The Dutch chapter of PEGIDA recently organized a demonstration in front of the Ulu Mosque in Utrecht. As usual, the counter-demonstrators from the Muslim community considerably outnumbered the “Islamophobes”, and were willing to escalate to violence. The mayor of Utrecht got cold feet, and forced PEGIDA to cancel the demo before events got out of hand.

The two videos below show portions of the evening’s action in front of the Ulu Mosque. The second was recorded from the Muslim side of the counter-demonstration.

Many thanks to C for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling.

Video #1:

Video #2:

Video transcript #1:

00:00 The anti-Islam movement Pegida insists on showing anti-Islam imagery 00:06 on the square in front of the Ulu mosque in Utrecht. 00:09 Pegida says this on Facebook after the rally escalated yesterday. 00:14 Around 15 Pegida protesters stood on the square in front of the mosque 00:17 in Lombok [neighborhood], around 8 PM the peace was disturbed. 00:20 They were pelted with eggs, fruit and cans of beer. 00:24 We’re just going to request a permit for another protest. Look, I’m always told 00:28 we’re under the rule of law, but I beg to differ. 00:31 Especially after what I’ve seen today, and what happened to me before in court, 00:34 here in the Netherlands. We’ll simply go on! I want to make my point, even if I have to request 00:39 10 permits! Or [mayor] van Zanen has to say: 00:42 “No. We have a no-go zone, we have a problem with Muslims in this area.” 00:46 Just say so. Then we’ll all know. —Police intervened yesterday evening, 00:50 and also mayor van Zanen. He cancelled the protest. 00:53 The city council says Pegida started their video even though police had asked them to wait. 00:59 The head of the Ulu Mosque addressed the crowd and tried to calm them down. 01:03 Let us please not do anything today! 01:07 Yes, I told them: guys, let’s not give them what they want, because there’s ten of them here. 01:13 and all they want to do is provoke, and make sure youths do wrong things 01:21 when they get emotional, which I understand. So they can say, “You see, we wanted to protest there… 01:27 and we weren’t allowed, because youth were out of control. They threw things 01:31 at our heads”. And I don’t want them to get what they’re after. 01:35 Nobody was arrested yesterday. Pegida wants to organize 01:38 another protest, but has not requested a permit yet.



Video transcript #2: