After the many deadly police brutality in the United States against black Americans, the expression ‘walking while Black’ targeted: simply walking on the street makes you suspicious as a black person. You don’t have to make any effort for that.
There we can use the term ‘banking while muslim’ add to this, because a simple donation of 2.50 euros to your local mosque turns out to be a reason for banks to investigate ‘terrorism financing’. That was clear from the article If transferring money to your spouse is suspected earlier this week in NRC (3/8): Dutch banks already consider the most common bank transfers by Muslims suspicious.
In doing so, they do not apply the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, they intervene if they think there are terrorist motives, whereby the only point of departure is the Islamic background of the clients. For example, a chairman of a mosque in Heemskerk could not order new coffee filters because the account was blocked by the bank.
coffee filters. Terrorism is no longer what it used to be. According to the article, “negative publicity” is a reason for banks to reject Islamic organizations. But if negative press is an argument, then we also have some big apples to peel with the banks themselves. It is striking, and downright shocking, that banks are guided by messages on obscure websites with unfounded suspicions. Rabobank relied on the panting publicist Carel Brendel, who links just about every Muslim in the Netherlands to the Muslim Brothers or Hamas. Or both.
But there is still something fundamentally wrong with the attitude of banks. By considering people with an Islamic background as suspect in advance, you place them outside society. People are not judged by what they do, but by their faith. In doing so, the banks go along with the idea that Islam is inherently hostile and Muslims are a ‘fifth column’. Wilders has grown up with it.
There has been so much doubt about Muslims in politics and media for years that it is now apparently a well-established and accepted fact that you can suspect and exclude them. Those same Muslims who have been accused by politics of ‘standing with their backs to society’ all too often find themselves with their backs against the wall and society as a whole facing them. Excepted because of their faith, mistrusted as danger.
Meanwhile, the real danger is out in the open among us. While Muslims were accused of a vast, sinister plot to covertly subjugate the West, the far right worked openly on it.
After professor Leo Lucassen tweeted that nothing is as globalist as the extreme right, Thierry Baudet responded triumphantly: “That’s right, we’re connecting. And we are going to beat you.”
A memorable tweet in which Baudet wrote the truth for once. At the international level, the extreme right works closely together. Money flows – the American International Freedom Alliance Foundation paid Wilders’ attorneys’ fees –, Eva Vlaardingerbroek regularly appears on American Fox, Trump supports Dutch farmers’ terror campaigns and Dutch journalists and politicians openly sing of their love for anti-democratic autocrats such as Putin and Orban.
They are at the heart of our parliament, they work in the media, train students at our universities and have access to funds. The fifth column is below us, but does not wear a djellaba and beard, but is white and neatly dressed – so not suspicious.
As they continue to look to the rule of law, undermine democracy and poison the debate with blatant and blatant lies, the banks have it all under control. That 2.50 euros per month to the local mosque does not escape their attention.
Meanwhile, for Muslims, the promise that ‘if you do your best and obey the law, then you belong’ turns out to be a lie.
Hassnae Bouazza is a writer, journalist, columnist and program maker.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 6, 2022
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