First Anniversary

I started this blog almost exactly one year ago. The issue of Islam in Europe had interested me greatly the past few years and I had spent a lot of time reading about it and participating in discussions on other blogs.

I had a lot of doubts before starting off this blog. Did I really have anything to add to what was already being said? I felt I did, and I felt there was no blog which was really following up on the Islamic issues in the Dutch speaking countries. Since then I became acquainted with several Dutch bloggers.

It is not my intention to show the evil of Islam. I am more interested in following up on the clash of cultures, the clash of values and the way each side is dealing with them.

It had been an interesting year, starting off with the riots in France, which were also copied somewhat in Belgium, the various travails of Samir Azzouz, who's now facing his 3rd terror trial all the way through the Mohammed cartoons and the debate that they caused, and now to the debate over the Muslim veil.

I was unsure whether others would be interested in reading what I had to say, but I am gratified to find that I do have an audience. 700 posts and almost 50,000 page loads later, I can say it has been an amazing year.

It is noteworthy that two issues especially perked the interest of my readers. The first was my posts on the Mohammed cartoons and my translation of the Jyllands Posten apology in Arabic to English. Though my Arabic is very basic and I am still struggling with learning the language and though Jyllands Posten later posted another version of their apology in English as well, it gave a general overview of what was said to the Arab public when no other source was available. The second was the story of the Dutch Moroccans who cheered the tragedy of the American people while watching the movie World Trade Center. This piece of news barely appeared in the Dutch press and was generally ignored by the world media.

I thank all my readers for their support and their comments. I am happy to open another venue of information for you and I thank my readers for contributing their thought provoking insights and for developing my own opinions. Without all of you, this blog wouldn't be here! :-)

I will not be blogging next week.. enjoy the break :-)