Analyzing the recent bloody attacks on Brussels, Soeren Kern discusses some of the factors that have made Belgium a major hub for Islamist terrorist organizations:
Belgium’s radical-Islam problem originated in the 1960s, when Belgian authorities encouraged mass migration from Turkey and Morocco as a source of cheap labor. These migrants were later followed by [others] from Egypt and Libya.
The factories eventually closed, but the migrants stayed and planted family roots. Today, most Muslims in Belgium are the third- and fourth-generation offspring of the original migrants. While many Belgian Muslims are integrated into Belgian society, many others are not.
Growing numbers of Belgian Muslims live in marginal districts—isolated ghettos where poverty, unemployment, and crime are rampant. . . . Radical imams aggressively canvass the area in search of shiftless youths to wage jihad against the West. As in other European countries, many Muslims in Belgium are embracing Salafism—a radical form of Islam—and its call to wage violent jihad against all nonbelievers for the sake of Allah. . . .
[F]or the past three decades, Belgium has [also] faced an existential crisis due to growing antagonism between the speakers of Dutch and French. . . . This dysfunction extends to Belgian counter-terrorism [in which there is insufficient cooperation between the two groups within the government]. . . .
The language issue also affects integration. As a Washington Post analysis explains, “Many jobs in Brussels require knowledge of French, Flemish or Dutch, and now sometimes English, too, while most immigrants speak mostly Arabic and some French. That has blocked integration.”
Read more on Gatestone: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7677/belgium-jihadists