Politics
Whereas all foreign nationals who have legally resided in the country for five years have the right to vote in local elections, Moroccans traditionally turn out in low numbers, while turnout among Turks is comparable to that among native Dutch.
After the 2003 elections, there were at least ten MPs from Muslim background among the 150 Members of Parliament, but as few as three among them may have been active believers, while two explicitly classified themselves as ex-Muslims.
Nebahat Albayrak (ex-State Secretary of Justice) and Ahmed Aboutaleb (ex-State Secretary of Social Affairs and Employment, now mayor of Rotterdam) were both the first Muslims in the Dutch cabinet.
Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom was put on trial for inciting racial hatred in early October 2010. Wilders was acquitted on June 23, 2011.
Read more about this topic: Islam In The Netherlands
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)