Islam In Belgium Research Articles

Islamonderwijs aan de Vlaamse Hogescholen: een stand van zaken

In this article, we elaborate on the current state of Islamic education in Flanders. Due to a difficult start, the school subject is, up until the present day, highly contested and challenged. In order to increase its quality, several initiatives have been taken over the past decades. One of these initiatives is the establishment of teacher training programs for Islamic religious education. The article first discusses the complex story of the instutionalization of Islam in Belgium. Subsequently, an overview of the different trajectories regarding the professionalization of Islamic education is given. In order to make the reader familiar with these trajectories, we focus on the curriculum of Islamic religious education in two Flemish university colleges. Contents, subject didactics, teaching internships and student testimonies clarify the teaching strategy. In conclusion, we argue that there is still room for quality improvement. In this regard, this article provides useful recommendations such as increasing the number of inspectors, updating the curriculum, and providing innovative learning materials.

Islam de Belgique, islam moderne ou islam des origines ?

This article studies a large corpus of newspaper articles about Islam in Belgium. The analysis focuses on repeated segments, i.e., collocations that appear regularly throughout the corpus. Among all the repeated segments identified we isolated those that contain the word Islam, namely 27 definite or indefinite nominal expressions (Islam in Belgium, modern Islam). We will first observe the nature of these phrases (their syntactic structure and semantic content which enable them to behave as more or less fixed expressions) and, in a second step, their discursive meaning and referential properties through the study of co-occurrences. These repeated segments uncover a social endeavour to define Islam on the basis of competing representations which vary according to the place this religion is meant to have in Belgian and European societies.

The Relevance of Islam in Belgium and Future Perspectives

Migration in Belgium in the 1960s represented the beginning of a social transformation process that has turned the traditionally Catholic country into a multicultural reality where Islam has achieved more significance. Consequently, the government had to adapt different structures to the new reality, and people had to learn to live together. In this regard, the Muslim community demanded public spaces to develop cultural and religious events. Second and third generations of Belgian Muslims conserve their family roots and require space for Islam in Belgium. As a result, progressively, the state has incorporated soft elements of Sharia Law in national and local legislation to respond to Muslim requirements. This fact has opened a debate in Belgium and has created controversies in some environments. Thus, this article analyses the implementation of Sharia Law legislation in Belgium and its consequences.

What Makes A Foreign Fighter? Radicalisation and Extremism in Belgium

This article aims to explore the complex issue of what „makes” a foreign fighter: the origins, the key characteristics, the factors that push one away from one’s home country and towards, in the case examined in this article, the Islamic State. Stripping away distorted narratives and political discourse, the article attempts to outline the core of the radicalisation process within the Belgian context based on an overview of available sources. To reach a baseline of understanding as to why Belgian foreign fighters are disproportionately represented among Islamic State combatants, the article delves into the history of Islam in Belgium. This is necessary to be able to trace the processes that led to the contemporary situation. The article subsequently offers a discussion of the elusive profile of aspiring jihadist recruits.

The Political Influence of Islam in Belgium

Belgium is one of the Western European countries in which Muslims have reached more relevance. The immigration process initiated in 1960s brought thousands of people from Turkey and from the Arab World to the major cities of the country. As consequence of their cultural and religious particularities Muslims were progressively claiming their own space in public life. Then, in the analysis of the Muslim political participation in Belgium two stages must be differentiated: The first one dominated by the delegates of the Arabs embassies; and the second one, when the Saudi influence decreased in 1990s giving rise to the emergence of other Islamic groups whose activities were totally involved with the real concerns of Muslims in Belgium. However, after several decades, the impact of the Islamic political activity is still low compared with the social presence of Muslims in the country.

The impact of dramatic events on public debate concerning accommodation of Islam in Europe

Using the data of the EURISLAM project, this article investigates the impact of dramatic events on the public debate with regard to Islam in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. It assesses the extent to which dramatic events such as 9/11, the bombings in Madrid and London and the murder of Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam impacted on the debate on multiculturalism, notably the accommodation of Western-European institutions to Islam. In this contribution, we analyse the overall evolution of public debate in the written press on Muslims, and more particularly Muslim rights, for the period 1999–2009. Our aim is to empirically analyse the transitions that the public debate on Islam in Europe has undergone in the wake of the most dramatic terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslim extremists during the last decade. We hypothesize that dramatic violent events involving Muslim extremists had an impact on the number of claims about Muslims and Islam in general, but not on the debate about religious rights for Muslims in Europe. Descriptive analysis and time series plus intervention analysis were undertaken to test these hypotheses.1

Religious identification and politicization in the face of discrimination: Support for political Islam and political action among the Turkish and Moroccan second generation in Europe

Taking an approach from religion as a social identity and using large-scale comparative surveys in five European cities, we investigate when and how perceived discrimination is associated with religious identification and politicization among the second generation of Turkish and Moroccan Muslims. We distinguish support for political Islam from political action as distinct forms of politicization. In addition, we test the mediating role of religious identification in processes of politicization. Study 1 estimates multi-group structural equation models of support for political Islam in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In line with a social identity model of politicization and across nine inter-group contexts, Muslims who perceived more discrimination identified (even) more strongly as Muslims; and high Muslim identifiers were most ready to support political Islam. In support of a competing social stigma hypothesis, however, negative direct and total effects of perceived discrimination suggest predominant depoliticization. Using separate sub-samples across four inter-group contexts in Belgium, Study 2 adds political action tendencies as a distinct form of politicization. Whereas religious identification positively predicts both forms of politicization, perceived discrimination has differential effects: Muslims who perceived more discrimination were more weary of supporting political Islam, yet more ready to engage in political action to defend Islamic values. Taken together, the studies reveal that some Muslim citizens will politicize and others will depoliticize in the face of discrimination as a function of their religious identification and of prevailing forms of politicization.

The Recognition and Institutionalization of Islam in Belgium

Il y a aujourd'hui 350000 musulmans en Belgique (contre 200000 en 1985). La visibilite de la communaute s'est donc accrue grâce notamment a des mosquees, des ecoles et des centres culturels. Cependant, dans un contexte de recession economique, un climat d'hostilite et de stigmatisation s'est installe sous l'influence certaine du Vlaams Blot, parti flamand d'extreme droite. C'est dans ce contexte que le gouvernement a choisi de faire elire le conseil du culte musulman en 1998. Cette instance, creee en 1974, n'avait en effet jusqu'alors pas eu l'occasion de fonctionner.

The recognition and institutionalisation of Islam in Belgium, Great Britain and the Netherlands

Abstract In this article the authors argue that the historically specific laws and regulations with regard to religious groups in Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands provoke different political reactions to the presence of Muslims. These laws and regulations also affect — to some extent — the ideological representation of Muslims. The reverse process of laws and regulations being changed by politico‐ideological mobilisation also takes place, but the picture is less clear. Sometimes the law has been changed to entrench the norms of the receiving society and to suppress ‘undesirable’ Muslim behaviour. But at other times existing laws have been changed or circumvented to enable Muslims to institutionalise. The ideological representation of Muslims does not necessarily depend on religious characteristics, but may also turn on ethnic or socio‐cultural characteristics.

Moslim-organisaties in België

In Belgium there are about 200,000 immigrants who come from a country in which the Muslim religion is dominant (from Morocco and Turkey in particular). This is a completely new phenomenon, as Belgium has never, even in its colonial history, experienced an encounter with Islam. This text presents the results of a study about all the organized forms of Islam in Belgium, Over the last ten years, these have developed considerably. It is important to distinguish between the diverse nature of all these organized forms: from the mosques and prayer rooms, to movements and brotherhoods, to the action of States and interstate organizations. The Belgian State which' has recognized the Muslim religion, giving it the same status as the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish religions, proves to be an important "organizer of Islam", particularly as regards the teaching of this religion. Organized Islam is becoming one of the institutions on which the future of the insertion of immigrants will depend.