Netherlands: A controversial talk by a controversial speaker

Netherlands: A controversial talk by a controversial speaker

To be more precise: the talk wasn't so controversial as everybody expected, but that didn't stop the media from starting up a controversy anyway.  That's what the media is for, no?

I translate a lot and every so often, much more often than I would like, I make mistakes.  However, how the Dutch media went from "I think at least he deserves a judicial slap on the wrist" to "Wilders should be flogged with a belt" (NL) is really beyond me. 

Yasin spoke in English, and you can see what he said here: Netherlands: Khalid Yasin on Wilders

What is more interesting is that the same newspapers who published that Yasin said that Wilders should be flogged, had journalists at the talk who reported that Yasin spoke about tolerance.

On Saturday, before the controversy about the flogging broke out, Dutch Newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported that Wilders could be calm:


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"Terrror Imam" Abu Muhammad Kahlid Yasin did not preach hate and discord in front of a packed hall in the Islamic University of Rotterdam - on the contrary.  The Black 'sheik' from Brooklyn/New York, impressed upon his audience of hundreds of young Muslims that they must keep the law, integrate as well as possible, and build a better Netherlands with non-Muslims.  At the end of his marathon speech he thanked the Prime Minister and Queen for the hospitality.

(..)

Islam, Khalid Yasin recited loudly, is a message of 'tolerance, respect and social reform".  Western society offers Muslims the best possibilities for development.  "Don't come to me with this nonsense that you don't want to obey the Kafirs," the Afro-American Sheik, who in the 60s was involved with the Nation of Islam of Malcolm X, thundered.  After which he paraphrased John F. Kennedy: "This nation will know what one million Dutch Muslims could do for their country."


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Yasin sweeps out onto the floor with Geert Wilders: "That man who made that film.  Shame on you."  The public revels in it.  But Sheik Yasin didn't come to Rotterdam to please.  The Muslim community is also bad, he says menacingly.  No wonder that people in the Netherlands speak about 'those Moroccan youth'.  But he also doesn't spare the religious fundamentalist Muslims, telling them that Islam is not a religion of hermits, and they shouldn't only be with those who are like them.


(..)


Source: NRC (Dutch)

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