Mohammed Rabbae

Mohamed Rabbae (Berrechid (Morocco), 8 March 1941) is a Dutch politician and activist of Moroccan descent.

Rabbae fled in 1966 as a student from Morocco to the Netherlands, when activists against the regime of King Hassan II were taken prisoner. In the Netherlands he finished his studies, carried out various activities and was involved in various actions for foreigners' rights, including the so-called 182 Moroccans church after asylum-seekers were threatened to be expelled by the then State Secretary of Justice Bert Haars () in the First Van Agt cabinet. In 1983 he was director of the Dutch Center Foreigners (NCB). At the 1994 Dutch general election, he became an MP for the political party GreenLeft. For the elections of that year he was one of the two top candidates, along with Ina Brouwer. During the campaign, in an interview with NRC Handelsblad, Rabbae expressed understanding for people who wanted the book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie banned. He said that "an attempt to have such a book banned with democratic means is better than following Khomeini and other forces of darkness". His party lost 1 of its 6 seats in those elections but gained 6 at the next ones, while Rabbae was still a candidate.

In 2002, Rabbae left parliament, and for some time he was an alderman in Leiden. On his first working day after a period of several months of absenteeism due to heart surgery, he resigned as an alderman. This was because of errors that had been made in his absence, but for which he took responsibility.

Rabbae is on the executive of several organizations, especially in the field of policies on ethnic minorities. In March 2008, he was co-organizer of a large public meeting on Dam Square in Amsterdam in the framework of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

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