Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb faces questioning by city councillors on Thursday evening over comments he made about Salafism during the winter break, according to the Volkskrant.
Aboutaleb told a radio programme that every Muslim is a ‘bit of a Salafist’, and that he could be seen as a jihadi, stating, when questioned, that he was referring to the words in their broadest definition.
Salafism is considered to be an conservative or pure strand within Sunni Islam and has come to be associated with extremist violence. Aboutaleb, however, told the programme that to him Salafism is about attempting to live in the same pious way as the prophet Mohammed.