ROTTERDAM, 17/01/08 - Labour (PvdA) politician Bouchra Ismaili has reviled a citizen of Rotterdam in an e-mail. The man was told that as a member of the white minority in his district, he should not complain about the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Ismaili, who has Moroccan nationality, is a council member for PvdA in the Rotterdam district council of Charlois. “You are the immigrants here!!!”, she wrote to the white man who drew her attention by e-mail to statements by the controversial Muslim organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ismali also wrote in her e-mail reply to the man: ‘Drop dead,’ and ‘convert to Islam,’ Algemeen Dagblad reported yesterday.
Ismaili has had her knuckles rapped by vice-party leader of the PvdA district council party in Charlois, Marco van Dijck. But he has not asked her to resign from the council.
Ismaili says she sent the e-mail in a burst of anger. “I do not want to justify it, but as a Muslim politician, I have for years been harassed by mail from extreme right figures. Normally speaking, I throw them away unread. When I saw the mail at home, something broke in me. All the more because I had heard someone that day say that all Moroccans should be dead. For me, this was the last straw.”
Jos Parbleu, the man that received the e-mail from Ismaili, sent hundreds of local politicians an e-mail with statements by Okay Pala of Hizb ut-Tahrir. He is concerned about the rise of this movement, which is monitored by the AIVD secret service. The e-mail from Ismaili that he got back “shows the frightfully disastrous situation in which our country has landed!”, he said in the newspaper.