Muslim Dutch Mayor to Muslims: Accept Western Values or Leave

The Muslim mayor of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said this week that Europe has no place for extremists who are not willing to live within the bounds of its norms.

Speaking to CNN's Michael Holmes on Wednesday, the mayor, Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb suggested that those Muslims who don’t embrace values should leave Europe.

"You are not forced to be with us, it's a choice," he said. "Work with us together to construct a 'we society.'"

"But if you want to stand out of the 'we community,' you threaten us, you go to Yemen to learn how to use a Kalashnikov and to come back to threaten the society, well you are not part of my 'we society,' you better leave," added Aboutaleb.

Aboutaleb drew headlines around the world in the wake of last month's attack on the editorial staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, when he said, "if you don't like it here because you don't like that humorists who make a newspaper -- yeah, if I can say it like this, get lost!"

Aboutaleb, who moved to the Netherlands when he was 15, eventually working as a television journalist and then working his way up through the Dutch Labor Party, said he has the authority to speak on the subject. He rejected the notion that poverty leads to terrorism.

"I am one of the people who knows how it is to live in poverty. I spent fifteen years in Morocco of my life on one meal a day, walking without shoes, going to the Netherlands without a coat to protect myself," he told CNN.

"I cannot accept that poverty leads to terrorism," he added, saying that poverty must lead to knowledge and to better oneself.

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