a story of patriotism...

[Kissaki]

Originally Posted by DarkFish

It will affect my identity as a Dutchman because it changes our culture. It brings large, instantly recognizable aspects of a foreign culture into ours.
Many mosques with no minarets or calls to prayer would hardly matter. One mosque with minarets and calls to prayer would hardly matter. In both cases it doesn't influence the Dutch culture significantly.
But when you build many mosques with minarets and calls to prayer, you are bringing Arabic influences into our culture on a large scale.
Thus changing the Dutch culture.
Thus changing my identity as a Dutchman.

How? If it doesn't make you Muslim, how does it affect your identity?

That kebab shops are not very detrimental to our culture is simply because the foreign cultural influences remain relatively contained inside the kebab stands. Whenever I enter a kebab shop, a Chinese restaurant or an Italian pizza shack, I immediately notice the foreign cultures. I smell the food. I see foreign ornaments and decorations. I hear the Turkish, Chinese or Italian music. But the moment I set one step out the door, I'm back in the Netherlands again.

Yet on the outside you can still see the shops and smell the food. It's not like you only notice the foreign element once you go inside. And why should that even matter? What you define as "Dutch", how "Dutch" would that be to Dutchmen 100 years ago? And someone immigrating to the Netherlands, and whose children become Dutch citizens, are they not allowed to decide on what is "Dutch" every bit as much as you?

Minarets and calls to prayer however are easily visible/audible from well outside the enclosed environment of the Mosque.

I really don't see the problem with that.

And also these differences in churches around Europe are a sign of differencing cultures. Our Dutch churches look very different from e.g. Breton churches (just picking a region I've regularly visited) or Norwegian churches (Urnes stave church, wooow! Definitely on my list of places I want to visit in my life)

And that's exactly what I am saying: there are Dutch churches, so why not Dutch minarets? Christianity was just as alien to that region once as Islam is today.

I don't know if the Moorish influences are a good thing. I know too little of the historical Spanish and Moorish culture and especially about the differences between the two to say anything useful about it.
And besides, it would be just a matter of opinion anyway.

Fact is that the Spanish culture is already "contaminated" by the muslims (Moors) while the Dutch culture hasn't been yet.
Also, Moorish influence in Spain is quite logical. They were neighbouring people, there are always mutual influences in those cases.

Why "contaminated"? Tomorrow's generation of Dutchmen may be accustomed to minarets, seeing them as being just as Dutch as church towers. Why would that be a bad thing?

There's nothing anti-Dutch about mosques in itself.
The thing I find anti-Dutch are the minarets and calls to prayer, because they change the Dutch culture, and thus are automatically "anti".

Again I have to ask, how?