Clamp down: Belgium’s policy to besiege and curb Brotherhood

Aya Ezz

To increase the area of its terrorism in Europe, the Brotherhood is currently trying to expand within Belgium, as the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned on Sunday, March 7 of Brotherhood attempts to expand in Belgium after the French government and security services subjected the group to security restrictions.

According to a report, Belgium is an important European station for extremist and terrorist groups wishing to extend their influence, which was confirmed by a study issued by the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, which said that Belgium is the only outlet for the Brotherhood after the crackdown in France.

Brotherhood incursion into Belgium

According to the report, the Brotherhood’s institutions in Belgium are represented by the League of Muslims of Belgium (LMB), an active member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), the European Forum of Muslim Women (EFOMW), the Muslim Brotherhood’s face, and the European Muslim Network (EMN), which was founded in 2005 by Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.

In a report by The Guardian, the League of Muslims of Belgium is considered one of the most important institutions of the Brotherhood there, as that association was established in 1997 by Monsif Chatar and Karim Azzouzi.

Since the founding of LMB, it has managed to control 10 mosques, and it also has headquarters in five Belgian cities – the capital Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Liege and Verviers – and it is run by a biology professor named Karim Chemlal, who resides in Antwerp.

In the same context, the LMB is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, which brings together Brotherhood organizations in about 28 European countries.

The Brotherhood has many branches in Belgium, especially charitable organizations that are considered a window of Brotherhood extremism in Belgium.

The Brotherhood’s presence in Belgium began after the immigration of a large number of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

The Brotherhood’s branches were established in Belgium by Syrian Brotherhood member Mohamed Hawari at the University of Brussels in the 1970s. With the passage of several years, many associations and organizations were established, developing until it included the establishment of a lobby there that had a great influence on the course of religious orientations.

The terrorist group was not satisfied with this extent, as they were able to form partnerships with many non-Muslim entities, such as the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Party in Brussels.

The Brotherhood exploits these advocacy and charitable platforms to influence and penetrate Belgian society, especially since many of these organizations are close to the European organizations that spread there.

Perhaps the thing that helped the Brotherhood to penetrate Belgium is that it is home to the largest Muslim community in Europe, compared to its population of approximately 1.5 million.

The biggest crisis is the adoption of violent ideology by militant Islamist groups seeking the Islamization of Belgian society and the establishment of an Islamist state, to the extent that Belgian sociologist Felice Dassetto expected in a study he conducted on the Islamic situation in his country that Muslims will represent the majority of the population of Brussels by 2030.

Importance of Belgium to terrorists

According to the Washington Post, Belgium is one of the richest and most important European countries geographically, because it enjoys a privileged location that makes it the heart of Europe, as it is bordered on the eastern side by Germany and Luxembourg, on the southern and southwestern sides by France, and on the northern side by the Netherlands. It is also a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters.

Belgium is also a member of many other major international organizations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and as such, it has an important geostrategic position. Therefore, all terrorist organizations, headed by ISIS and the Brotherhood, covet the country, where it is also easy for them to launch terrorist attacks on neighboring countries, in particular France and Germany.

Despite all these advantages that Belgium enjoys, it ranks third on the list of danger in the European Union and first in Europe with the number of its citizens fighting alongside ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Numbers indicate that approximately 412 Belgians have gone in recent years to the fighting areas in Syria and Iraq, and 30% of them returned to Belgium.

Belgium also became a pathway and crossing point for extremists, through which Europeans who wanted to join the ranks of ISIS crossed to Syria and Iraq.

Confronting extremism and tightening the screws

Belgium recently began to take several steps to confront extremism in its country, especially the terrorism of the Brotherhood, as it expelled all affiliates of the terrorist group.

According to the Belgian newspaper Voetbalbelgie, the government also accused Turkey of being the main financier of the Brotherhood in Belgium, so Brussels decided in late 2017 to prevent 12 Turkish imams from entering the country due to Ankara’s cooperation with the Brotherhood and for being members of the Brotherhood in Turkey, as they are considered a national threat to Belgium.

This was not the first time that the government in Belgium took measures against the Brotherhood. In 2014, then-Interior Minister Jan Jambon decided to take a package of measures against the Brotherhood’s charitable organizations.