Something's Rotten in Rotterdam

Just under one sixth of Luton's population is Muslim. Bring it up to one quarter and it could get even more "vibrant". Paul Lucre writes in Pajamas Media on diverse, dynamic Rotterdam:

Getting jumped by six Moroccans after I left a gay bar in Rotterdam a few weeks ago brought home — with brutal clarity — my feeling that this Dutch port city is a nervous place on the verge of breakdown.

Having studied in two European countries, lived and worked in three, and visited about two dozen over a 20-year period, I usually feel extremely safe meandering around the “old countries” of our Western civilization. But there’s something rotten in Rot-town.

The city has been hard hit by the economic crisis. Unemployment is already twice the national average and over the next year could match the 20 percent rate of the 90s downturn.

But economics only partially explains why Rotterdam may see blood in the streets this summer.

Rotterdam’s demographics make it the unofficial capital of Eurabia. Its population is half non-Western or of non-Western descent. Muslims make up close to 25 percent of its population. Unskilled, undereducated, and increasingly unemployed workers abound. And segregation — ubiquitous in all large European cities — is extremely acute here. Rotterdam’s ghettos would make Hitler smile.

In the last few weeks, I’ve witnessed two violent incidents in downtown Rotterdam between whites and non-whites. Each started over absolutely nothing, but flared up like lighter fluid on hot coals. All sorts of racial and religious tensions — which were only intensified by the 2002 murder of city leader Pim Fortuyn and the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh — fog the streets of this working-class shipping town.

[...]

Because of the generosity and humanity of the Dutch welfare system — and the “sensitivity” of police and Dutch officials to Islam — I’m at an utter loss to understand why Muslim immigrants hold Dutch society in such brazen contempt. Surely life here is far better than in the places they came from. Yet few seem even remotely grateful. And being grateful means — among other things — following the rules, getting a job, learning the language, and accepting the values.

The author needs to study Islam. Welfare payments from non-Muslim taxpayers are jizya, and Muslims have no need to be grateful for what is, after all, their due.