Dutch Integration Minister Ella Vogelaar has ordered an investigation into claims that Saturday mosque schools are using corporal punishment, the centre-left daily Trouw reported on Thursday.The children are being indoctrinated to be anti-Western, according to an Amsterdam city councillor Ahmed Marcouch cited by Trouw.
Hundreds of children have lessons in the Koran and in Arabic in informal classes attached to mosques.
The integration of Muslims remains a concern for the Dutch government, particularly after a film-maker critical of Islam, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 by a radical Islamist.
Crime and unemployment levels among Muslim youths are also a source of tension. The Netherlands favours multi-culturalism or the equality of different ethnic and religious groups.
There are around one million Muslims in the Netherlands, approximately 5.8 percent of the population.
Many Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands are from North Africa, Turkey and Morocco.
Some Muslims arrived from the former Dutch colonies of Suriname and Indonesia in the 1950s.
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