People wearing burqas, balaclavas or all-in-one motorbike helmets in public in the Netherlands will soon face fines. On Friday, government ministers voted to outlaw all clothing which covers the face.

“People must be able to look each other in the face and be recognisable to one another. The wearing of face-covering clothing does not fit in with the Netherlands’ open society, in which participation in social traffic is actually crucial,” the cabinet said Friday.

The Dutch government said it will appoint a commission to study new tightened rules for ritual slaughter to satisfy animal rights activists without infringing on  Jewish and Muslim traditions.

Before voting in January, the Senate will review a compromise offer by Henk Bleker, state secretary for agriculture.

A Christian civil servant has been fired by the Dutch city of The Hague for refusing to oversee same-sex marriages on Biblical grounds.

Wim Pijl, 67, said Tuesday, November 15, he would take legal action against the dismissal despite parliamentary support for gay weddings.

Holland is to become the latest European country to ban the burka, despite the fact that fewer than 100 Dutch women are thought to wear the face-covering Islamic dress.

A ‘burqa ban’ formed part of the minority Dutch government’s programme agreed with the populist Freedom Party (PVV) on whose parliamentary support the cabinet relies.

A court in Amsterdam has acquitted MP Geert Wilders of charges of inciting hatred and insulting Muslims as a group.

The charges had been brought by individuals who felt they had been discriminated against by the anti-Islam nationalist MP.

Retired Dutch politician Frits Bolkestein says the poor quality of Muslim-operated Islamic schools in the Netherlands distance Muslims further from Dutch society.

He fears this may result in ethnic segregation, creating areas in the Netherlands where Shariah is the rule of law.

Bolkestein warns against Islamic schools “where boys and girls are segregated, where Holocaust history is not taught, where anti-Semitism is not combated, and where the curriculum militates against the emancipation of women.”

The northern Dutch province of Friesland has the highest density of churches in Europe. But the number of worshippers is falling, and this is creating financial problems for the churches.

As a result, 100 of the province’s 700 churches are going to have to close.

Prosecutors in the hate speech case against Dutch politician Geert Wilders on Tuesday requested the court drop charges of insulting Muslims from the list of crimes being considered.

Although prosecutors would continue pushing for a conviction on charges of discrimination and inciting hatred against Muslims, they said incendiary statements Wilders had made about the Koran and Islam could not be construed as a direct insult to people of the Muslim faith.

Dutch anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders, who plays a controversial but pivotal role in the formation of a new Dutch government, went on trial on Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims.

Wilders is charged with inciting hate and discrimination against Muslims in comments he made in the media and for insulting Muslims by comparing the Islamic faith to Nazism.

A ‘psychic’ Singapore parakeet which correctly predicted all four winners in the World Cup quarter-finals has picked the Netherlands to trump Spain for the championship, local media said Friday.

Local media reports said Mani used its beak to pick a card bearing the flag of the Netherlands over one with Spain’s national colours.

May it be so, said the Amsterdam-based publishers of Religion News Blog.

bomb threats against several stores in south-east Amsterdam today were of a terroristic nature, police has announced.

7 people of Dutch nationality with a Moroccan background have been arrested for questioning.

Several of the people arrested have previously been involved in violent crimes. One of those arrested has a relationship with a person who was involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombing — which was carried out by Islamic terrorists.

At last an official message to Muslim immigrants: if you want to live here, you must integrate.

If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was exceptional.

The paper said: “The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance.”

Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of “loss and estrangement” felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Calls from countries with a largely Muslim population to ban Geert Wilders film Fitna have fallen on deaf ears in the Netherlands, where freedom of expression is seen as an unassailable right.

Media Minister Ronald Plasterk sees no possibilities nor desire for banning public broadcasters BNN and VPRO from showing the explicit porn film Deep Throat. Christian government party ChristenUnie appears to be accepting this decision.

A stale old porn movie is at the centre of a political row involving Dutch public television. Public broadcasting corporations VPRO and BNN are planning to screen Deep Throat, a 1972 vintage production, as part of a themed night on the history of pornographic films.