Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

Belgian radicals: Bring me your unschooled, your jobless

  • Turkish/Moroccan district in Brussels, which hosts more than 160,000 Muslims (Photo: William Murphy)

Islamic State (IS) recruiters are targeting young and jobless Muslims in Brussels, the director of the city’s biggest mosque has said.

“Some of them are here recruiting young people. They give them wrong information about what they’ll find there [in Syria] and they’re trying to send them to hell. When they go there, they find out the truth by themselves,” Jamal Saleh Momenah, the director of the Parc du Cinquantenaire mosque, the largest in the Belgian capital, told EUobserver.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

“If people had jobs and opportunities here, they wouldn’t go [to Syria], believe me,” he added.

Momenah spoke to EUobserver before the Paris attacks and before the Brussels terrorist alert.

But his words shed light on a long-standing issue.

He said recruiters are approaching “young people who have no experience of life.”

He also said lack of jobs makes them more vulnerable.

“Free time isn’t good for the young. They need to be engaged, whether that's working in a factory, or for a company, or they have to be in school. There’s a saying in Arabic: 'If you have youth and free time, you will do something bad.’ With free time, you begin to think about bad things, whether that's sex, or money, or other bad things.”

Momenah, who came to Belgium from Saudi Arabia three years ago, said things were better before the economic crisis.

“The older generation [of Belgian Muslims] is more lucky than this generation. When they came, everything was available. They found good opportunities here. But for the new generation, it's difficult to find a job, to get good healthcare. It’s because of the economic situation in Europe. Now, nothing is like it was. Everything’s changed in Europe.”

Abdelkader Dahmihi, who works in the mosque’s Islamic and Cultural Centre, echoed the director.

He told EUobserver the centre has helped convince about 400 Belgian Muslims not to go to Syria.

“I’ve spoken to some young men who went there and came back. They were bitterly disappointed. They said it’s nothing like what the recruiters promised,” Dahmihi noted.

For its part, the US Department of Homeland Security said, already in February, that individual districts in and around the Belgian capital - Molenbeek, Laeken, and Vilvoorde - have the world’s highest per capita numbers of IS recruits.

Brussels is home to about 1 million people.

According to its last census, in 2001, it hosts 126,000 Moroccans and 36,000 Turks, who first arrived as economic migrants in the 1960s and 1970s.

The main concentrations of Moroccans are in the districts of Anderlecht, Brussels centre, Laeken, Molenbeek, Schaerbeek, and St Gilles, while Turks cluster in the St Josse and Schaerbeek areas.

According to 2012 figures, the highest levels of youth unemployment (over 40% in parts of Molenbeek) overlap directly with the Moroccan and Turkish quarters.

Rif culture

A Belgian security contact, however, said that culture, as well as economics, is a factor.

The contact, also speaking before the Paris attacks, told this website that the Turkish community in Brussels is “closed” to IS recruitment.

But he said that young men who originate from the Rif region in north Morocco are more prone to radicalisation.

He said the Rif community is marked by low levels of education, a “more tribal, more aggressive culture,” and lawlessness linked to hashish smuggling.

“Some entire streets in Laeken [the Brussels district] have decamped to Syria,” the security contact noted.

“People talk a lot about Internet radicalisation. But the real problem is penetration by networks of individual recruiters, in mosques and in Islamic bookshops,” he added.

“It’s not like Laeken has better Internet connections than St Gilles.”

The role of Saudi Arabia and of mosques in the propagation of Wahhabism, a hardline form of Islam, in Belgium has also been highlighted since the Paris attacks, but the Parc du Cinquantenaire's Momenah said: “Nobody like this [an IS recuiter] can come here. I wouldn’t allow them to come to this place and they understand my way.”

Asked about Moroccans from Rif, he replied: “If you’re educated, you understand. You recognise whether the recruiter is telling the truth or giving you false information. Most of them [IS recruits] aren’t well educated.”

Police methods

The Belgian security contact said Brussels’ police is a relatively positive factor.

He said relations between police and Muslim communities are good, with incidents almost never ending violently despite the wide availability of illegal firearms.

“Everybody in Brussels has weapons. People easily buy and sell pistols and machine guns,” he said.

He noted that police lack knowledge of Muslim quarters, however. He also said some Flemish-speaking police use “harsh” methods, which cause tension.

“Many Brussels police come from provinces that don’t have Muslim districts, while Moroccan and Turkish police prefer to work in other districts to avoid conflict,” he said.

Momenah praised Belgian security services.

“I’ve had many contacts with the police … They speak in a very polite way, a very respectful way, and this is what we need,” the mosque director said.

He said Belgian Muslims more broadly, including people from Albania, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia, “are happy to live in this country. They feel at home. They don’t feel like foreign people.”

“In Brussels, especially, it’s very open. They have good relationships, also with Belgian families, and this makes me happy,” he said.

“When I first came to Brussels I didn’t think I’d feel comfortable. But ever since I’ve lived here, I feel that it’s different to any other European country. I was in London. I was in France. But here, I feel like I’m home. I feel like in Saudi Arabia.”

Feature

Mechelen: the Belgian city with no foreign fighters

The picturesque, multicultural city north of Brussels believes it has the right policy mix to prevent Islamist extremism. It wants the rest of Belgium to follow its example.

Few, but fanatics: The Kosovo women who join IS

In a generational shift in Kosovo, a largely secular and pro-Western society, Islamic radicalisation is making inroads. And it’s not just young men who join Islamic State.

Opinion

Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers

The UN could launch an independent international investigation into Navalny's killing, akin to investigation I conducted on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, or on Navalny's Novichok poisoning, in my role as special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, writes the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

Opinion

I'll be honest — Moldova's judicial system isn't fit for EU

To state a plain truth: at present, Moldova does not have a justice system worthy of a EU member state; it is riven with corruption and lax and inconsistent standards, despite previous attempts at reform, writes Moldova's former justice minister.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us