CNA938 Rewind - A Letter to Myself: For Rotterdam's former mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, poetry is a light in darkness

Ahmed Aboutaleb migrated to the Netherlands when he was a teenager. It was a vastly different world from the poor Moroccan village in which he grew up. In 2009, he was the first immigrant to become mayor of a Dutch city. When he was co-awarded the World Mayor Prize in 2021, his citation described him as having “acted as a father of a very large family… with courage, patience, and humility”. Mr Aboutaleb, who is an outspoken opponent of extremist ideology, shares why he believes so firmly in multiculturalism and how poetry has been a source of solace and strength throughout his life journey — in particular during the most challenging periods of his career in public service. Mr Aboutaleb was in Singapore in late-June 2025 for the International Conference on Cohesive Societies.