Thanks for the links... they are certainly food for thought. Would it show cultural insensitivity on my part to try to win the immigrant population of Amsterdam Noord over to the cycling lifestyle?

One thing I have personally observed... the women who show up at the bicycle lessons are not really enthused about the cycling itself. It is more that they get a chance to hang out and mingle together outside their homes.

'Even after comprehensive training and instruction, cycling is for many of them an “uncanny,” “dangerous,” and also “weird” activity predominantly reserved for the ethnic Dutch'

Yup, that would explain a few things...

I used to think that, given the vast sums of money spent by the Dutch government .. tens of millions of euros each year!!... to encourage immigrant women to ride bikes, a more effective campaign might be to instead send teams of cyclists to rove around major cities in Holland, handing out 20 euro notes, to each woman seen riding along with a head scarf on...every single day.

I am also wondering how well an earn-a-bike program might go over in a youth population of Moroccans,... ' where the bicycle has a bad image and little status value..'

I'm thinking an earn-a-bike program might be a tough sell, unless it is marketed as job-training of sorts, for a future career of repairing scooters and cars. It is a sorry state of affairs, to those of us who came from a California-style bike culture. But it may be the social reality here.

"The latest controversy reported by the website Elaph.com "(29/12/207) is a sad illustration, verging on the ridiculous, as was the fatwa on" nursing major. "Indeed, the last discovery of a fatwa that forbids Muslim women to practice cycling, because according to the religion that spread, "straddle the saddle of the bicycle engender women as sexual arousal, and the bike becomes this point of view, a prohibited object. "