AMSTERDAM: Hundreds of Dutch citizens met at an Amsterdam mosque Sunday to show solidarity with the country’s Muslim population, as an anti-Islam lawmaker vowed to shut down mosques and ban the Holy Qur’an should he win upcoming elections.
Some 200 citizens and organizers representing a broad coalition against racism in The Netherlands gathered at the central Al-Kabir Mosque, saying they were deeply worried about the rise of discrimination against Muslims in the European country.
“It’s very important that we make our voice heard. We as a Muslim community pose no danger whatsoever to society,” said Najem Ouladali, one of the organizers of the meeting.
“In fact, we are victims too of... extremism,” added another speaker, Abdou Menebhi, who chairs a Moroccan organization in The Netherlands.
Various estimates put The Netherlands’ Muslim population between 840,000 to 960,000 people, or around 5.0 percent out of a population of some 17 million people. Most Muslims are from Turkish or Moroccan descent, according to the Dutch central statistics office.
Talk during the meeting, which was paused for afternoon prayers, constantly returned to Dutch firebrand far-right MP Geert Wilders, who is campaigning ahead of elections on an anti-Islam ticket.
The 53-year-old Wilders has courted controversy with his anti-immigrant stance and his incendiary insults against Moroccans and Turks.
He has vowed in his party’s one-page manifesto that if elected he would close mosques and Islamic schools, shut Dutch borders and ban Muslim migrants.
Support, however, for Wilders and his extreme stance seems to have withered in recent days, according to the latest polls.
“We believe that what Wilders is doing is very dangerous to our society,” Ouladali told AFP after the mosque meeting, speaking in Dutch.
Ineke van der Valk, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, told the meeting incidents of hate crimes against Muslims were on the rise in The Netherlands.
Since 2015 incidents involving discrimination have almost doubled and there were at least 54 incidents involving mosques — like threatening letters displaying Nazi symbols, she said.
“There has been a worrisome rise in this kind of activity in our country,” Van der Valk said.
Meanwhile, earlier across the Dutch capital, the firebrand Wilders again vowed to close mosques, should he become prime minister after the vote.
Just 10 days before elections Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) appears to have slipped into second place behind the Liberal party of incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte after months of leading the opinion polls.
“I am confident we will all have excellent results,” Wilders told a gaggle of mainly foreign journalists, referring also to France’s far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen.
Dutch vow solidarity with Muslims against populist leader
Dutch vow solidarity with Muslims against populist leader
Tug of war: how US presidents battle Congress for military powers
- The last official declaration of war by Congress was as far back as World War II
WASHINGTON, United States: Donald Trump’s unleashing of operation “Epic Fury” against Iran has once more underscored the long and bitter struggle between US presidents and Congress over who has the power to decide on foreign military action.
In his video address announcing “major combat” with the Islamic republic, Trump didn’t once mention any authorization or consultation with the US House of Representatives or Senate.
In doing so he sidelined not only Democrats, who called for an urgent war powers vote, but also his own Republican party as he asserts his dominance over a largely cowed legislature.
A US official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had called top congressional leaders known as the “Gang of Eight” to give them a heads up on the Iran attack — adding that one was unreachable.
Rubio also “laid out the situation” and consulted with the same leaders on Tuesday in an hour-long briefing, the US official said.
According to the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
But at the same time the founding document of the United States first signed in 1787 says that the president is the “commander in chief” of the military, a definition that US leaders have in recent years taken very broadly.
The last official declaration of war by Congress was as far back as World War II.
There was no such proclamation during the unpopular Vietnam War, and it was then that Congress sought to reassert its powers.
In 1973 it adopted the War Powers Resolution, passed over Richard Nixon’s veto, to become the only lasting limit on unilateral presidential military action abroad.
The act allows the president to carry out a limited military intervention to respond to an urgent situation created by an attack against the United States.
In his video address on Saturday, Trump evoked an “imminent” threat to justify strikes against Iran.
- Sixty days -
Yet under this law, the president must still inform Congress within 48 hours.
It also says that if the president deploys US troops for a military action for more than 60 days, the head of state must then obtain the authorization of Congress for continued action.
That falls short of an official declaration of war.
The US Congress notably authorized the use of force in such a way after the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda. Presidents have used it over the past two decades for not only the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan but a series of operations in several countries linked to the “War on Terror.”
Trump is far from the first US president to launch military operations without going through Congress.
Democrat Bill Clinton launched US air strikes against Kosovo in 1999 as part of a NATO campaign, despite the lack of a green light from skeptical lawmakers.
Barack Obama did the same for airstrikes in Libya in 2011.
Trump followed their example in his first term in 2018 when he launched airstrikes in Syria along with Britain and France.
But since his return to power the 79-year-old has sought to push presidential power to its limits, and that includes in the military sphere.
Trump has ordered strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America without consulting Congress, and in June 2025 struck Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Perhaps the most controversial act was when he ordered the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in a lightning military raid on January 3.
Republicans however managed to knock down moves by Democrats for a rare war powers resolution that would have curbed his authority over Venezuela operations.
Trump has meanwhile sought to extend his powers over the home front. Democrats have slammed the Republican for deploying the National Guard in several US cities in what he calls a crackdown on crime and immigration.
