Belgian
Breeding Ground Fuels New Terror Wave
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
November 23, 2015
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 Time was, thoughts
of Belgium led to thoughts of rich, dark chocolate, of Old Master painters
and delicate, handmade lace.
Now it brings a different image: of Islamic jihad and men armed with
Kalashnikovs, and of secret meetings of Muslim youth plotting a new attack
against the West. The country is in lockdown today, facing what authorities
believe is an "imminent attack." On Sunday, police raided 19
homes in and around Brussels, and made 16 arrests. Brussels continues to be
the focus of their action.
There is good reason for this. The Nov. 13 massacres in Paris, we've
since learned, were planned in the Brussels district of Molenbeek,
sometimes called "little Morocco" for its large Moroccan
immigrant population. The attack on Charlie Hebdo also was planned
there, along with the foiled attack on a Thalys high-speed train between
Brussels and Amsterdam. Mehdi Nemmouche, who killed four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum in May
2014, spent time there.
But it isn't only Molenbeek, and it isn't only recently. Belgium has
been a hotbed of radical Islam for more than a decade, breeding organizations
like Sharia4Belgium – one of the most influential "Sharia4"
groups globally – and the now-defunct Arab European League (AEL). The goal
of the AEL, founded by the Lebanese-Belgian Dyab Abou Jahjah in 2001, was
to form a "sharocracy" in which sharia and democracy ruled
together across the West. The organization was based in Antwerp, where
Jahjah and his friends also celebrated the attacks of 9/11 with laughter.
"We couldn't hold our joy," he recalled later in his
autobiography.
Other signs of radicalism, also connected to Jahjah, soon followed; in
2002, Jahjah helped orchestrate riots in Borgenhout, outside of Antwerp.
And in 2004, after establishing a Dutch arm of the AEL, he declared, "I consider every death of an
American, British, and Dutch soldier a victory."
Jahjah was hardly alone. By 2006, Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi,
herself a Muslim, discovered that books teaching Muslims to fight infidels
were being freely distributed by radical imams who preached jihad in local
mosques. Other books she found in Belgium included Guide For Muslims,
a Dutch publication that encourages Muslims to throw homosexuals from tall
buildings and to beat their wives. A Washington Post profile of Fraihi cited other books she found,
including some that "advised readers to learn to communicate in
symbols and secret code, and offered tips on how to do that."
But the largest influence on Belgian Muslims, and the source of much of
their extremism, was the creation of Sharia4Belgium in 2010. Thanks to that group, Belgium
boasts the largest number of Muslims per capita who have joined the Islamic
State and its jihad. According to the Wall Street Journal and others,
"dozens" of Sharia4Belgium members have made the pilgrimage to
Syria, and dozens more have been detained before they could make the trip.
Three of them, all women, were arrested in May 2014, around the time of the
Jewish Museum shooting. They were part of a larger group of 40 Belgians
planning to join the jihad, and most of them had Sharia4Belgium ties.
This should not have been surprising. By 2012, Belgium's security
service director Alain Winants determined that "radical Islam forms
the greatest threat" to the country. Salafism, he told Belgian daily de Morgen, is gaining
followers who have built up a parallel community with its own values, its
own banks, justice system, and educational program.
Sharia4Belgium's founder, Fouad Belkacem, was tried and convicted in
September 2014 for supporting terrorism, along with dozens of other
Sharia4Belgium members, some of whom are still on the Syrian battlefields.
But by then it was too late. The group, with its active Dutch- and
French-speaking recruiters in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and – most
of all – the Internet, had already infiltrated the minds of untold numbers
of other Belgian youth.
And still, no one seems to be watching.
This is due in part to limits of Belgium's intelligence facilities.
While German intelligence, for instance, is currently stretched to its
limits trying to track potential terrorists, Der Spiegel reports that Belgium's threat has
long since exceeded the its own intelligence capabilities.
Indeed, according to Dutch NOS TV, "the central counterterrorism
unit of the [Belgian] police department has only one employee tracking
radical [Islamic] activity on the Internet. And she only works part
time." The result, notes Der Spiegel, is that "many
Muslims who have become radicalized or received military training and may
even have been traumatized are returning home from Syria without anyone
checking on them whatsoever."
Moreover, Belgium's disorganized police system – with six authorities
for 19 districts in Brussels alone – coupled with a chaotic government and
the European capital's convenient location at the midway point between
Amsterdam and Paris –combine to help French and Dutch Islamists take refuge
there. Two of the Paris attackers, the French-born Bilal Hafdi and Brahim
Abdelslam, were among them.
As recently as last month, an exploratory committee determined that
Belgian police had failed to notice, let alone monitor, a "jihad
camp" set up by Kurdish PKK members and Sharia4Belgium in the
Ardennes.
But the truth is, the country's "capabilities" are only part
of the problem: political timidity and correctness carry a good share of
the blame. Suspicious behaviors are too often overlooked for fear of being
called "racist," Alain Winants told de Morgen in 2012.
That viewpoint has since been echoed in Belgian editorials since the Paris
attacks, with journalist Luckas Vander Taelen noting that Molenbeek's mayor had once called a
journalist "Islamophobic" for reporting on the radical Islamic
books being distributed there. "There are no problems here," the
mayor insisted at the time.
Since the Nov. 13 attacks, however, Belgium has rounded up dozens of
jihadists, with nine raids leading to nine arrests on Thursday
preceding Sunday's additional raids. The speed with which these terrorists
were located suggests that authorities were aware of them prior to the
events in Paris. So why weren't they captured earlier? Was it a matter of
incompetence? Or a kind of narcissistic concern over image, a fear, as
Winants suggests, of being seen as "racist?"
Hopefully, Belgium has now learned its lesson. The fight against terrorism
is not a popularity contest. It's a contest we fight for our lives.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands.
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, Paris
attacks, Molenbeek,
Belgium,
radicalization,
Mehdi
Nemmouche, Sharia4Belgium,
Dyab
Abou Jahjah, Hind
Fraihi, Guide
for Muslims, Alain
Winants, Bilal
Hafdi, Brahim
Abdelslam, Luckas
Vander Taelen
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