Moroccan Family Seeks Acceptance By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 27, 2003; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16652-2003Nov26.html UTRECHT, Netherlands -- Fatima Yaakoub, 24 years old, born in Morocco, living in the Netherlands since she was 12, says she wants nothing more than to fit in. She works hard, cleaning offices in the early mornings, going to college during the day, taking English classes on weekends -- trying to get ahead, trying to do what is expected of a good citizen in her adopted homeland. But three years ago, she began wearing a head scarf, the sign of a devout Muslim woman, and got a rapid education on how much of an outsider she remains. Whenever she left her largely Muslim immigrant neighborhood, she discovered that the scarf, known in Arabic as a hijab, marked her as a subjugated Muslim woman, a foreigner, or buitenlander in Dutch. And since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the discovery of al Qaeda cells among Western Europe's 15 million Muslims, Yaakoub has found that the scarf raises suspicions among native Dutch that she is a terrorist, a threat. "They treat me like trash," Yaakoub said. In the pharmacy where she worked, some customers saw the scarf and said, "I want to be treated by a Dutch girl." Her co-workers were no better, she recalled, laughing at her hijab, calling her names. She recalls hiding alone most days in the bathroom to cry. She switched to another pharmacy, and then to another. But the abuse continued. She gave up studying to be a pharmacist, and switched to a course in administration -- a career, she said, that would require less contact with the public. Yaakoub's experience offers a glimpse into the conflict between Europe's historically Christian, increasingly secular societies and the large -- and often alienated -- Muslim populations. Many of the Muslims were invited here three decades ago as cheap temporary workers who would one day go home. But they stayed on and became an integral part of European society, making Islam the continent's second-largest religion. Today it is common to see a mosque near a medieval church; Arab restaurants and food stores abound on inner-city streets. Muslims represent the fastest growing-group in Europe, a boom fueled by high birth rates as much as immigration. But on average they remain far behind the traditional populations economically and socially. In France, North Africans often live in bleak housing developments where crime and rape are depressingly common. Here in the Netherlands, government statistics show that the percentage of low-income households is three times higher among immigrants than native Dutch. At the same time, some of Europe's Muslims have prospered and found a place in society, running for public office, intermarrying. But the more common existence is as a minority, separate and apart, as revealed by a look at one Muslim household in one town in the center of the Netherlands. One Family's Story The Yaakoub family consists of father, mother and eight children -- four boys and four girls. The older children have married and moved away. Remaining together are Fatima, her parents and three younger brothers, who live in a large, eight-room home in a working-class neighborhood of Utrecht. The sitting room is in traditional Moroccan style -- it is long, and sofas with triangular cushions covered in blue and gold line the walls. Verses from the Koran hang prominently on the wall in gold-colored frames. Beneath one verse is a Sony television, and atop the set the remote control sits next to a string of brown wooden prayer beads. The TV, connected to a satellite dish, is usually tuned to al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network that is the family's connection to the Arabic-speaking world. The patriarch is Mohand Yaakoub, 67. He passes the time tending fruit trees in his back yard, looked after by his wife, who like many traditional Muslim women stays out of sight when male visitors call. Mohand came to the Netherlands in 1957 after answering an ad in a newspaper in Morocco. "I thought, okay, I'll go to Holland for two or three years," he said, reaching up to stroke his white whiskers. "I came here as a young guy," he added, "and now I'm old." His was a typical story of those early immigrants. He put in long hours running plastics and metal equipment in a succession of factories that eventually numbered 14. In between, he got odd jobs repairing vacuum cleaners and washing machines. He never got a chance for formal education or even language classes; the Dutch he speaks was picked up in the factories. Still, he feels he was treated well in those days. "The people were so kind," he recalled of those early days. "There was only a little racism." He took money back to Morocco during vacations, but it was never enough for a family that continued to grow. "I only saw him for six weeks during his vacation," Fatima said. "For me, it was really hard. I needed his love. . . . We always needed money. We always needed food. And we had to wait for my father to send it." Eventually Mohand brought his family to the Netherlands under a unification program, as many Muslims did. His story was typical in another way: The back-breaking labor took a toll on his health, and he now has multiple ailments. His children's experience has been different. While Mohand came as an adult and viewed the Netherlands as a place to make money, Fatima arrived as an excited youngster knowing she would make her life here. She enrolled in public schools, learned the language and made Dutch friends. For many years, she recalled, "I was just like a Dutch girl, with the clothes, and my hair down." She graduated from high school and entered college, with her eye on becoming a pharmacist. But she had spent her first 12 years in an Islamic society, and some of its customs stayed with her. As she grew older, she began to feel uncomfortable with Dutch practices concerning men and women. "I always got the wrong attention," she recalled. Men often looked at her, or tried to talk to her, to compliment her on her appearance. Three years ago, during the holy month of Ramadan, Fatima said, "I went to a lot of mosques, and heard a lot of things." She heard that the head scarf is for protection of women against unwanted male attention. She heard that it denotes modesty and adherence to Islam. Many people in the Netherlands believe that Muslims like Fatima are forced to wear the head scarf by their families. In her case, she said, she was the one who decided. The scarf deflected male advances, but it also brought another, unwanted type of attention -- abuse, insults or just quiet looks that communicated suspicion. Sometimes at the pharmacy, where she was serving the equivalent of an internship, the workers would sit together during breaks. She recalled the conversations shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. "I'm a Muslim. I don't have a bomb under my head scarf," she told her colleagues. "I also don't endorse what those people did to the twin towers, because that is against Islam." But all they said was "Muslims this" and "Muslims that." At home at night, she talked to her father. "Try to hold on," he told his daughter. "And if they continue to treat you this way, you can take off your head scarf." But Fatima was stubborn. "I do this for my belief," she said. "I love Islam. Islam for me is everything. Allah for me is everything. I couldn't give it up." Besides, "even if I get rid of my hijab, I'm still Moroccan. They still see my black hair. They still see my brown eyes. So why bother?" she said. She eventually quit her pharmaceutical studies. Fatima said she worries about how life here is affecting her youngest brother, Ahmed, a high school student who also works odd jobs, such as in fast-food restaurants. Like many teenagers, he likes to go to clubs for dancing. But a young Moroccan in the Netherlands knows it is likely that he will be refused admission at the door. Sometimes they tell him it's too crowded. Once, they told him it was because of his haircut. "Of course, it's because I'm Moroccan," said Ahmed, a quiet, stocky youth. He said he likes to hang out with friends in the park. But he knows the police will tell a group of young Moroccan men to move along, or fine them for loitering. Sometimes he talks with girls in Internet chat rooms, has good conversations, "and then they find out you're Moroccan, and that's it." At the house, Ahmed recounted these stories in a matter-of-fact tone; facing discrimination is a fact of life for him. But Fatima is concerned. "He's really angry," she said, after he left the room to go off with a friend. "He's 18, and that's a difficult age. And he goes to discos and he can't get in, and he comes home and I can see the anger." Legal Conflicts While Europe is slowly moving away from its Christian roots, with church attendance in decline, many of its Muslims cling strongly to their faith and are asserting their right to live openly according to their religious beliefs. For governments that hold that religion and government must be separate, this can bring important policy challenges and accusations of favoritism. In France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population -- more than 5 million -- the government is considering a law that would ban students from wearing head scarves in schools, saying it threatens the foundation of the French secular state. There is no such law banning crosses or other Christian symbols. In Germany, with 3.5 million Muslims, a woman was refused a job as a teacher because she wore a head scarf. When she sued in court and won in September, most German states initiated legislation to ban head scarves from public schools. In Italy, a court stirred controversy in October by ruling in favor of a Muslim father who contended that a small-town school could not display a crucifix in class, a common practice for generations in Italian classrooms. At the same time, concern about crime in cities that have large Muslim populations has helped fuel the rise of anti-immigrant politicians, notably Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Pim Fortuyn here. Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002, and both his and Le Pen's parties lost national elections that year. But in both countries, left-wing governments that many citizens considered too soft on crime and immigration were replaced with right-of-center ones promising a tougher line. For many practicing Muslim families in Europe, like Fatima Yaakoub's, a parallel clash is the one within -- that is, how to maintain adherence to Islam while living in Europe's open societies. The challenge is particularly acute in the Netherlands, with its tradition of tolerance, whether it is prostitution or use of soft drugs. At the same time, head scarves have become common on the streets of some towns and cities; they are often seen next to bare midriffs or billboards openly using sexuality for advertising. The Netherlands is home to nearly a million Muslims, more than 5.7 percent of the total population, and Muslims now outnumber Calvinists. But the country remains sharply divided. People talk openly of "black schools" and "black zones," meaning schools and neighborhoods where nonwhites are in the majority. Said Brenda Hassell, a social worker who has frequent contact with Muslims in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Utrecht, "As much as we are called a multicultural city, we are living next to each other, and not with each other." Now Fatima Yaakoub has made another decision that will change her life; she has become engaged. "I thought, okay, I'm 24 -- I'll marry in about two or three years." She plans to marry a young man she met in Morocco, a Muslim, so they can have a family based on Islam. She had met a young Dutch man at school who was willing to convert to marry her, she said, but "if he wants to be a Muslim, he has to do it for himself." Now she is waiting for her fiance to arrive, which she hopes will happen before the end of this year. She feels most comfortable marrying someone from her homeland, yet at the same time, she is so far removed from Morocco that she would not feel comfortable living there. She feels neither Dutch nor Moroccan, but something in between. "Actually, I don't have an identity," she said. "Because when I'm in Morocco, people say, 'That's the girl who lives in Holland.' And here, I'm not a Dutch girl. So I don't have a place." "At the moment, I'm nothing," she said. "I'm only Fatima." |