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Around 150 Muslims, mostly European converts to Islam, with their families are meeting in a farm turned to a camping site in southern Holland to listen to Muslim speakers from around the world.

Jacob van Blom, chairman of the Dutch organization Ondekt Islam (Rediscover Islam), told KUNA that the summer camp which started on Saturday and ends today, Wednesday, is an annual event organized by the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Holland for the past 15 years, but Ondekt has joined for the first time in organizing it.

“This time the forum is focused on Youth and New Muslims,” said Van Blom, who converted to Islam 11 years ago.

Muslims from several European countries such as Norway, Romania, Greece, Holland, Germany and Sweden are meeting here to get to know each other, to socialize and to understand Islam better.

Van Blom said that last March he went to Kuwait with a group of European Muslims to attend a two-week training course on Islam. Many of the attendees who went to Kuwait are in this camp, he said.

“We were invited to explain about Islam. Being a Muslim does not mean you become an Arab or an Asian but you stay Muslim and focus on Islam,” he noted.

“Kuwait is a very good country … There you see a very good example for Western people to see; you have a good developed country, where people have a good living standard and they have full Islam,” he stressed.

“You will see the masjid (mosque) and the shopping malls. So this will create a good idea for the new Muslims in Europe that they understand Islam is also modern,” said the Dutch Muslim activist.

“Sometimes people get mixed up when they become Muslims. They think they have to go back 1400 years in time. But there it shows that Islam and modernity can go side by side,” he added.

Jamal Nasser Al-Shatti, Deputy General Manager of the Dawah Sector of Kuwait’s Islam Presentation Committee (IPC) told KUNA that his organization held a conference for European Muslims in March in Kuwait on how to be good Muslims in Europe.

“You should be positive to your country, not to be negative to your country. You should not cut yourself off from your society. You have to be positive towards your nation to your community,” said Al-Shatti.

He noted that this youth camp in Holland is a continuation of the meeting in Kuwait to present Islam in a positive way and remove misunderstandings about Islam.

The IPC is planning to hold another conference for European Muslims in Kuwait in November.

He clarified that the IPC has four goals; one is to present Islam to Muslims with wisdom and good way, the second is to take care of New Muslims, the third is to take care of non-Arab Muslims who live in Kuwait, and the fourth is to teach Arabic to non-speaker Muslims in Kuwait.

Among the speakers who addressed the camp were Sheikh Hussain Yee of Malaysia, Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick of Canada, and others.

An estimated one million of the 17 million population in the Netherlands is Muslim.

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