Although Islamophobia is growing all over Europe, it surprises many to know that a leading voice of European Islamophobia actually hails from Holland, a place renowned for its tolerance, art, and scholarship. In the seventeenth century, Andalusian Muslim scholar Ahmed ibn Qasim Al-Hajari described lengthy discussions on religion with pluralistic Dutch scholars in Amsterdam. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, The Netherlands was home to both Jews and Muslims, and was described as a place of "unlimited freedoms to all sorts of religions" in a Europe still finding its identity. … Yet today, one of the most high-profile politicians in the country is an anti-Muslim zealot named Geert Wilders.

XREF: Connects to broader histories of European religious tolerance versus present-day anti-Muslim sentiment, and to Geert Wilders' political rise.

XREF: Contrasts directly with the historical portrait of the Dutch Golden Age as a pluralistic haven for Jews and Muslims.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 517