Paris Attacks: How the Influence of Saudi Arabia Sowed the Seeds of Radicalism in Belgium
23rd November 2015
There are many reasons why Belgium has become a hotbed of radical Islamism. Some of the answers may lie in the implanting of Saudi Salafist preachers in the country from the 1960s.
Keen to secure oil contracts, Belgium’s King Baudouin made an offer to Saudi King Faisal, who had visited Brussels in 1967: Belgium would set up a mosque in the capital, and hire Gulf-trained clerics.
Not a good idea. But money often blinds those to whom religion is merely a hobby that others take it more seriously.
Although the mosque was treated as the official voice of Muslims in Belgium, its radical Salafist teachings came from a very different tradition to the Islam of the new immigrants. Today, there are around 600,000 people of Moroccan and Turkish origin in Belgium, a country of 11 million.
And, I suspect, they are now regretting it. But maybe not — Europe is not what it was.
Still, perhaps there is hope that people there are starting to wake up, as this article in a British newspaper suggests might be happening.