Dubbed the jihadi capital of Europe Molenbeek is fighting back against those sowing the seeds of terror
IT has been dubbed the jihadi capital of Europe, but as Ellen Whinnett discovers, this disadvantaged and disengaged suburb is fighting back.
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WHEN terrorist Khalid Masood launched his vicious attack on Westminster, it soon emerged he lived in Birmingham, the city 200km north of London with an unenviable reputation as the UK’s hotbed of Islamic extremism.
With a million people, Birmingham is the UK’s second-largest city. Twenty per cent — one in five — of its population is Muslim.
And in recent years, 39 convicted terrorists have come from Birmingham, a figure eclipsed only by London, with its much larger population. One in 10 terror suspects came from just five council wards in the city of Birmingham.
As Birmingham looks — again — for answers on why some of its residents are determined to harm their fellow UK citizens, another suburb in another city blighted by terrorism is tackling the problem head-on.
Masood carried out his attacks on March 22, the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks in Belgium that were linked back to the suburb of Molenbeek, the disadvantaged, disengaged suburb of Brussels dubbed the jihadi capital of Europe.
For the past year, residents in this gritty northwest district, just 20 minutes’ walk from the tourist hub of Brussels’ old town, have focused on making Molenbeek’s young people resistant to the siren call of jihadi recruiters.
“We try to get to them, to help them think they are not worth nothing, they can do something with society,’’ says Nabil Fallah, a young Muslim man born and raised in Molenbeek, who volunteers with local youth.
“It’s not just work but they can do something, and there are things here for them.’’
Aziza El Miamouni is a mum, a Muslim, and a Molenbeek community activist who is helping fight radicalisation by reaching out to isolated families, and drawing them in.
Born and raised in Flanders to Moroccan parents, she moved to Molenbeek 18 years ago when she met her husband.
“I found the love of my life and came to Molenbeek,’’ she said.
THE MAN IN THE HAT
Like most residents there, El Miamouni was horrified when she found out how deep the links between the terror attacks and her adopted suburb were.
The mastermind of the Paris terror attacks which killed 130 people in November 2015, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, lived there before travelling to Syria, emerging to lead the bombing and shootings across Paris.
Two of his fellow attackers, brothers Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, ran a bar in Molenbeek.
Brahim blew himself up in Paris but Salah escaped, and was arrested in dramatic scenes in Molenbeek in March last year.
Days after his arrest, bombings at Brussels airport and a metro station in the city on Tuesday 22 March killed 32 people from around the world.
Mohamed Abrini, the alleged “man in the hat’’ accused of taking explosives to the airport but fleeing before he detonated them, was from Molenbeek.
All up, 14 of the people involved in the two interconnected attacks had links to Molenbeek.
In the wake of the attacks and the arrests, El Miamouni and her friend Malika Aberkane, another Muslim mum, decided to take action and try to draw isolated families, some of whom were vulnerable to jihadist recruits, closer to the community.
“It was a painful period for the people — the attacks came from our neighbourhood and we didn’t see it coming,’’ El Miamouni told News Corp.
“We never thought the youngsters of our neighbourhood would be so vile to do those sorts of things.
“We started talking to our neighbours and we found that there was shame. Everyone was ashamed. No-one wanted to talk about it. That hurt as well.’’
In the days and weeks following the arrests and attacks, the community tried to rally — there were candlelight vigils, and public renunciation of terrorist acts.
But the mums knew vigils and well-meaning speeches wouldn’t change the deep-seated problems.
“We also wanted to seek hope with a lot of the amazing organisations that already worked here,’’ El Miamouni said.
“Later on, after the events with the candles, we have formed a platform to do positive things.’’
The women went to Rotterdam in Holland to look at how community organisations were working together there, and together they formed the Wijkacademie, or Neighbourhood Academy.
The volunteer group does outreach in the community, connecting isolated families with community services, health groups and support networks to get them better engaged, and make their kids less vulnerable to recruiters who tell them seductive lies about a better life fighting for the terror group Islamic State in Syria.
“A lot of families were in a fragile situation,’’ El Miamouni said.
“In Molenbeek, there were families that no-one knew anything about.
“If you’re at the point where you want to leave (to join IS in Syria) you are really at a low point, on the margins of the community. A lot of parents didn’t know or see their children were living a double life.’’
The academy mums — sometimes up to 20 of them at the weekly meetings — hold events in parks and go door-to-door in the social housing blocks that make up 90 per cent of Molenbeek’s accommodation.
They just go to talk, to offer pamphlets, websites and phone numbers of support services, and to introduce themselves to their neighbours.
“The aim is to reach the families not yet reached by the organisations,’’ El Miamouni said.
“They feel isolated, their self-esteem is low. They want to gain confidence. We went to the blocks and the parks and we talked.’’
When they first launched in October, the academy mums were worried no-one would come to see them. They held a picnic in the park in Molenbeek. A hundred people showed up, bringing food and drinks to share.
“The community round the park had a really good heart,’’ El Miamouni said.
The area is heavily dominated by Muslim residents. At this event, everyone came — Muslims, non-Muslim, residents from other parts of Molenbeek.
“The Government puts the people in the (housing) blocks and makes it a ghetto and a monoculture,’’ El Miamouni said.
“Their world is very small and in many ways like they’ve lived in Morocco. The only people they mix with are people like them.’’
So far, the group has reached 300 residents, and has applied for a government grant to expand their operations.
“We want to work on prevention, to get to people before things happen. We are not scared of putting taboos on the table,’’ El Miamouni said.
EERILY QUIET
Life’s journey in Molenbeek — its actual name is Sint-Jans-Molenbeek — has never been an easy ride.
Home for decades to migrants and those just starting out, the suburb attracted an unsavoury reputation, fuelled by poverty, high youth unemployment, drugs and crime.
With more than 40 per cent of its population from a Muslim background, mainly from Morocco, or Belgians born to Moroccan parents, it gained a reputation similar to the banlieues of outer Paris, where gangs of young men ruled the housing estates, and police considered it a no-go zone.
Molenbeek doesn’t feel like that.
Despite being the most densely-populated pocket of Brussels, with 100,000 people crammed into a small crescent-shaped zone just a few kilometres long, there are no gangs of youths roaming.
But it does have an unusual vibe — the large Place Communale town square is virtually deserted, the teashops are behind smoked glass, and seem to have only male customers, and tiny mosques are tucked in behind high walls.
It doesn’t feel unsafe.
But except when the Tuesday market is on, it’s eerily quiet.
Life here goes on behind closed doors.
It’s a strong contrast with the Brussels old town just across the canal, where soldiers with machine guns patrol as thousands of tourists take selfies in the gorgeous Grand Place town square, loading up on waffles, pale Belgium beer and expensive chocolates.
Deeply concerning links between Islamist terrorism and Molenbeek had been emerging in recent years.
In 2014, a French-Algerian extremist murdered four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. He had spent time in Molenbeek.
In 2015, a Moroccan man attacked passengers on a high-speed train between France and Belgium.
He had spent time in his sister’s house in Molenbeek.
Molenbeek knew it had a problem.
After Paris and Brussels, the whole world knew it too.
“The Afghanistan media came to see,’’ said Ayoud Ben Abdeslam, another young man born and raised in Molenbeek.
He makes a good point.
If Afghanistan, a country blighted by decades of war and terrorism, thought Molenbeek was newsworthy, something was not right.
The world’s media descended on Molenbeek, shining bright lights in dark places, and some residents reacted badly. Rocks and fists were thrown, and TV cameras caught images that showed a suburb in the grips of violent dysfunction, unwelcoming to outsiders.
Fallah and Ben Abdeslam, lifelong mates, struggled to process what was happening. “I was sad about it. I didn’t believe it (at first) and then I realised I had heard the names,’’ Fallah told News Corp, sitting in a cafe across the canal from Molenbeek.
Ben Abdeslam agreed, saying he had struggled at first to believe that people from their neighbourhood could be responsible for such attacks.
The young men were not friends with the terrorists — they didn’t even know them — but they had heard their names in the community.
They wondered why so many young men would turn their backs on their community and consider going to Syria to support Islamic State.
Ben Abdeslam thinks the problem could be linked to many young Muslim men in Molenbeek failing to develop a sense of belonging.
“In the community there are a lot of people who don’t have an identity. They go to Morocco and they are told they’re Belgian, they are not Moroccan. But when they are in Belgium they are told they are Moroccan,’’ he said.
“They overthink it, so it’s easy for people (recruiters) to say to ‘come to a better place’ (Syria).
“It’s easier to go to someone who doesn’t have an identity, they’re easier to manipulate, than someone who has a good life.’’
“They’re more Belgian than Moroccan. We are trying to make them feel good in the community.’’
DISAFFECTED YOUTH
Fallah and Ben Abdeslam are both Belgium-born to Moroccan parents, raised in Molenbeek, attended school and mosque there, and know every inch of its streets, cafes and run-down public housing blocks.
They both speak four languages. They are both studying, working, and volunteering with local youth organisations. The community is proud of them.
As volunteer youth workers, they are ideally placed to know what is going on in the minds of the disaffected young men who think fighting for Islamic State seems like a good idea.
“It was heavy at first, the first two weeks, a lot of media,’’ Fallah said.
“Brazil media came and said they had thought it was worse than the favelas in Rio and then they came and saw it and saw it was not really like that.
“It affected the youth. They were applying for jobs and people saw ‘Molenbeek’.
Ben Abdeslam is studying a social and cultural diploma, and working and volunteering at Molenbeek NGO Foyer, where he helps young people find work.
He knows of one young man who sent out two job applications that were identical except for one thing — the first application was under his correct Muslim name and Molenbeek address.
The second was under a false name and Brussels address. He got a call-back under his false name.
Fallah is in his last year of a college diploma in accountancy and tax. He volunteers with youth organisation JES, and runs the Street Talent shows, which gets kids singing and dancing in front of audiences.
They both believe getting Muslim and non-Muslim residents spending more time together will be good for everyone.
“Now you see it is more mixed, not just the Moroccan community, but the Belgian community too,’’ he said of Molenbeek’s early efforts to open up to the wider community.
“There’s a new museum and the image of Molenbeek is doing better.’’
Liselotte Vanheukelom is a social worker with JES, and moved to Molenbeek with her children and her husband three years ago.
She wears a grey jumper with the numbers 1080 — Molenbeek’s postcode — across the front, and clearly loves the suburb, without being blind to its challenges.
Her children attend the local Catholic school. So do Aziza’s children. The school observes all the big religious events — Christmas, Easter and Ramadan.
“I like to live here because it was also linked to the school, it is a good mix and I felt my children should grow up in diversity,’’ Vanheukelom said.
“It is a really nice community, a lot of things happening, social and cultural happenings.’’
She agrees Molenbeek’s high concentration of Muslim migrants is unusual in Brussels, the self-proclaimed heart of Europe, home of the European Union and NATO.
“If you walk in the streets, sometimes I am the only white female. That is a reality. I sometime observe this,’’ she said.
COMMANDO RAIDS
Vanheukelom said it was unfair and inaccurate to label residents of Molenbeek as terrorists, and said the attacks in Paris and Brussels were devastating to the community.
“Each day the attacks were in a conversation with someone,’’ she said, of the months after the attacks and the police raids on Molenbeek, which saw Salah Abdeslam shot and dragged out of his home by commandos.
He was arrested two streets from Vanheukelom’s home.
The commando raids put Molenbeek on lockdown. At the school, the children were rushed out of their classrooms and held in the school gymnasium until the raids were completed. Horrified parents — Muslim and non-Muslim — raced to the school to be with their children and sat with them in the gym.
“That was terrifying for everyone,’ Vanheukelom said.
Helicopters hovered 5m above Molenbeek’s cheek-by-jowl rooftops for two hours as gunshots rang out.
In the aftershocks, Molenbeek withdrew, and lashed out at those who came to question its mindset.
“The youngsters attacked journalists and attacked police. That had a big impact, that was really heavy,’’ Vanheukelom recalled.
“Nobody liked it. Everybody felt stigmatised. I’m a white female, highly-educated, all the opportunities in the world and even I felt stigmatised.’’
Muslim residents came to see Vanheukelom rejecting terrorism and denouncing the actions of the terrorists.
“Everyone was really, really mad,’’ she said.
“They felt it was an opportunity that people would be negative about Islam.’’
The European Institute of Peace conducted a study of 400 Muslim residents and their views on terrorism. Only one person out of 400 supported the actions of Islamic State terrorists.
“All of them rejected it,’’ Vanheukelom said.
“In all of them only one person agreed it would be good to go to Syria.’’
The cause wasn’t helped by a group of outsiders, Shariah4Belgium, who travelled to Molenbeek to hold a rally.
They were from Antwerp, and inspired by British hate preacher Anjem Choudary, who founded Shariah4UK. No matter, the damage was done.
There are many theories on why Belgium, and inner-city Molenbeek, are so closely linked to terror attacks.
The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism reported in 2015 that around 4000 European Union citizens had gone to fight with Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. Of these, between 420 and 516 came from Belgium — despite the country having a population of just 11 million.
“How come if we compare to our neighbours, so many of our youngsters go to Syria?’’ Vanheukelom asks.
“In Rotterdam (which has a large Muslim population), practically no one goes.’’
One theory relates to Brussels’ links with fundamentalist Islamic teachings, which can be traced back to 1969 when Belgium politicians wanted to do deals with oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis were encouraged to build a grand mosque in Brussels, and were allowed to staff it with imported Salafist preachers, who espoused an extreme form of Islam.
Then there’s the fragmented, tangled nature of Belgium’s policing.
The country speaks Flemish and French and has dozens of separate municipal areas, police forces and security agencies. Brussels alone has six different police forces, answering to 19 different municipal mayors.
A SLEEPING BOMB
Johan Leman is an emeritus professor at Leuven University outside Brussels, and started working in, and studying, Molenbeek in 1981.
A social and cultural anthropologist considered an expert in his field in Belgium, he saw trouble coming decades ago, and warned in a television interview in 1987 that he predicted violence from some of Molenbeek’s estranged Muslim residents.
“In ‘81 when I arrived the situation was quite dramatic, quite a bad situation,’’ he said, from his office in an old rag-traders shopfront in historic Molenbeek.
“There were poverty issues, a lot of drug dealing.’’
Leman didn’t identify the rise of Islamic State in 1987.
But he did warn that there were growing numbers of young Muslim men who might be drawn to terrorist causes — and their friends and neighbours were unlikely to turn them in.
“If we don’t control this one day we will have a lot of violence,’’ he said back then.
Leman said what he meant was there was no debate about what sort of leadership should be emerging within Muslim communities, which might direct Islamic teachings.
“So long as people see themselves as immigrants, they will stay quiet. They believe they are in another man’s country,’’ he said.
“It was predictable, we sat on a sleeping bomb.’’
Leman said the rise of Islam was an issue across Europe through the 1990s.
“The management of Islam in the 1990s was given into the hands of the Saudis,’’ he said.
“Most of the politicians didn’t know Islam.
“We lost a lot of time debating. What will be the leadership of Islam, who will be the spokesmen?
“While we the Belgians debated, a marginal view of Islam formed.
“I am not saying all Islamification is bad, I am not opposed to Islamification. But it is difficult to say this (Salafism) is an ideal interpretation of it.’’
Leman is not opposed to large Muslim communities and has written passionate defences of the Molenbeek community in newspapers across Europe.
He said the warning signs were there when violent jihadism emerged from France, mainly from French Algerians.
“Those who fell under suspicions in France simply moved to Brussels,’’ he said
“What happened in Molenbeek? We had a poor district, we have Salafi Islamification. I’m not against it at all. But we left it in the hands of foreign influences.’’
IS ARE LOSERS
Leman said the September 11 attacks in America in 2001 changed the debate, and the evolution of social media saw the establishment of what he calls the “Arab-Islamic imagination.’’
Syria became the place in people’s mind representing an Arab-Islamic idyll.
“It attracted many of the people. Typically those people were non-successful, petty criminals. They saw very well they hadn’t much future here and were presented with something in the new world in Sham (an area in the Middle East based around Syria),’’ he said.
As well, it cost only 100 euros, or around A$140, to get a plane ticket to Turkey, and cross into Syria, with the Turkish Government in the early years of the war not preventing foreign fighters from crossing the border.
“If I am a young drug dealer, not very entrepreneurial, I am going to go to hell anyway. I can go for 100 euros and stay in the caliphate,’’ Leman said.
“These are not great philosophers or theologians, they’re young kids.
“When we, the establishment, look at the TV or the media, we see the official media. It’s not what they (terror recruits) see. They look at their Facebook, they see nice cities and believe.’’
The number of Belgians travelling to Syria and Iraq is now falling, which Johan says is linked to the heavy losses Islamic State is experiencing on the battlefield.
“It’s not attracting people now, it’s simply that ISIS is not attractive because they are losers,’’ he said.
But Leman warns against complacency.
“Some recruiters are still active now,’’ he said.
“Now there are more than 10 recruiters still active in Molenbeek.
“They will not be as successful.’’
Leman said it was too easy to blame Molenbeek for all Belgium’s problems with foreign fighters.
“Molenbeek is somewhere, an emblem, for a lot of dysfunction,’’ he said.
“It is not fair.”
He said Molenbeek was a “gateway city’’ with 7000 new inhabitants a year.
“If they make it, they leave, and if they don’t make it, they stay,’’ he said.
“Per inhabitant it has less police per head of population than anywhere in Brussels.’’
Official figures put Molenbeek’s population at around 95,000, and Johan believes there are another 5000 illegal inhabitants.
A refugee reception centre is 300m away across the canal, from where many who fear they will be rejected simply melt away into Molenbeek.
On Leman’s figures, of those who hold Belgium citizenship and live in Molenbeek, 50 per cent are Moroccan and of all newcomers, 25 per cent are Moroccan. The community also has large numbers of sub-Saharan African and Roma migrants.
He has done his own studies on foreign fighters, and concludes that across Belgium, 350 citizens left to fight in Syria for Islamic State.
Of these, 130 remain there, while 90 were killed.
Another 130 came back — and about 40 of these are in prison.
Leman has also burrowed into the number of Molenbeek’s residents who travelled to Syria, and puts the figures at 60.
Of these, 30 remain in Syria, 15 were killed, and 15 have returned.
Police are supposed to be following 118 sympathisers in the northwest policing zone, the majority of which is Molenbeek territory.
Leman said he has never met anyone in Molenbeek who supported the actions of the terrorists.
“What may have happened is a lot of people didn’t believe it,’’ he said.
“Disbelieving and approving are not the same thing.’’
He cited as an example the case of Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat’’ allegedly caught on CCTV pushing a suitcase of explosives through Brussels Airport with two suicide bombers, before escaping.
“Abrini, people say he was such a nice guy. I do not exclude that people knew (about him) and didn’t tell the police, I don’t exclude that.
“You may have some cliques — and I see it among some of the young groups of friends — where the last thing you’d do is go to the police.
“But it doesn’t mean they approve of what their friend did, no.’’
Originally published as Dubbed the jihadi capital of Europe Molenbeek is fighting back against those sowing the seeds of terror
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