. We should have ignored him. This is how you tackle bullies.”
During the speech by mosque chairman Khaled Mouhouti, addressed to almost fifty neighbors and associates who attended the iftar, the Quran burning was little more than a footnote. What is striking: Mayor Marcouch has received extensive praise for his decision to ban Quran burning in the middle of Arnhem's 'Week against Racism'.
In a story about Islam as a religion of peace and justice, raw emotions are palpable, especially with the theme of Gaza. Mouhouti then grabs the reporter by the arm: “The fact that the Netherlands, the country that prides itself so much on peace and international law, is so weak in the face of a humanitarian disaster is too hypocritical for words, isn't it?” He grabs the reporter's arm again. “There is no other way for the government to listen to CIDI (an Israeli interest group in the Netherlands, ed.).”
He has nothing against Jews, he swears. “We are brothers of the book, which is in the Koran.” But Israel? That's another story. “Did you see that they added another 800 hectares of land this week? Just when the world's attention is focused on their actions in Gaza? The smiechts.”
According to the chairman, nothing fuels the feeling of being second-class citizens as a Muslim as much as this conflict, a few thousand kilometers away. “It's about children. In famine. How can you look away from that?”
Whether Wagensveld will still enter Arnhem to carry out his action seems to leave the faithful present unconcerned. “I especially think it is a waste of my tax dollars,” says thirty-something Mohammed. “But honestly: there are so many more important things going on in the world. Why should I care about one such man?”
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