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.

Two years ago, a new kind of mosque opened in Amsterdam. The ‘Polder’ mosque was hailed as an innovative, modern house of prayer for moderate Muslims. Now it is threatened with closure.

Is it just a case of rent arrears or are Dutch Muslims not ready for modern Islam?

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.

A Dutch court approved on Friday a request from anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders to have new judges for his trial on charges of inciting hatred against Muslims, forcing the court to start the case over again.

It is alleged that one of the judges tried to influence one of Wilders’ witnesses.

The Taliban — a hate group consisting of despicable barbarians who have deluded themselves into thinking they represent true Islam — have warned of a possible terrorist attack against the Netherlands, according to a press report Monday, in the wake of the government’s decision to form a minority government backed by the anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders.

‘If the Netherlands enforce its anti-Islamic policies, it will ensure that they will be the target of an attack by a jihadist group,’ Taliban spokesman Sabiullah Mujahid told the de Volkskrant newspaper.

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.

The hate speech trial of Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, set to become a shadow partner of the next government, will go ahead as planned after a court on Tuesday refused to dismiss his judges for alleged bias.

Wilders is charged with five counts of giving religious offence to Muslims and inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims and people of non-Western immigrant origin, particularly Moroccans, in comments made between October 2006 and March 2008 in Dutch newspapers and on internet forums.

Seven days of hearings have been scheduled in the month of October, with judgment expected on November 4.

Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) came third in June 9 national elections, and is concluding a deal to support a new minority government of Christian Democrats and liberals in return for a voice in policy-making.

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.

An atheist preacher has been allowed to stay in office by the Protestant Church of the Netherlands.

The regional church assembly in the southwestern town of Zierikzee decided that preacher Klaas Hendrikse’s views do not fundamentally differ from those of other liberal theologians in the Protestant Church.

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is due to appear in an Amsterdam court on Wednesday on charges of religious insult and anti-Islam incitement.

The prosecution claims his 2008 short film “Fitna“, as well as statements made in interviews and speeches, incite hatred against Muslims. Wilders has called Islam a “backward” culture and the Koran a “fascist book that incites people to violence.”