[WaPo] The Grand Mosque of Brussels is the country's biggest and oldest site for Muslim worship. Officials in Belgium say it is also a hotbed for Saudi-backed Islamist extremism. Now the parliament wants the nation’s leaders to take over the sprawling complex that is just steps from the gleaming core of the European Union. The sudden move against the mosque underscores the challenge for Western European leaders seeking to embrace what they call a “European Islam” that endorses pluralistic values. For too long they have stood by as imams preaching Wahabbism have worked among their populations, encouraging frustrated descendants of North African immigrants to wall themselves off from society.
But the crackdown on the mosque puts Belgian policymakers in the unusual position of picking and choosing among strains of Islam. The dilemma grew more pressing after Europe was struck repeatedly by Islamic State-inspired terrorist attacks, often perpetrated by citizens born inside the countries they have targeted.
The mosque’s leaders “are trying to live in their splendid isolation with a radical point of view, and their aim is not to integrate into our society. And that is a big problem,” said Servais Verherstraeten, one of the leaders of a Belgian parliamentary commission that recommended last month that the government break the Saudi government’s 99-year, rent-free lease on the mosque. The lease was handed to Saudi King Faisal in 1969 as a goodwill gesture by Belgian King Baudouin.
| The kind of grand gesture necessary to placate potentates when oil prices are high, but not nearly as necessary when prices fall and the potentate is visibly heading toward bankruptcy. Let us be grateful to the frackers for allowing Belgium such a luxury in the brief moments when they have a government and are able to enjoy it. |