Some members of Vlaams Belang, an intensely xenophobic Flemish nationalist group, occupied the roof of an Antwerp building that the municipal authorities will turn into a mosque.
The protest against “the Islamisation of Antwerp” and the “supermosque” (as Vlaams Belang leader Filip Dewinter defined it) may continue next week with a pork barbecue in the same building.
A total of 166 out of 1,466 cases launched in connection with discrimination and racism-related offenses involve faith, according to the 2010 report prepared by Belgium’s Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR).
Eighty-four percent of these cases are connected to Islam while only 2 percent concern Christianity and Judaism. The high number of cases of discrimination against Muslims is likely to bring more debates on Islamophobia back to the agenda. Eighty percent of the complaints filed with the CEOOR involve racism.
About two-thirds of the cases involving Islam stem from Islamophobia, the report says. These incidents of Islamophobia are mostly characterized by propaganda being disseminated through email and pressure in the workplace. The workplace-related cases of discrimination include exclusion and verbal provocation of Muslims. The report notes these instances are a result of workplace administrations believing that “religion has no place in the workplace”. The tension arising from Islamophobic attitudes in the workplace is mostly eliminated “by transferring the Muslim employee involved to another department or laying her/him off”.
Furthermore, 50 percent of cases of discrimination involving faith are linked to media organizations that publish or air unfair accusations or generalizations about members of a specific religion. Twenty-five percent of these cases concern recruitment or promotion while 8 percent involve services provided. The cases of discrimination in the latter category are mostly visible in real estate purchases or rentals. Some real estate agents and home owners are not inclined to rent out their properties to people who they believe are of a different faith.
Additionally, the number of cases of discrimination reported to the CEOOR in 2010 increased by 25 percent compared to the previous year. A list of companies allegedly reluctant to employ foreign employees was recently posted on the Internet.
Belgian Jews reacted with surprise at news that a member of the Israeli government met this week with a leader of the Flemish extreme-right party Vlaams Belang in Antwerp.
Ayoob Kara, a Druze who is Deputy Minister for the Development of Galilee and the Negev, met with Filip Dewinter who hosted him in the Flemish parliament followed by a meeting with other European extreme-rightist politicians and a visit to the heavily Muslim populated area of Antwerp North. According to the Flemish party, the visit came several months after a visit of Dewinter in Israel.
At a joint press conference Dewinter explained the need to warn against the growing Islamization of the West.
The Israeli embassy reacted with surprise and embarrassment. An embassy spokesperson told the Joods Actueel weekly magazine published in Antwerp: “We have learned about the visit through the press, we were not aware of this visit.”
He insisted that this was a private visit by Ayoob Kara, which was later confirmed by Mark Regev, spokesman of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Deputy Kara is in Belgium in his personal capacity and his visit does not reflect government policy,” said Regev.
But the local Jewish community says the visit risks to severely embarrass the community and Israel. “This visit is very damaging for us,” said Michael Freilich, editor in chief of Joods Actueel.
He said: “Israel and the Jewish community are not at war with Islam, we are at war with extremists, and that’s a quite a different thing. Singling out a religion, as the Vlaams Belang does, inevitably brings back dark memories of a not too distant past where it was Jews who were persecuted because of their religion. Is this the message we want to send to Europe? That Israel follows the racist ideology of Europe’s most notorious bigots?”
The Jewish community also stressed that it was precisely the Vlaams Belang party that proposed last month a bill in the Belgian Senate calling for amnesty for Belgian collaborators of the Nazis during WWII.
Belgium was set Wednesday to become the second European Union country to enforce a ban on public wearing of Islamic face veils, as its senate failed to raise objections against the provision passed last month by the lower chamber of parliament.
The Chamber of Deputies approved the so-called burqa ban law on April 28. The senate had 15 days to interfere with it, but declined to do so, the Belga news agency said, quoting sources from the Belgian Parliament.
Belgian lawmakers had already voted to ban Islamic face veils last year, but the law did not get into the statute books as parliament was dissolved in the wake of a government crisis fueled by a row between the country’s French and Dutch-speaking politicians.
“This time it should go through,” Belga wrote, indicating that the law is set to be enforced ten days after its publication in the country’s official journal.
The measure is supported by all political parties except French- and Dutch-speaking Greens, which either opposed it or abstained in last month’s chamber vote.
The law would punish anyone caught in public places with their face completely or partially covered –thus preventing their identification – with fines between 15 to 20 euros (21 to 35 dollars) and/or up to seven days’ imprisonment.
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have criticized it, arguing that it “would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion” of affected women.
Belgium has taken a major step toward banning burqa-type Islamic dress in public when its lower house of parliament overwhelmingly backed the measure.
After Thursday’s approval, the senate still has several weeks to decide whether to put the bill up for further discussion and another vote.
The Belgian legislature already came close to approving such legislation last year, but the process was held up at the last moment when the governing coalition collapsed.
On Thursday, the bill was approved by an overwhelming majority of 136-1 and two abstentions.
Associated Press, 28 April 2011
Update: See also the statement by the far-right alliance, Cities Against Islamisation, which declares itself “satisfied with Burka ban in Belgium”. Its chairman, Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang, is quoted as saying: “Burka ban is just the first step, the recognition and subsidising of Islam in Belgium has to be revoked. Islam doesn’t belong on European soil.”
The statement adds: “The vote also illustrates once again the pioneering role that parties like the Vlaams Belang and others play. Cities Against Islamisation hopes the burka ban in Belgium may lead to the reduction and forcing back of Islam. After this first symbolic victory the next step is to undo the recognition and subsidizing of Islam. Islam is a totalitarian conquestial religion, a threat to our European values and our western way of life.”
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism – a detailed analysis by Executive Director, Liz Fekete, of key speeches made over the past six months by leading centre-right politicians from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.
These speeches attack multiculturalism and immigration and link them to the economic crisis. The IRR finds that:
In Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalismthe IRR warns that:
Read the IRR’s research Understanding the European-wide assault on multiculturalism here.
A pig’s head buried under a Christian cross along with several offensive inscriptions have been found at the future site of a mosque in southern Belgium.
The inscription “Muhammad lies here” was among the Islamophobia-fueling slogans found at the French-speaking Charleroi city, AFP reported.
A committee in Belgium’s lower chamber of parliament approved Wednesday a law outlawing burqas and other kinds of Islamic face veils – relaunching efforts to introduce the ban nearly one year after they were thwarted by a government crisis.
The law seeks to punish anyone caught in public places with their face completely or partly covered – thus preventing their identification – with fines between 15 to 20 euros (21 to 35 dollars) and/or up to seven days’ imprisonment.
The draft law still needs to be approved by the full Chamber of Deputies and by the Senate, Belgium’s upper house.
A similar bill won backing from the Chamber last April, but was still waiting to be approved by the Senate when a linguistic squabble between Belgium’s French- and Dutch-speaking politicians led to parliament being dissolved, triggering early elections.
The bill was reintroduced by the centre-right French-speaking Mouvement Reformateur (MR), which stressed the need for a national law outlawing burqas after judges in January scrapped a local ban imposed in Etterbeek, a district of Brussels, the Belga news agency said.
Like last year, all other parties backed the proposal except for the French- and Dutch-speaking Green parties, which renewed calls for Belgium’s top administrative court to review the constitutionality of such a ban before it is introduced.
Via Islam in Europe
After being refused an extension of her contract because she wore a headscarf to work, an employee of Hema last week turned down a new job offered by the Dutch-owned retail chain. Antwerp-born Joyce Van op den Bosch, 20, said the new offer was not satisfactory.
“This is not my old job as a saleswoman; here I have to stay in the warehouse. I won’t be accepting their offer,” she said. In addition, the contract was temporary and part time, while Van op den Bosch had been promised a full-time job.
Van op den Bosch had been employed by Randstad as temporary staff in the Hema store in Genk, where she lives. When her contract reached its end and was not renewed, she was told there had been customer complaints about her headscarf. According to a spokesman for Randstad, wearing a headscarf was “not in conformity with Hema’s company dress code”. Her contract was not renewed, he said, because she had declined to comply.
At the beginning of her employment, Van op den Bosch had asked if wearing a headscarf was acceptable, and she was told it was. She was even provided with a Hema headscarf, as worn by staff in the Netherlands. That went on for two months, then came “many negative reactions” from customers, according to Hema spokesperson Inge Van Baarsen. The company declined to say how many complaints were received.
In a statement, the company made an unusual claim: “Since in Belgium is it not customary to wear a headscarf in a public place”, Hema decided to ask Van op den Bosch to stop wearing the headscarf, which she declined to do. “We wish to stress that this decision is not connected to the wearing of a headscarf as such, but that it applies to any outward appearance which is not in keeping with the neutral and discreet image of Hema,” the statement said.
However, Jozef De Witte, director of the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism, said that the case appears to be discrimination. The temp agency cannot discriminate among their staff on the basis of the complaints or prejudices of a client – in this case Hema. Unless the store cancelled its contract with Randstad as a whole, it would be guilty of discriminating against one member of staff.
Randstad later admitted it had misgivings about the question of discrimination against the wearing of a headscarf and had applied earlier this month to the Centre for Equal Opportunities for advice. The centre said a headscarf was in most cases not a significant item of business clothing and so could not be grounds for dismissal. Randstad later said it could not take the centre’s advice, since a number of employment law experts disagreed.
Last weekend, Hema issued the statement: “By permitting the wearing of a headscarf and later withdrawing permission, Hema behaved unfairly towards the temporary employee. Internal rules for work clothing have now been refined, central to which is that staff should be as neutral as possible in the view of the public.”
For Van op den Bosch (pictured), nothing is decided. “This week on Wednesday I have an appointment with my lawyer,” she said. “Then we’ll know where everything stands.” Also last weekend, about 300 people took part in a demonstration organised by supporters of the right to wear a headscarf.
Meanwhile, the controversy over the headscarf was also revived again at the federal level after a member of staff of the socialists appeared in parliament wearing one. N-VA called for a ban on the display of all religious symbols in parliament, a position supported by French-speaking liberals and the far-right Vlaams Belang.
Last year Jan Peumans, N-VA speaker of the Flemish parliament, reprimanded Vlaams Belang’s Filip Dewinter after he called for the expulsion of a woman wearing a headscarf in the public gallery.
Belgium’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the official Flemish Community schools network has the right to decide for itself whether the Moslem headscarf or other religious symbols may be worn in their schools. However, it is another body, the Council of State, which will have the final say.
The matter came to a head after a school in Antwerp banned the wearing of the headscarf on its premises two years ago. The matter resurfaced at the beginning of last school year following controversy about a ban in two Antwerp schools. The Flemish Community schools authority then decided on a blanket ban on the wearing of ideological symbols in all its schools. The ban is set to become operational on 1 September 2011.
A year ago the Council of State suspended the introduction of the ban. Before making a ruling the Council wanted to learn whether it had the jurisdiction to rule in such a matter. The Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled that this was the case.
Tuesday’s ruling does not change anything to the present situation in Flemish Community schools, but it does give the Council of State the authority to take a decision.