Belgium cuts funding to the Muslim Executive (EMB)
Accused of opacity and of being the plaything of foreign interference, the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium (EMB) is no longer recognized as the official interlocutor of the Belgian authorities.
Indeed, the Belgian Executive has cut off supplies to the management body of Muslim worship by denouncing, according to the Belgian Minister of Justice, in charge of worship, Vincent Van Quickenborne, “a grossly unconstitutional action”.
Recall that Minister Vincent Van, a Flemish liberal, had recently been the subject of a kidnapping attempt by the Macro Mafia gang.
The ax therefore fell in mid-September, and is now being carried out. In fact, the minister deprived this body, which is the official interlocutor of the authorities and is responsible for the temporal management of this cult, its official recognition and its subsidy which was 639,000 euros in 2021.
It’s a little bit into the context of the saying “burn what you worship”. Indeed, the EMB, a body which, at the time of its official recognition in the mid-1990s, appeared as a model in Europe, seems to have become, overnight, in the eyes of the Belgian authorities, the enemy number one fighter.
What does the Belgian executive reproach the EMB for? Not being independent enough, too undemocratic and transparent, and above all being subject to foreign interference… from Morocco and Turkey, in this case the two most numerous communities among the 400,000 members of the Muslim community in Belgium .
This is not from today. “J.I will now refuse any import of imams, foreign influence must decrease”already said, at the time in 2017, the Secretary of State for Migration Theo Francken.
Belgium wants to reduce the influence of “certain countries on its Muslim community, those whose agents it considers to be too active, and which control a good part of the mosques, recognized or not”.
The Sûreté (Belgium’s internal intelligence) warned, for its part, in 2020, of the persistence of “foreign interference”, which obviously weighed on the decision of the current Minister Van Quickenborne.
Other arguments are not to be outdone and have influenced this decision, such as the very structure of the EMB, whose administrators have not met for almost three years, its management (entrusted to 17 people supposed to be representatives of the various currents ) is monopolized by a handful of people and, above all, elections supposed to take place in 2020 have still not been organized. They should, in the minds of the political authorities, promote the establishment of a “pluralistic, inclusive, representative and transparent” body. All aimed, in reality, at giving birth to a “Belgian Islam”.
But not that, because by the admission of the board of directors of the EMB itself, “extremist elements” had infiltrated the body and that the official desire to see women sit seems impossible to translate into the facts.
The project of a “Belgian Islam” therefore fell through. Reduced to “current affairs” for weeks, plunged into a legal void, the EMB is experiencing an existential crisis and the minister’s call to organize itself to create another tool promoting better integration, seems illusory.
So there you have it, and in the face of the problems noted, Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne twice gave notice to the Executive to put an end to the shortcomings noted. Consultation meetings also took place. ” Despite many promises, the necessary measures to this end have still not been taken to date. As a result, the Muslim community in our country still does not have the representation to which it is entitled, which hinders the integration of Muslims in our country.“, had explained the minister recently.
It should be noted that the Muslim religion was formalized in 1974 in Belgium, which notably authorized it to benefit from public funding, like the Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant and Anglican religions, as well as the movement of ‘Secular action.
The government was required by the Constitution to recognize a representative body of the Muslim community. The mission of this body: to appoint imams paid by the Ministry of Justice and teachers of Islamic religion – “religious and philosophical” courses are on the program of primary and secondary schools –, to examine the files for the recognition of mosques and, then , exercise guardianship over them, etc.