Muslims suffer year of discrimination after Brussels bombs
BRUSSELS: Belgian teenager Ahmed is still reeling from the hostile reception he received from a teacher the school last September.
“If you’re going to set off a bomb, warn me because I have a daughter and she needs me,” the Moroccanborn 16-year-old recalls the teacher telling him in front of his classmates.
The aspiring footballer’s experience is an example of what rights groups say is a rise in both verbal and physical abuse directed at Belgian Muslims since suicide bombings killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more in Brussels.
“Deep down it hurt me, but I laughed with everybody in order not to show it,” Ahmed, whose name is being withheld by AFP as he is a minor, said at his home in Brussels.
The hostile remarks have continued during his time at his school for future athletes in southern Belgium. “All that because of my origins.”
A rise in Islamophobic incidents was reported as early as a month after the attacks, by Unia, Belgium’s public body for equal opportunities and the
The fact that the attacks were carried out by young men of Muslim origin, many of them from the largely Muslim Brussels district of Molenbeek, fuelled the prejudice.
One year on, the problem has if anything got worse, instead of fading, activists say.
“Islamophobic acts have increased in quantity and seriousness,” said Hajib El Hajjaji, of the Collective against Islamophobia in Belgium (CCIB).
This non-government organization recorded 120 Islamophobic incidents in 2016, including 36 in the month that followed the attacks.
‘Tip of the iceberg’
The CCIB recorded a case where a man hit a woman with his briefcase and hurled verbal abuse at her as she left a hospital on March 23.
The workplace is not shielded from this “polarization of society,” said Unia director Patrick Charlier. Last year the number of incidents motivated by race or religion in-
- Courtrai, erupted in anger on television
“We are in an era when such words
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‘ We want to live’
the Paris attacks four months earlier, the Belgian authorities launched the “Canal Plan” to fight radicalization in all of which are along an industrial
However, the Belgian League of Hu
“Our Prime Minister (Charles Michel) -
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Noting a rise in hate speech and - - prove the image of Muslims, showcase
to live, create a generation which works for
understand what I mean?”