scholarly journals Managing Mosques in the Netherlands

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Verkaaik ◽  
Pooyan Tamimi Arab
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Call To Prayer

This article engages with the emergent ethnographical study of secular practice by focusing on how local bureaucracies manage the Muslim public presence in the Netherlands, particularly the construction of new mosques and the amplifying of the Muslim call to prayer. We argue that what started as the ‘Islam debate’, itself provoked by growing populist articulations of the fear of Islam, has gradually developed into a conflict in the practice of local governance about the meaning of secularism. Whereas the public and political debate about mosque issues is often dominated by what we call a ‘culturalist’ or ‘nativist’ form of secularism, in practice bureaucrats are often led by a ‘constitutional secularism’ that protects the constitutional rights of Dutch Muslims. Thus, in its practical application, constitutional secularism is one way of tackling Islamophobia and protecting the rights of religious minorities in general. Moving beyond the genealogical study and the deconstructivist critique of secularism by such authors as Talal Asad and Wendy Brown, we show that the ethnographic study of actual secular practice remains crucially important to avoiding monolithic text-based understandings of the secular as inherently dominating the religious.

scholarly journals Social Change and the Accommodation of Religious Minorities in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Wibren van der Burg ◽  
Wouter de Been
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Information ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Information And Communication

The toleration of religious minorities is changing in the Netherlands. In this paper we analyze three recent developments in Dutch society that are important for understanding the way the Dutch regime of religious tolerance is adjusting to 21st century circumstances. The first one concerns the growing homogenization of Dutch society and the emergence of a secular and liberal majority. The second is the dominance in policy and public debate of a “Protestant” conception of what religion amounts to. The third development is the fragmentation of religion and its simultaneous combination into new networks and groups made possible by new information and communication technologies. These developments pose challenges to constitutional rights and principles. There are no simple solutions to these challenges, but the Dutch tradition of consociationalism, as a liberal tradition in its own right, may provide some valuable perspectives.

scholarly journals Social Change and the Accommodation of Religious Minorities in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Wibren van der Burg ◽  
Wouter de Been
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Information ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Information And Communication

The toleration of religious minorities is changing in the Netherlands. In this paper we analyze three recent developments in Dutch society that are important for understanding the way the Dutch regime of religious tolerance is adjusting to 21st century circumstances. The first one concerns the growing homogenization of Dutch society and the emergence of a secular and liberal majority. The second is the dominance in policy and public debate of a “Protestant” conception of what religion amounts to. The third development is the fragmentation of religion and its simultaneous combination into new networks and groups made possible by new information and communication technologies. These developments pose challenges to constitutional rights and principles. There are no simple solutions to these challenges, but the Dutch tradition of consociationalism, as a liberal tradition in its own right, may provide some valuable perspectives.

scholarly journals Consultant-liaison psychiatrists and euthanasia in the Netherlands

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 497-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frits J. Huyse ◽  
Willem van Tilburg ◽  
Ine Klijn ◽  
Gertie Casteelen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Medical Doctor ◽  
Public Prosecutor ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Criminal Punishment ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Public

On 30 November 1993 a nine year political debate on euthanasia closed; the first chamber of the Dutch parliament ratified the law on undertaking, including euthanasia regulations. This political step concluded, for the time being at least, a legal, public, political and medical debate, which started in 1973, when a medical doctor was convicted for performing euthanasia on her mother. In a first effort in 1983, parliament failed to legalise euthanasia. In 1989 a new government introduced an initiative to improve the existing law in this regard. As a part of the process, empirical data on the extent of euthanasia in The Netherlands were required. Therefore, the Minister of Justice installed a committee. Its findings have been reported nationally and internationally (van der Maas et al, 1991a, 1991b); about 2,300 euthanasia cases in 1990, being 1.8% of all deaths. These empirical findings reduced the uncertainties about the extent of euthanasia, thereby providing a sound basis for the parliamentary decision-making process. Although by the current law euthanasia and assisted suicide still remain illegal, under strict guidelines for behaviour provided by the Ministry of Justice in November 1990 and distributed among physicians in January 1991, euthanasia can be exempted by the public prosecutor from criminal punishment on the basis of the ‘opportunity’ principle, this being the opportunity for the public prosecutor not to bring all reported crimes to court (Letter of the Minister of Justice to Parliament, 1990).

Tolerance and Accommodation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori G. Beaman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter problematizes the notions and language of tolerance and accommodation in relation to religious diversity, and traces their genealogy both as legal solutions and as discursive frameworks within which religious diversity is increasingly understood in the public sphere. The problem they pose is that they create a hierarchy of privilege that preserves hegemonic power relations by religious majorities over religious minorities. Tolerance in this context might be imagined as the broadly stated value that we must deal with diversity and those who are different from us by tolerating them. Accommodation might be seen as the implementation of this value—that in order to demonstrate our commitment to tolerance we must accommodate the ‘demands’ of minority groups and those individuals who position themselves or align themselves with minorities.

scholarly journals Tensions in Urban Transitions. Conceptualizing Conflicts in Local Climate Policy Arrangements

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Winfried Osthorst
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Policy Arrangements

Academic and political debate places great expectations on cities’ potential for furthering decentralized, bottom-up climate policies. Local policy research acknowledges the role of local agency to develop and implement sustainability, but also acknowledges internal conflicts. This partly reflects tensions between different functions of the local level, and different governance models related to them. In addition, local dependency on higher level competencies, resources, and overarching strategies is discussed. This article proposes a focus on political processes and power relationships between levels of governance, and among relevant domains within cities, to understand the dynamics of policy change towards sustainability. Researching these dynamics within local climate policy arrangements (LCPAs) is proposed as an approach to understanding the complexities of local constellations and contradictions within them. It makes the distinction between “weak” and “strong” ecological modernization, and relates it to two basic rationales for local governance. The resulting typology denotes constellations characterizing policy change ambitions towards local climate policy in crucial domains, including economic development, energy infrastructures, climate change management, town planning and housing, and transportation. This article argues that this approach overcomes the limitations of the predominating conceptualizations of urban carbon control strategies as consistent, and recognises the multi-level dimension of such internal urban processes.

The Chaste Parricide: Murder, Femininity and the Subversion of Authority in the Reception of the First Performance of Shelley’s The Cenci, 1886

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-211
Author(s):  
Lee Michael-Berger
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
True Story ◽  
The Public Sphere

The story of The Cenci’s first production is intriguing, since the play, based on the true story of a sixteenth-century Roman family and revolving around the theme of parricide, was published in 1819 but was denied a licence for many years. The Shelley Society finally presented it in 1886, although it was vetoed by the Lord Chamberlain, and to avoid censorship it had to be proclaimed as a private event. This article examines the political and social context of the production, especially the reception of actress’s Alma Murray’s rendition of Beatrice, the parricide, thus probing the ways in which The Cenci question was reframed, and placed in the public sphere, despite censorship. The staging of the play became the site of a political debate and the performance – an act of defiance against institutionalised power, but also an act of defiance against the alleged tyranny of mass culture.

The Urban Environment and Medieval Social Strategies

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Irina Variash
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Public ◽  
Crown Of Aragon ◽  
History Of ◽  
Call To Prayer

The article discusses the issue of the so-called segregation norms against Muslims that emerged in the fourteenth century in Christian Law. The author analyzes source material relating to the history of the Crown of Aragon and raises the following question: is it possible to trace any connection between the urban environment and those social strategies that were applied to the infidels in the Middle Ages? Such research optics makes it possible to distinguish several types of segregation laws, some of which were a product of the urban environment and urban culture, which is substantiated by the author on the basis of the royal ordonnances, capitulae of the Valencian Cortes, Fuero of Valencia. The author discusses new legal norms that contradicted the early privileges for Muslims (12th — 13th centuries) and regulated Muslims’ appearance (a distinctive sign on clothes, a special hairstyle), their right to live together or next to Christians, their work on Sundays and Christian holidays, and also prohibited the public call to prayer. Paradoxically, these norms, being aimed at restricting the rights of the infidels (i.e. the Others), were formulated under the influence of the urban environment, in a settlement that was heterogeneous in its genesis and diverse in its nature. The Iberian-Latin civilization, which accumulated the human capital of the Muslim civilization in the course of the Reconquista, began to change its own social strategies in the management of Muslims in the fourteenth century. The experience of the cities was crucial in this process.

DRIEDIMENSIONAAL NIEUWS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-152
Author(s):  
Tessel X. Dekker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Mass Medium ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Visual Medium ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wax Models

THREE-DIMENSIONAL NEWS The Amsterdam wax museum as a competitor of the illustrated newspaper, 1882-1919 The nineteenth-century wax museum can be viewed as a contemporary mass medium that showed people scenes from the news. The Nederlandsch Panopticum was the first of its kind in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam between 1882 and 1919. As an informative visual medium, the Panopticum had to compete with other media, like the illustrated newspaper, for the attention of the public. At the same time, the wax museum also depended on photographs published in these same papers: wax models were often, and in the course of time almost exclusively, modelled after photos. This reciprocal relationship can be seen as an example of ‘intermediality’. In the end, the wax museum lost ground, foremost, to the new mass medium of the time, cinema, which took over both as an urban attraction and as a popular visual medium.

A Dutchman in London: reflections of a hospital chief executive from the Netherlands in the NHS

BMJ Leader ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. leader-2021-000509
Author(s):  
Marcel Levi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interesting Insight ◽  
Clinical Point ◽  
High Level

BackgroundThe NHS is a fascinating health care system and is enjoying a lot of support from all layers of British society. However, it is clear that the system has excellent features but also areas that can be improved.Story of selfA number of years as a chief executive in one of London’s largest hospital has brought me a wealth of impressions, experiences, and understanding about working in the NHS. Contrasting those to my previous experience as chief executive in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) provides an interesting insight.ObservationsVery strong features of the NHS are the high level of health care professionals, the focus on quality and safety, and involvement of patients and the public. However, the NHS can significantly improve by addressing the lack of clinical professionals in the lead, curtailing ever increasing bureaucracy, and reducing its peculiar preference for outsourcing even the most crucial activities to private parties. The frequent inability to swiftly and successfully complete goal-directed negotiations as well as the large but from a clinical point of view irrelevant private sector are areas of sustained bewilderment. Lastly, the drive for innovation and transformation as well as the level of biomedical research in the NHS and supported by the British universities is fascinating and outstanding.

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