Accused by his detractors of anti-Semitism and promotion of Sharia law, politician Fouad Ahidar was able to attract a certain number of voters, mainly Muslims, in several municipalities in Brussels. This new occurrence of a form of political Islam in Belgium, which occurs after other inconclusive attempts, could be long-term.
In Belgium, the federal legislative elections of June 9 profoundly reshaped the political landscape of part of the country, with a strong increase in right-wing and center-right movements.
However, the results were more mixed in the Brussels region. The socialists retained their influence there and a previously little-publicized party emerged: Team Fouad Ahidar, named after its leader, a former socialist MP and initially a member of the Volksunie (Flemish nationalist party now dissolved).
This formation stands out for its ability to compete with the socialist party by tackling community and religious issues, such as the wearing of the veil in public administration and in schools, ritual slaughter or the thorny issue of the Israeli conflict. -Palestinian. Team Fouad Ahidar now has three seats in the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region and legitimately claims a place within the region’s executive, the constitution of which is still under negotiation.
The Belgian municipal elections of October 13 confirmed the breakthrough of Team Fouad Ahidar, which exceeded 10% in four of the nineteen Brussels municipalities and obtained seats in five municipalities. The party therefore seems ready to establish itself permanently in the political landscape of the Belgian capital.
This is not the first time that parties defending a program partially or entirely centered on community and religious issues have emerged in Belgium. The very controversial Islam Party in 2012, or the Young Muslim Party in 2004 are examples of this. However, these groups, which directly attacked the secularization of the State, obtained only marginal electoral scores and quickly disappeared from the political scene. The recent successes of Team Fouad Ahidar put community issues back at the heart of the debates.
Diversity and evolution of religious pluralism in Brussels
The community issue has gradually entered the public debate in Belgium, and in particular in Brussels, following successive waves of migration which, since the 1960s, have brought numerous people from various countries around the world to settle in the capital. This diversity is seen as both a strength and a challenge in the region, which has experienced transformations on the cultural and religious levels. Since 2000, in this country of around 11 million inhabitants, more than 530,000 foreigners have acquired Belgian nationality and Islam has become the second religion in the country.
At the national level, the management of this diversity has sparked numerous debates around the idea of “reasonable accommodation”. Initially, these adjustment requests were intended to support people with disabilities by implementing specific adjustments. Today, they have been extended to other spheres, notably cultural and religious, and in doing so question the Belgian model of society in terms of management of individual or collective particularities.
The most emblematic cases, but also the most controversial, concern religion, in particular the demands of a part of the Muslim community (prayer room in the workplace, wearing of the veil in the administration, ritual slaughter for example). ). The controversies of 1989 over the wearing of the veil, which took place in France then in Belgium (in a school in Molenbeek), followed by the attacks of September 11, 2001, also contributed to religious visibility, and Islam in particular, a major political and societal issue.
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Furthermore, the new religious and cultural realities in Belgium – but also in Europe – must be placed in the context of a more global evolution which began in the 1960s. We then witness a reaffirmation of what we can call the “fundamentalism” in the Christian, Protestant, Jewish world or within other religious currents stemming from Hinduism, Buddhism or even non-religious ones, such as atheism (which is part of a more radical criticism towards religion).
It was also from the 1960s that the European landscape evolved under the effect of different waves of migration, in particular due to the arrival of populations from Muslim countries who questioned the dynamics of secularization of politics. The immigration of Arab-Muslim populations is taking place at a time when the Muslim world is facing the establishment of Islamist actors including the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. The latter offer a totalizing vision of religion, according to which religion organizes and governs the entire life of individuals.
An associative landscape under influence
These movements gradually took hold in Europe following the exile of several of their leaders, forced to leave their countries of origin. One of the best-known examples of this exile is undoubtedly that of Saïd Ramadan, former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and father of Tariq Ramadan, who lived in Switzerland until his death in 1995.
During their establishment, Islamist movements, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkish Islamists, invested part of the Brussels community and religious associative sector, as well as certain youth and university movements), by holding debates on the wearing of the veil and reasonable accommodations linked to religious practices (for example, ritual slaughter), privileged themes.
The community and religious issue encountered in Brussels is obviously not the only fact of Islamist activism; it is favored by a broader context. On the one hand, we observe gender identity claims, political-religious beliefs and professional and other identities more marked than before. On the other hand, society has evolved towards a more cultural conception of racism, where difference in treatment, prejudice and acts of hatred relate more to the cultural or religious aspects of a person rather than to their biological characteristics. Furthermore, the influence of these movements is sometimes widely fantasized by activists or intellectuals close to conservative or far-right currents who fail to distinguish between the producers of a discourse (Islamist movements) and the actors who can involuntarily or unconsciously participate in its circulation. It is therefore not a question of denying the existence of an influence, but rather of thinking of it as diffuse and capable of having repercussions in the discourse and morals of individuals who are not directly linked to a religious political project.
In the wake of this influence, we find lobbies fighting against Islamophobia such as the Collective for Inclusion & Against Islamophobia in Belgium (CIIB) (equivalent to the former CCIF in France). They have a very broad conception of Islamophobia (including the restriction of religious practices in certain contexts) and reconfigure the boundaries of what is perceived as discrimination by no longer distinguishing the individual from their religious practices. A recent example of the repercussions of this discourse is the case of the Brussels Minister of Animal Welfare, Bernard Clerfayt, accused of Islamophobia because he speaks out in favor of limiting the wearing of the veil in public administration or even for the ban on ritual slaughter.
This vision is today shared and relayed by political groups such as Team Fouad Ahidar, which maintains close links with the CIIB. By mobilizing religious themes, this formation attempts to reshape the relationship between religion and State and seems to impose on the future Brussels mandate a political agenda marked by community demands. Although its program addresses a set of socio-economic themes, the underground campaigns led by this training have fueled community and identity debates via less regulated channels, such as WhatsApp.
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