Tariq Ramadan, 2009. Wikicommons/Joshua Sherurcij. some rights reserved.
Zakaria Hamidi is surprised at how many ‘Dutch people’ have come along to the first of a series of public debates in Rotterdam organised by the newly-launched New Horizon – a platform for discussion with a special focus on Islam in the Netherlands. The Mayor of Rotterdam has given a paternalistic blessing to the proceedings, with a few sincerely felt words urging Muslims and non-Muslims alike to take responsibility for their city. After 9/11, the Mayor had responded to the call for improving ‘social cohesion in the cities’ by initiating an annual Day of Dialogue, designed to bring citizens from different cultural backgrounds together around tables set up throughout the city, to discuss concrete challenges faced by their communities as well as Rotterdam as a whole. No subject was taboo: the main idea was the idea of inclusion. After a while, Zakaria and his colleagues had the feeling that it was always the same people who came and talked. State-funded Muslim organisations invited them to participate in discussions of ‘Islam and homosexuality’ or ‘Islam and wife-beating’, but there seemed little space to discuss European identity, the space that secular society gives to religion, or Iraq. Zakaria and his friends decided that they would like to organise their own debates.
