Anne's Daily Encounters

By dutchdelight

Je m'appelle aujourdhui Charlie

At 6 in the eve people in Holland demonstrated in many cities  at the same time as in Paris to show they stand for the freedom of speech and expression ~ I didn't manage to go there and followed the rallies on the tele.
The speech of Rotterdam's Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb was like a call from the heart: 'Normalement je suis le maire de Rotterdam, mais ce soir je suis Parisien et je m'appelle Charlie' (normally I'm mayor of Rotterdam, but this eve I'm Parisian and named Charlie)
He also said he's an angry Muslim and that it's most important that Muslims express detest of terror against Freedom of expression ~ his impressive speech impressed me deep.

the picture of him I took from the papers

backblip
2015/01/13 London's mayor Boris Johnson wrote:

'And my hero – the man who got straight to the point – was the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, himself a Muslim. “If you don’t like freedom,” he told the Dutch nation’s potential jihadists, “then pack your bags and leave. There may be a place where you can be yourself, so be honest with yourself, and don’t kill innocent journalists. If you don’t like freedom, then f--- off.”
That is the voice of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire. We can and will protect this country against these jihadist thugs. We will bug them and monitor them and arrest them and prosecute them and jail them. But if we are going to win the struggle for the minds of these young people, then that is the kind of voice we need to hear – and it needs above all to be a Muslim voice.'

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