London mayor backs Rotterdam mayor on "fuck off" remark

By Zack Newmark on January 13, 2015 - 20:09
Aboutaleb
A series of images showing Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb's criticism of people who hate Dutch society but still live in it. (image: Riet Wartenbergh/Twitter; screenshots: Nieuwsuur). (A series of images showing Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb's criticism of people who hate Dutch society but still live in it. (image: Riet Wartenbergh/Twitter; screenshots: Nieuwsuur))

Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb ruffled feathers when he suggested that Muslims who "do not like it here because humorists you do not like make a newspaper, may I then say you can fuck off.” London mayor Boris Johnson was not amongst those offended.

"And my hero – the man who got straight to the point – was the Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, himself a Muslim," Johnson wrote in Sunday's Telegraph.

“It is incomprehensible that you can turn against freedom,” Aboutaleb said Wednesday during a broadcast of Nieuwsuur. “But if you do not like freedom, in Heaven’s name pack your bag and leave.”

“There may be a place in the world where you can be yourself,” he continued. “Be honest with yourself and do not go and kill innocent journalists.”

"That is the voice of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire. We can and will protect this country against these jihadist thugs," he continued.

"We will bug them and monitor them and arrest them and prosecute them and jail them. But if we are going to win the struggle for the minds of these young people, then that is the kind of voice we need to hear – and it needs above all to be a Muslim voice."

"Across France, Britain and the rest of Europe, there are Muslim voices saying what needs to be said, like the Association of British Muslims – which issued a dignified and sensible statement, in which it not only condemned the killings in the strongest possible terms, but defended the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish the cartoons," Johnson wrote.

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