Brussels, in early September 1994. I am 24 years old and a somewhat exotic dream in mind, or at least a little surrealist, like René Magritte’s paintings: living and exercising my profession as a journalist in Belgium, in Brussels. It’s far, but it’s near. It speaks French but not like with us, it speaks so Flemish, English, German.
This melting pot sharpens my curiosity. I want to see, I want to know. On this Monday morning, I disembark Gare du Midi, light smell of waffle on sugar on the quay, austere building located in Schaerbeek, one of the 19 municipalities – the equivalent of the Parisian districts – which form the Belgian capital.
I spend a head outside, it’s still summer but “It drache”as they say, and I am at least one kilometer from the apartment I have just rented. I take my courage in both hands and hardly advance sheltered under an old beige waterproof. Two routes are available to me. Two parallel streets, two parallel worlds, should I say.
Signs of tilting
The first runs along the train rails. Lighted windows of pink neon lights in which girls of small virtue, undoubtedly victims of sexual exploitation, try to bait the customer. The rue d’Aerschot deploys a theater of shadows and garish lights, gloomy atmosphere, high place of Brussels prostitution, the famous red district.
A few meters above, rue de Brabant. Another atmosphere, other customs: a succession of boutiques imprints of sacred and Islamic customs. Behind the windows, facialless mannequins decked out with long tunics, Abayas and Hijabs, but also pronounced prayer carpets and Koranic books. Am I really in Brussels? Exotic, I tell you.
At the end of the street, Place Liedts, crossed by an old yellow tram, flanked by Turkish cafes, barbershops, kebabs, Night Shops. Here I am in my new home, on the top floor of an old building, seen on the atomium in the distance, with its nine illuminated metal spheres, one of the most visited monuments of the Belgian capital. It was more than thirty years ago, and already the warning signs of a switch to an extraordinary Islamization.
Observers like journalist Jean-Pierre Martin, book co-author Allah has nothing to do in my class (2024), affirm: the process of Islamization of the public space visible to the naked eye has excited was much later, after the attacks of Paris, in 2015, and Brussels the following year. “We saw nothing coming, we were struck by these barbaric acts on the Parisian terraces, in the metro and at Zaventem airport. The authors largely came from Molenbeek, another Brussels commune, but we were in a moment of gathering, national unity against these atrocities. »»
These years of terror during which Belgium looked elsewhere in reality enabled the Islamic octopus to deploy its arms provided with suction cups to better hang and prosper. The result is there. In certain Brussels streets of Saint-Gilles, Anderlecht or Forest, most women are now veiled, says Jean-Pierre Martin. It is very rare now, according to him, to cross a young girl of Moroccan origin with the hair and her face discovered. And for good reason, the Islamists watch. Brussels has become clearly an incubator of Islamization in the heart of Europe.
The Jewish community shaves the walls
The union is strength, the motto of Belgium, is now scattered like a puzzle. The kingdom, more than ever weakened by its historic community divisions between French -speaking, Dutch -speaking and German -speaking, serves as a life -size experimentation for the bearded and radicalized beards. They take full advantage of the situation to impose themselves, weigh their full weight on unions, subsidized associations and traditional political parties, in particular the Socialist Party, and now by creating their own movement.
“More a weekend does not take place without an anti-Semitic event”
Under pressure from the Muslim Brothers, Brussels has no more regional government. For the past year, no majority is possible. Admittedly, the MR, a center -right reform movement, won the elections. But without coalition, no government. The MR has therefore just thrown in the towel, caught up on the fly by the PS, a heavyweight of Belgian politics in front of the Lord. Clientelists, extremists, openly propalent from the pogrom of October 7 in Israel.
In Brussels, plus a weekend does not take place without an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, supported demonstration without complex by the complete left. A “show” with the scent of death even took place recently in the street, retracing the killings of October 7, without much going.
The Jewish community, a few thousand people, accuses the blow, shaves the walls, victim of practically daily anti -Semitic acts, or when the worst hours in history remember the bad memories of the flat country. Jean-Pierre Martin affirms it, “It is a foul -smelling race that is committed to the left”. Who is the most radical positioning between the PS, the PTB (Belgian Labor Party, the equivalent of LFI), the ecologists?
And a new new one who invited himself and sows the Zizania in this already electrified corpus: Fouad Ahidar, ex-socialist who won three of the seventeen seats devoted to the Flemish minority in the Brussels Parliament during the elections. Whoever presents himself as openly frequistly prevents any coalition and does not hide his ambition: to apply Sharia law, the rigorous rules of Hassan El-Banna, the man who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, at the beginning of the last century.
He has just been inspired by a shock proposal: allow teachers of the public school and their students, including the youngest, to wear the Islamic veil. An idea that resonates in the Belgian capital while, according to the honorary senator Alain Destexhe, the future of the public school is sealed, the course of Muslim religion being by far the most acclaimed by the young generation, essentially of foreign origin. More than 60 % of Brussels residents are today extra-European, the vote of these people is now mainly on nationalist and religious criteria.
The excessive Islamization phenomenon is also found on the side of unions. Here again, the frequents penetrated the power stations, aware of their social and financial weight. In Belgium, the unions are seated on a golden heap, and they are the ones who manage unemployment insurance and its millions of euros. A huge means of pressure, a means of manipulation on the weakest, the unemployed or precarious workers often foreign or of foreign origin, a captive audience that falls out.
