Outgoing mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb no longer stands by a statement he made last week shortly after the fatal stabbing at the Erasmus Bridge. The perpetrator allegedly shouted ‘Allahoe akbar’. “I shout Allahoe akbar dozens of times a day,” Aboutaleb told Omroep Rijnmond, shortly after the incident.
“I don’t regret the verdict, but I shouldn’t have said it. Because it wasn’t relevant,” he said Tuesday night in a television interview with Eva Jinek on NPO1. Aboutaleb said he knew that the suspect had a history of mental health problems.
But “at that moment I don’t care if it’s a terrorist, the judge decides that,” says the mayor. The incident happened last Thursday. Incidentally, Aboutaleb immediately condemned the act in strong words in the same interview with Omroep Rijnmond.
Nevertheless, Leefbaar Rotterdam wants to debate with Aboutaleb. That will happen on Thursday. The three parties that want to debate with the mayor speak of a terrorist attack. The Public Prosecution Service is still investigating whether the suspect, a 22-year-old man from Amersfoort who was already known to the police and the judiciary, had a terrorist motive.
‘It just wasn’t convenient’
Rotterdam-Rijnmond Ombudsman Marianne van den Anker knows Aboutaleb well. According to her, ‘Allahoe akbar’ (God is great) is not an everyday remark for many Dutch people. “Certainly because of the association we have with terrorist attacks, which often have an extremist Muslim edge to them, it was simply not smart,” she says about the ruling in Goedemorgen Nederland on NPO 1.
“I think it’s really good that he’s now said: I shouldn’t have said it,” says the ombudsman, who understands why Aboutaleb said it. “I don’t think it was stupid. I think what he said yesterday at Eva’s is right. I think he already had a bit more information about the background of this person.”
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“The press had only reported that he shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ while stabbing. The authorities already knew that it was much more likely to be a confused man with a psychiatric illness. But it was really not helpful that he said: I say ‘Allahu akbar’ all day, as if you were saying ‘we’re calling’.”
Van den Anker is full of praise for Mayor Aboutaleb. She hopes that after Thursday’s debate, the air will be cleared. “He doesn’t deserve to have this stain on his long period of dedication to the city.”
‘Don’t become oversensitive’
Brigadier General Han Bouwmeester believes that we should not react too tensely. “We should not become oversensitive and go too far. If these kinds of statements are made, we should not jump on them immediately and call everything terrorism. That would be wrong.”
Defense works together with the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security to protect the Netherlands from terrorism. Bouwmeester believes that we need to get “an accurate picture” of the threat. “We know that in the faith Muslims call upon the almighty with ‘Allahu akbar’, just as Christians curse when they do something wrong.”
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‘Allahoe akbar’ therefore does not come across as “very strong” to Bouwmeester. “When this is shouted, we as Westerners always immediately equate it with a terrorist attack. We make it a sensitive statement,” he says. “But if Aboutaleb distances himself from it because he concludes that it is politically sensitive, then I think that is very strong.”
Also read:
Aboutaleb starts his last week: ‘He is a man who has difficulty with criticism’
By: Peter Visser
