Het Molenbeekprobleem

Dalrymple schrijft:

We zaten op onze vlucht naar Parijs te wachten toen de annulatie van de volgende vlucht naar Brussel werd omgeroepen. Geruchten deden snel de ronde, maar de werkelijkheid bleek erger te zijn dan iemand verwachtte. Enkele uren later reden we in een taxi weg van de luchthaven Charles De Gaulle. Een radiozender wist te vertellen dat er twintig doden waren, een andere beweerde vierendertig. Eén van de zenders kondigde aan dat die avond de Eifeltoren in de Belgische kleuren zou worden verlicht. Wellicht zal er een tijdje een moratorium liggen op de Belgenmoppen in Frankrijk. Het gevoel van solidariteit is oprecht. Het is dan ook nog maar vijf maanden sinds de gruwelijkheden in Parijs.

Onze chauffeur was een moslim van Noord-Afrikaanse origine. Hij was duidelijk een integere man, welwillend en eerlijk. De chauffeur was woedend op Uber, dat zijn inkomen halveerde. Wat de abstracte economische argumenten ook zijn in deze zaak, het was moeilijk om geen sympathie op te brengen voor deze man. Maar het waren de terroristen die hem meer bezighielden. ‘Het zijn allemaal criminelen’, zei hij. ‘Ze hebben allemaal in de gevangenis gezeten.’ Hij sprak geëmotioneerd. ‘Het zijn mensensmokkelaars, bandieten.’ Ik wilde er nog aan toevoegen dat het allemaal liefhebbers zijn van rapmuziek, maar ik zweeg, ook al speelde er tussen de nieuwsberichten door barokmuziek op zijn radio. ‘Dit heeft niets vandoen met religie’, sprak hij. ‘Ze gaan meteen van de misdaad naar het terrorisme.’

Het leek me het beste – opdat ik de man waar ik sympathie voor koesterde niet zou ontstemmen – om te zeggen dat dit maar ten dele juist was. De islam is niet de hele oorzaak, zeker, maar kan er ook niet los van gezien worden. Uiteindelijk blazen de talrijke verarmde christelijke Congolezen in België zichzelf niet op in een metro of de luchthaven. ‘We oogsten wat we hebben gezaaid’, ging hij verder, ‘met al die bemoeienissen in Libië en Mali’. Opnieuw zag ik slechts een vaag verband, en als er al één was, dan vond ik dat niet echt flatterend voor de moslimmigranten. ‘En hoe hebben ze Molenbeek zo laten evolueren dat het een plaats werd waar het extremisme kon bloeien?’

Inderdaad, hoe? En wat te doen nu het er is? Tijdens mijn bezoek aan die Brusselse wijk enkele jaren terug kon ik de gevaren al duidelijk vaststellen. Een man zoals Salah Abdeslam, de gearresteerde terrorist, zal zich daar als een vis in het water hebben gevoeld, om met Mao te spreken. Het was een perfecte schuilplaats daar, tussen de sympathisanten en de rest van de gemeenschap die men tot stilte kon intimideren. Deze sociale wereld was ondoordringbaar voor de staatsdiensten. Een kennis vertelde me dat de Belgische overheid er niet in slaagt daar belastingen te innen, hoewel het er wel lukt om de sociale gelden uit te keren uit de staatskas.

Hoe houd je de vorming van getto’s zoals Molenbeek tegen en wat doe je eraan eens ze er zijn? Het antwoord van de taxichauffeur was eenvoudig: dwing ze om ergens anders te wonen. Een simpel plan, maar in de praktijk heel moeilijk. Het Europese Hof van de Mensenrechten veroordeelde onlangs Duitsland, omdat het die exacte plannen koesterde. Nadat een miljoen Syrische vluchtelingen en migranten in het land werden opgevangen, wilde de Duitse overheid de vorming van islamitische getto’s voorkomen door de immigranten te spreiden over het hele land. Het Hof oordeelde dat dit tegen de fundamentele mensenrechten van deze migranten inging, en dus verwerven ze het recht om enkele — of vele — Molenbeeks te vormen.

Molenbeek: hoofddoeken en moslimextremisten

Dalrymple schrijft over Molenbeek, de wijk waar terrorist Salah Abdeslam zich waarschijnlijk ruim vier maanden heeft schuilgehouden:

• Alle vrouwen dragen een hoofddoek
• Jonge mannen kleden zich als Amerikaanse rapmuziek-fans
• De politie vertoont zich zelden in de wijk en maakt zich meer zorgen om islamitische gevoeligheden te vermijden — bijvoorbeeld door niet in het openbaar te eten tijdens de ramadan — dan om boeven op te sporen en te vangen die de wijk tot een gevaarlijk crimineel terrein maken
• Bedrijven betalen geen belastingen, maar worden niet onderzocht op belastingontduiking
• Prediking en samenzwering door moslim extremisten is schering en inslag, maar er wordt niets gedaan om het te stoppen. Men probeert aldus de gespannen en de broze vrede zo lang mogelijk in stand te houden
• Sympathie voor terrorisme is de norm — of liever gezegd niemand durft openlijk zijn stem daartegen te verheffen

Stumbling blocks to Islam’s accommodation with the modern world

Harland Gibb’s 1948 survey

Two large ones, Dalrymple writes, are

• equality before the law
• the freedom openly and publicly to apostatise and argue in opposition to the religion

Dalrymple points out that Mohammedanism has

a very violent history, even according to its own sources, which may be expected to paint such violence in a favourable light, a fact so obvious as to hardly be worth pointing out. This is so whether or not other religions and doctrines have also had violent histories. Islam (in the words of Gibbon, in the context of the spread of another religion) did not spread merely by the convincing evidence of the doctrine.

Flüchtlinge willkommen

So, even now, say a few Germans. In Sweden they cried (until they brought in border checks),

Flyktingar välkomna.

Dalrymple turns to Max Frisch’s Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1953), written

in the aftermath of the Second World War as an attempt to explain (and to warn) how a patent evil like Nazism can triumph in a civilised society.

The play’s protagonist, Dalrymple explains,

is a comfortable bourgeois living in a town that is beset by several mysterious acts of arson. He is visited at home by Schmitz, a hawker, who half-persuades, half-intimidates his way into an invitation to lodge in Biedermann’s attic, and who soon brings a second hawker, Eisenring, to stay in the house.

Gradually it becomes clear that Schmitz and Eisenring

are the ones setting the fires in the town, but Biedermann refuses to acknowledge it. His blindness arises from moral and physical cowardice, and from wishful thinking—the hope that what he sees does not really mean what it obviously means.

Schmitz and Eisenring bring barrels of gasoline into the house and Biedermann,

pusillanimous to the last, helps them make the fuses and gives them the matches with which they burn his house down.

A stroll in Molenbeek

Munich 1932: Europe’s Nazism central? It’s not that simple

In the course of a visit to Brussels, Dalrymple perambulates in the North African ghetto of Molenbeek. The terrorist hub is, he points out,

de facto extraterritorial to Belgium.

Taxes

are not collected from businesses there, and the only functioning activity of the state is the payment of social security.

A walled city without the walls

Everyone in the streets is

of North African origin. The women in particular are not sartorially assimilated and, I suspect, would not dare to try to assimilate even if they wanted to.

Dalrymple writes that Molenbeek’s

connection with Islamic terrorism is now indisputably strong: but how many terrorists does an area have to harbour or produce for that connection to be recognised? How many terrorists and supporters of terrorists would be necessary to make Molenbeek a true centre or hub of terrorism? Just because most of the people go about their normal business most of the time is not sufficient to prove that it isn’t.

Grauniad delicacy

Dalrymple comes across an article in the London newspaper the Guardian atop which the heading reads:

Is Molenbeek Europe’s jihadi central? It’s not that simple

Dalrymple comments:

There are those who would have written an article about Munich in 1932 with the headline

Is Munich Germany’s Nazism central? It’s not as simple as that

After all, the cafés were still open, people still had lunch, etc., and not everyone was a Nazi.

The Guardian article states:

Molenbeek, while it has its problems with unemployment, crime and drugs, is also a place where anyone can easily hide.

Dalrymple comments:

Surely it’s because it’s a place where people can easily hide that it has its problems with crime and drugs — and terrorism.

 

Extraterritorial Molenbeek

The jihad capital of Europe

Brussels is slightly more than a quarter Muslim, Dalrymple points out, and nearly all Molenbeek residents are Muslims of North African background. The place, he writes, is

virtually extraterritorial as far as the Belgian state is concerned—apart from the collection of social security, of course.

A popular bar in the quarter. Mine host: Ibrahim Abdeslam

Dalrymple lists some of the features of the terrorist haven:

• all women wear headscarves
• young men dress like American rap music fans
• police rarely enter and are far more concerned not to offend Muslim sensibilities—for example, by not being seen to eat during Ramadan—than to find or capture miscreants who make the area dangerously crime-ridden
• businesses pay no taxes but are not investigated for evasion by the tax authorities: it is the tax authorities who do the evading
• Islamist preaching and plotting is rife, but nothing is done to stop it, in order to keep the tense and fragile peace going as long as possible
• sympathy for terrorism is the norm—or, it would be more correct to say, no one dares publicly voice opposition to it

Incubator of Islamist evil

Molenbeek, Dalrymple explains, is thus

the perfect place for psychopaths with an illusion of purpose to flourish and make plans undisturbed by the authorities, while being supported by the welfare state.

The Belgian prime minister, Dalrymple reports,

The young people of Molenbeek

has virtually admitted that the area was extraterritorial to Belgium, and out of all control. The time had come ‘to focus more on repression’, he said.

But

whether the determination or sufficient political unity necessary to carry it out will last is doubtful. Repression requires discrimination; we live in a regime in which murderers may come and go, but social security goes on forever.

Molenbeek folk

Molenbeek: a vibrant community

Molenbeek as it was

Molenbeek past

Fertile ground for Muslim ‘martyrs’

The outlook in France and the rest of the West is grim, says Dalrymple. He identifies the factors which, he writes,

ensure fertile ground for the recruitment of further ‘martyrs’ for years to come.

These are:

• a highly secularised Muslim population whose men nevertheless wish to maintain their dominance over women and need a justification for doing so
• the hurtful experience of disdain or rejection from the surrounding society
• the bitter disappointment of a frustrated materialism and a seemingly perpetual inferior status in the economic hierarchy
• the extreme insufficiency and unattractiveness of modern popular culture that is without value
• the readiness to hand of an ideological and religious solution that is flattering to self-esteem and allegedly all-sufficient, and yet in unavoidable conflict with a large element of each individual’s identity
• an oscillation between feelings of inferiority and superiority, between humiliation about that which is Western and that which is non-Western in the self
• the grotesque inflation of the importance of personal existential problems that is typical of modern individualism

Common sense on Islamic terrorism

Islamic horror

Dalrymple Q&A

What do you say to those who pretend that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam?

Such a view violates common sense.

Should internet providers and universities be less complaisant towards Islamic extremists?

Yes.

Conspiracy theories

Should the conspiracy theories Islamists peddle be countered and mocked?

Vigorously.

Is Islamic terrorism caused by poverty?

No.

Is there any other reason for complaint that justifies Islamic terrorism?

No.

Certain immigrant groups do not flourish in the UK.

Symbol of success

This reflects more on their group characteristics than upon the host country.

Give an example.

The Sikhs, who came to Britain from the Punjab with nothing, are now the second-wealthiest group by household, as classified by religious affiliation; notwithstanding individual successes, Muslims who came from the Punjab at the same time remain relatively poor.

Are values such as democracy, freedom, sexual equality and non-discrimination compatible with Islam?

They do not appear at first sight to be so, though no doubt some Muslim reformists would like to make them so; and Bangladesh, from which a large group of immigrants to Britain have come, is one of the few countries to have witnessed an explicitly anti-democratic mass demonstration. In most Muslim countries, it remains dangerous to be explicitly atheist. Criticism of Mohammed, even if reasoned and scholarly, would be even more dangerous.

Banner of failure

Is it a problem that many immigrants to the UK do not feel British?

This misses the point. It’s not how immigrants feel that matters, but how they behave. No one has any idea how British the Polish, Brazilian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and other immigrants (of whom there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions in total) feel, but nobody cares, because none of them is intent upon the destruction of British institutions. This is not true of some unknown and probably unknowable—but possibly not negligible—proportion of Muslims, no matter which part of the Islamic world they come from.

The great enabler

Does diversity make England a better place?

Success in Britain isn’t caused by diversity, but becomes possible for diverse people because of the rule of law—British law, not shariah, Jewish, canon, or any other law. And I doubt that the general population feels that the Kosovars, say, or the Romanian gypsies have, as a group (irrespective of any individuals among them), made Britain a better place.

Hirsi Ali versus Islamism’s fellow travellers

Proselytiser for the European Enlightenment view of the world

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, says Dalrymple, is right to insist

that a profound change in the relations between the sexes is the key to Muslim integration into Western society.

For many young Muslim men in the West, Dalrymple points out,

a powerful appeal of Islam is the sanction that it gives to their domination of women. This domination provides them an ex officio source of self-satisfaction that discourages further effort, and simultaneously deprives their society of the talents of women. The natural result is material and intellectual failure by comparison with other religious groups; and disappointment leads to morbid hypersensitivity to criticism, insensate rage and the blaming of others.

Many in the West,

from a combination of fear and self-hatred, are unwilling to make the distinction between a respect for the right of people to practise a religion within the law, and an exaggerated respect for the religion itself. Hirsi Ali rightfully pours scorn on the fellow travellers of obscurantism.

Houellebeckian auguries

Michel Houellebecq: ‘looks like a man who has crawled out of a giant ashtray after a prolonged alcoholic binge in clothes that have not been washed for weeks. This does not mean he approves of the world he inhabits: it is simply that he can conceive of no other, at least for Western man, and if anyone thinks otherwise he is deceiving himself. Grunge is reality; everything else is veneer’