Islam in Belgium

Over 10,000 workers from these countries moved to Belgium and mostly worked in low-skilled jobs such as coal mining, steelmaking, the automobile industry, etc.

This stopped in 1974 when all foreign manual labour was banned from entry into the country and, in the same year, Islam was officially recognised as a religion in Belgium.

[5] The Belgian government does not collect or publish statistics on religious affiliation, so the exact number of Muslims in Belgium is unknown.

[2]: 230  A 2009 analysis of the European 2006 PISA survey concluded inequality between minorities (including Muslims) and native Belgian students was one of the highest in all of Europe.

The same analysis observed a "high degree of segregation in Belgian cities," which they stated was the main cause for the difference in school performance.

Several studies have also concluded that high levels of discrimination in the work market is one of the leading causes of economic inequality among minorities in Belgium.

[2]: 231  Some politicians and commentators have implied economic differences between Muslims and non-Muslims were primarily the result of cultural failing or religion but a 2011 study by Agirdag et al. found no correlation between "religiosity" and "school performance.

[16] In 2008, Le Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique (CEVIPOL) published a study using exit polling data following the 2007 Belgian federal election.

[17] The study found that among Muslims in Brussels, 42.3% voted for the Socialist Party, 16.7% for the Humanist Democratic Centre, 14.7% for the Reformist Movement and 12.2% for Ecolo.

[21] In 2012, a new political party named "ISLAM" was established with four candidates, which at the local elections of 2012 gained 2 seats, in the Molenbeek and Anderlecht districts of Brussels.

Its policies include separating men and women on public transport and schools being forced to offer halal meat.

Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam resident and Auschwitz survivor, was quoted in the newspaper Aftenposten in 2010: "The antisemitism now is even worse than before the Holocaust.

[31] The increased frequency of antisemitic attacks started in May 2014, when four people were killed in a shooting at the Belgian Jewish Museum in Brussels.

[32] Two days later, a young Muslim man entered the CCU (Jewish Cultural Center) while an event was taking place and shouted racist slurs.

[28] In June 2005, the Antwerp court of appeal ruled that it was outside the jurisdiction of the state to determine whether Islam requires women to wear a headscarf and that girls in public schools have the right to do so.

[citation needed] At the end of 2005, approximately twenty municipalities had issued a ban on walking the streets completely veiled.

[citation needed] Two Belgian Muslim women, Samia Belcacemi and Yamina Oussar, challenged a 2011 veil ban, asserting the law infringed on their freedom of religion.

In response to the upholding of the law, Belcacemi told the court that she continued to wear the niqab after it was banned but had eventually stopped because she could not afford fines or jail time.

[36] In 2019, the State Security Service listed 100 organisations in Belgium which promoted Salafist ideology including mosques, community centers and educational establishments.

Nizar Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years for plotting a suicide attack against the NATO air base at Kleine Brogel.

Tarek Maaroufi, of the Tunisian Combat Group, was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in a Brussels-based fake passport ring that supplied fake Belgian passports to the men who assassinated former Afghan Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before the 11 September attacks.

[citation needed] In October 2004, a Belgian court sentenced eight Sunni Islamic militants to prison terms of up to 5 years for plotting attacks and for links to Al Qaeda.

On 9 November 2005, Muriel Degauque, a Belgian convert to Sunni Islam, committed a suicide car bomb attack against a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad.

"[2]: 251  In May 2002 a lone attacker broke into a family home around dawn, murdered two Muslim parents during their morning prayers and set the residential building on fire.

It lists its goal as "promot[ing] a multicultural society by fighting against discrimination and stereotypes, in particular against Muslim veiled women.

Similarly, the "Open Job Testing" project, backed by Brussels MP Didier Gosuin, was launched by CCIB in October 2016 with aims to address the obstacles to employment faced by individuals when accessing the job market and compile statistical evidence pertaining to discrimination in the labour market.