Many Muslim women in Belgium wear the traditional headscarf, the hijab. The picture there is similar to that in other Western European countries. The increase in women wearing the head covering has increased dramatically in recent years and critics are now warning that it could be a sign of the further spread of legalistic Islam, also better known as “political Islam”.
There are Muslim women who never want to wear a hijab. They reject it as an expression of male heteronomy. Others wear it of their own free will, sometimes for similar reasons to those who reject the head covering. For them it is also a self-determined decision.
The terrorist attack in Brussels occurred on March 22, 2016. Perhaps female Muslim victims who had to pay with their lives that day would still be with us if they had worn a headscarf. The Islamist suicide bomber stood in the subway right next to a Muslim woman without a hijab; the young woman apparently corresponded to his image of Western society as an enemy. 32 people died in the Brussels attacks, killed by the same terrorist cell that killed 130 people in Paris four months earlier. Men who grew up in the same district of Brussels, in Molenbeek, are responsible. They are now convicted of terrorist murder. One of the darkest chapters of European terrorism is now legally closed. But what lessons can be learned from this remains controversial.
The Brussels district, which gained sad worldwide fame as a result of the attacks in Brussels and Paris, is a colorful, livable district, partly gentrified. Two thirds of the 100,000 residents are Muslim, most of them live around the historic center, which exudes the charm of a small Arab town. Nevertheless, the conflicts cannot be overlooked.
A few months now, for the first time, a Muslim woman with a headscarf has held a senior political position in the town hall of Molenbeek. Her appointment was accompanied by great political strife throughout Belgium. The debates now revolve around the question: Are women wearing headscarves allowed to work in the municipal authorities of Molenbeek and other predominantly Islamic areas of Brussels? Some say “no”, the state would give up its neutrality in ideological questions and condone the oppression of women. The others say “yes,” the ban discriminates against the Muslim minority, and in many cases it is the only way to get jobs for Muslim women. The compromise that is now emerging: the headscarf will be permitted if the wearer does not hold a leadership position in the authority and does not receive visitors.
The decision is seen as an attempt by left-wing parties to grab votes from the Muslim community before the European elections in June 2024 – and fundamentally a sign of the gradual capitulation of the liberal democracies in Europe to the claim to power of political Islam. This is what the head of an organization that fights for an Islam that lives in harmony with liberal Western values says. Women who want to break out of the strict Islamic society find help with her. The director fled Algeria to escape jihadist terror in the mid-1990s. She first emigrated to Canada, and in 2019 she moved to Belgium. The woman, Djemila Benhabib, fought against the appointment of a headscarf-wearing scientist as state commissioner for gender equality. At the time, this woman was considered a model of a self-determined Muslim – and later had to resign because allegations emerged that she had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Djemila moved to the Belgian capital because the decisive battle between Islamism and Western-style democracies was taking place there. One may consider her warning to be exaggerated – but in any case it provides a counterweight to the widespread Belgian tendency to ignore integration problems. In the 1960s, the Belgian state brought Northern African, predominantly Moroccan workers into the country. In 1974, Belgium was the first European country to make Islam an officially supported religion. The Belgian state entrusted Saudi Arabia with looking after the Islamic community, and in return the kingdom delivered cheap oil to Belgium. It was a disastrous deal. The Gulf kingdom not only funded magnificent mosques but also sent imams who preached a rigorous Wahhabi-Salafist Islam. The Salafists formed an alliance with the politically agitating Muslim Brotherhood. Frero-Salafism found increasing support among Muslims suffering from industrial decline, unemployment and discrimination. And local politicians sought reconciliation with the Islamists instead of pushing them back.
These problems were centered in Molenbeek, formerly the industrial center of the country. The first jihadist hate preacher settled there in the mid-1990s. His word fell on fertile ground. The district in Brussels was a center of Islamist terror for decades. And the Muslim community, viewed with suspicion by the rest of the country, isolated itself even more.
Islamism continues to spread quietly throughout Belgium, well financed from abroad, says Djemila Benhabib. She reports on secular Muslim teachers who are bullied by fundamentalists. The Belgian state has no control over the teaching of Islam in its schools. At the moment she is fighting against violent resistance to a decree according to which children in schools in the southern region of Belgium should receive two hours of sex education lessons per year. The protest is carried out in public by women wearing a headscarf. But Djemila does not want to give up her fight against female self-determination and oppression by Islamic-style patriarchy. Only if women win their freedom can Islam become at home in Europe. She wants to continue to show her fellow believers in Molenbeek that Islam only has a future in the West if it emancipates itself from schools of thought that are backward-looking and deny the present.
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