The author discusses the way in which Islam has been cast as a political problem in Belgium and how Muslims have, particularly in Flanders, become framed by politicians and commentators in the media as a threat. The actual socioeconomic difficulties that Muslims (particularly those of Turkish and Moroccan descent) face are being redrawn as problems stemming from their culture and religion. State agencies are trying to shape the political organisation that will represent Belgian Muslims, as the issue of Islam is increasingly debated in terms of the ‘clash of civilisations’, and secularism and the Enlightenment are linked in public debate with a Christian Europe.
As a law already exists that makes it compulsory to be ‘recognisable’ in public spaces, the police thought it wise to caution the pencil man.
2.
Slavoj Zizek , ‘Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism’, New Left Review (no. 225), pp. 28-51, esp. p. 29.
3.
Benno Barnard , Johan Sanctorum and Wim van Rooy, ‘Zomaar een lapje stof? De hoofddoek als wapen tegen de moderniteit’, De Standaard(10 September 2009).
4.
Liz Fekete , ‘Anti-Muslim racism and the European security state’, Race & Class (Vol. 46, no. 1, 2004), pp. 3-29; also Fekete, ‘The emergence of xeno-racism’, Race & Class(Vol. 43, no. 2, 2001), pp. 23-40.
5.
To be complete, I should add that the transformation of the Belgian welfare state is synchronic with the rising success of nationalism in Flanders (whether in its party political or public form). In this article, I will not focus specifically on the differences between Flanders and Wallonia on the issue of Islam.
6.
There are no official figures on the exact number of Muslims in Belgium because a person’s religion cannot officially be registered. Based on approximate figures from the Belgian National Institute for Statistics (Nationaal Instituut voor Statistiek) and the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen), the number of Muslims is estimated at 416,000, equivalent to 4 per cent of the Belgian population. The biggest group of Muslims (roughly 200,000 people) is of Moroccan origin, followed by around 100,000 Muslims of Turkish origin. The remaining 100,000 originate from countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, Tunisia, the Balkans, and so on, but also includes converts. In addition to this ‘ethnic’ division, there is also a degree of religious diversity reflecting the different Islamic law schools (‘Madhabs’), Sufi brotherhoods and sects. There are also a large number of Muslims who practise very little, if at all, and who define themselves as ‘cultural Muslims’. Roughly 40 per cent of the Muslims in Belgium live in the Brussels agglomeration (16.5 per cent of the population of the capital). The remaining 60 per cent are distributed throughout Wallonia and Flanders. The 162,000 Muslims in Flanders represent 3 per cent of the Flemish population, the same percentage as the 94,000 Muslims living in Wallonia. The Maghrebi community tends to live in French-speaking Belgium, with almost half of them (47 per cent) living in the Brussels agglomeration. Fifty per cent of Turkish immigrants live in Flanders (the province of Limburg and the cities of Antwerp and Ghent), while the other half are evenly distributed between Wallonia and Brussels.
7.
From this follows the proposition that the framing of Islam as a threat to the European separation of church and state serves to ground such an identity for Europe. As such, this discourse obscures more than it reveals, as it is the vehicle with which to construct specific ideological representations depending on political preferences (Judaeo-Christian Europe, Catholic Europe, secular Europe, and so on).
8.
This does not mean that the two public debates are completely separated. Links, dialogues and overlap exist, but, by and large, the issues of immigration, asylum, integration and Islam are couched in different terms on both sides of the linguistic barrier. In fact, since the Belgian institutional crisis of 2007, culminating today in the inability to form a national government, the issues of migration, integration and asylum constitute a clear fault line between the two linguistic communities.
9.
Koninklijk Commissariaat voor het Migrantenbeleid, Integratie(beleid): een werk van lange adem (KCM/Inbel, Brussels, 1998).
10.
The concept of integration comes from biology. It refers to the process of dissolving (for example, sugar in coffee). Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren were the first to analyse the internal incoherence of integration policies in their seminal volume Het Belgische migrantendebat. De pragmatiek van de abnormalisering (The Belgian debate on migrants: the pragmatics of abnormalisation (Antwerpen, International Pragmatics Association, 1992)).
11.
Societal orientation encompassed classes on how to behave in the streets, how to look for traffic signs, where to buy garbage bags and how to use them, what administrations dealt with questions of nationality or unemployment, and so on.
12.
‘Decreet inzake het Vlaamse beleid ten aanzien van etnisch-culturele minderheden’ (28 April 1998).
13.
For a more in-depth analysis of the shift from integration to inburgeringfrom a discourse analysis perspective, see Ico Maly, Cultu(u)renpolitiek (Antwerpen, Garant, 2007).
14.
In an interview with Gazet van Antwerpen, the original Dutch reads: ‘De dwingende uitnodiging aan iedereen die in onze Samenleving wettelijk verblijft en er zijn toekomst wil uitbouwen om actief deel te nemen aan de samenleving, de taal te leren, de basiswaarden ervan te kennen en na te leven en zo snel mogelijk op eigen benen te kunnen staan’ (10 December 2005).
15.
In an interview with Het Nieuwsblad, the original Dutch reads: ‘Ik heb het dan over de gelijkheid tussen man en vrouw, het recht op vrije meningsuiting, de scheiding tussen Kerk en Staat, het accepteren van de regels van de rechtstaat’ (27 December 2004).
16.
As Belgium as a nation is struggling with its own identity, the liberal account of shared values and norms was effectively countered by a renewal of Flemish nationalism, as epitomised by Bart de Wever’s Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (NV-A) landslide victory in the June 2010 elections.
17.
This follows from the logic of inburgering itself. While the policy of inburgering was geared predominantly towards newcomers, citizens with a migration background can also apply for it. In public debates, however, it is very common to stretch this and to ask youngsters who are third- or fourth-generation ‘immigrants’ to become full citizens.
18.
Even a quick and succinct scrutiny of Belgian newspapers in the 2000s would give hundreds of quotes from politicians of all parties that suggest that ‘their culture’ or ‘Islam’ is the only obstacle to ‘their’ integration.
19.
In 1993, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism was created by royal decree to ‘promote equality of opportunity and to combat all forms of discrimination, exclusion, restriction or preferential treatment based on: so-called race, skin colour, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, marital status, birth, wealth, age, religion or ideology, present or future state of health, disability or physical characteristics’, available at: http:// www.diversiteit.be/?setLanguage=3.
20.
Willem Schinkel , Denken in een tijd van sociale hypochondrie. Aanzet tot een theorie voorbij de maatschappij(Kampen, Klement, 2007).
21.
It has to be said that this was as much the work of the host society labelling migrants as Muslim as it was the work of certain Muslims trying to become the new spokesmen for their communities.
22.
For a more in-depth and detailed account of the institutionalisation of Islam in Belgium, see Meryem Kanmaz and Sami Zemni, ‘Moslims als inzet in religieuze, maatschappelijke en veiligheidsdiscours: de erkenning en institutionalisering van de islamitische eredienst in België’, in Els Vanderwaeren and Christiane Timmerman, eds, Diversiteit in islam. Over verschillende belevingen van het moslim zijn(Leuven/Voorburg, Acco, 2008), pp. 109-56.
23.
The conditions for eligibility were: having attained a minimum age of 25; having lived a minimum of five years in Belgium; speaking one of the national languages; being in possession of a diploma of secondary education; having no political and/or diplomatic mandates; and, signing a declaration of loyalty to the Belgian Kingdom. ‘J’affirme sur l’honneur adhérer à la religion islamique, en respecter les prescriptions et les enseignements de fraternité, de tolérance et de probité, et m’engager à agir dans le cadre de mes fonctions dans l’intérêt exclusif du culte et cela dans le respect de la Constitution du Royaume, des Lois et des Institutions du peuple belge’(Panafit, 1999), p. 221.
24.
First published in the Dutch newspaper NRC on 29 January 2000, the op-ed was reproduced in numerous other publications, journals and magazines.
25.
For instance, between January and April 2009, Mia Doornaert wrote on ‘Clashing civilizations’ (3 January), ‘The shock of civilization’ (12 March), ‘Clashing civilizations’ (part 2; 12 March) and ‘Clash of cultures’ (6 April).
The CGKR published a 66-page document on discrimination in the job market after it had established that names play an important role as to whether a candidate gets invited for a job interview or not. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) also established how political xenophobia and Islamophobia are leading to concrete forms of discrimination on the job market: see: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Countryby-country/Belgium/BEL-CbC-III-2004-1-NLD.pdf.
In classic Islamic jurisprudence, ‘dhimmi’ refers to the status given to the ‘people of the Book’. By paying a tax (‘jaziya’), they were considered ‘protected’ groups.
30.
Baukje Prins , Voorbij de onschuld: het debat over integratie in Nederland(Amsterdam, van Gennep , 2004), pp. 34-6.
31.
Paul Beliën, ‘Geef ons wapens’ (Give us arms), available at: www.brusseljournal.com (21 April 2006). This op-ed has been taken offline on all Belgian websites after an official complaint to the CGKR.
32.
It was only after a couple of days that official complaints ensued, so that the op-ed had to be withdrawn from the numerous websites on which it was posted. Mr Beliën himself is trying his utmost to erase all traces of his op-ed, not so much because he has changed his ideas, but because he understood that he had made a ‘tactical’ error in his ideological struggle.
33.
J.M. Dedecker , ‘Het failliet van een crimineel gedoogbeleid’ , De Standaard (19 April 2006).
34.
The cultural diagnosis of Roma culture as an explanation for the murder was as biased and prejudiced as the debate on Islam, of course, and suffused with unabashed racism.
35.
See, from a political economic perspective, Sami Zemni, Het islamdebat (Berchem, EPO, 2009); and, from a discourse analysis perspective, Ico Maly, De Beschavingsmachine. Wij en de islam (Berchem, EPO, 2009).
36.
Ian Buruma, Moord in Amsterdam. De moord op Theo van Gogh en de grenzen van tolerantie (Amsterdam, Olympus, 2006), p. 28.
37.
Benno Barnard and Geert van Istendael, ‘Bericht aan weldenkend links’ , De Standaard (2 August 2008).
38.
Wim van Rooij, De malaise van de multiculturaliteit(Leuven, Acco, 2008).
39.
It is not a coincidence that much of the ‘factual’ material is dependent on translations provided by the highly propagandist MEMRI website.
40.
Arun Kundnani , ‘Islamism and the roots of liberal rage’ , Race & Class(Vol. 50, no. 2, 2008), pp. 40-67.
41.
It has to be said that this does not translate automatically into a specific political position on issues of diplomacy and international relations towards the Arab and/or Islamic world. In Flanders, for example, liberals tend to be opposed to the war in Iraq, but are very strong supporters of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
42.
See, for a more elaborate account, George Corm, Orient-Occident: la fracture imaginaire (Paris, Editions la Découverte, 2002, 2004).
43.
The obsession with Islam seems to be a fertile ground for synchronically attacking the so-called betrayal of the political Left as well as being the stepping stone to reformulate a Left politics in post-cold war Europe. For example, in France, Bernard Henr-Lévy and, in Holland, Carl Brendel have not much more to offer to a refounding of the Left than a declaration of war on Islam/ism and support for Israel.
