Berlin, Oct 17, IRNA,A Moroccan-born politician has been elected the first-ever Muslim mayor of a Dutch city, news reports said Friday.
Rotterdam’s City Council voted on Thursday for the 47 year-old Ahmed Aboutaleb who is presently the Dutch deputy social affairs minister and member of the Labour party.
The Dutch Interior Ministry has yet to approve Aboutaleb’s nomination but is expected to give green light to it.
Aboutaleb who is due to assume his mayoral post in Rotterdam on January 1, 2009, was born in Morocco and moved to the Netherlands at the age of 14.
Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands and has 582,000 inhabitants of which there is sizable migrant community.
The total Dutch population hovers around 16.5 million of which 950,00 are Muslims.
Anti-Muslim sentiments have run high in the Netherlands in recent years as a result of a series of Islamophobic remarks by a number of Dutch politicians and so-called “intellectuals.”