Alain Destexhe is a Belgian honorary senator, former secretary general of Médecins Sans Frontières and former president of the International Crisis Group. He took part in Éric Zemmour's campaign during the last presidential election.
After the Morocco-Belgium match, riots took place in Brussels, Antwerp and Liège where a police station was attacked by around fifty “young people”, but also in several cities in the Netherlands.
Beyond these incidents, the popular jubilation in the predominantly Moroccan neighborhoods of Brussels, notably in Molenbeek, showed that the Moroccan identity remained much stronger than the Belgian despite most of the inhabitants having dual nationality.
We had to show blindness and seek at all costs to bring reality into line with the ideology of living together so as not to see that the sympathies of Moroccans in Belgium went to the Moroccan team and not to that of "their second country".
Some journalists have nevertheless tried their hand at it, with titles like "
Molenbeek expects to experience a festive Sunday
", "
it doesn't matter who wins between Belgium and Morocco, it will be a party"
, or even a television subject dripping with political correct on one of the two French-speaking television channels which showed the opposite of what the commentary asserted!
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The celebration took place, in Molenbeek, Anderlecht, Schaerbeek and Brussels, municipalities where the Moroccan community is more numerous than the others, including the Belgians of origin.
You should have seen the enthusiasm of these supporters honking and displaying Moroccan flags in the streets of the capital in their car with a Belgian plate.
For many Belgians of origin, this spectacle broke the myth of integration (no one has spoken of assimilation for a long time in Belgium) and had an excessive or even indecent side for Belgium which allowed these Moroccans to live in a prosperous country and benefit from the advantages of the welfare state.
The television channels did not show this symbolic image of a demonstrator taking down a Belgian flag from a building to the applause of the crowd, nor this striking face-to-face between hundreds of Moroccans dancing and singing together steps from the Grand-Place in Brussels, blocked by a cordon of policemen, all Europeans of stock, helmets and clubs, prohibiting them from entering the center of the city.
According to Statbel, the Belgian statistics office, the growth in the number of Moroccans in Belgium has been exponential: 460 only in 1961, 39,000 in 1970 and 800,000 forty years later.
Alain Destexhe
According to Statbel, the Belgian statistics office, the population of Brussels is now 46% of non-European origin (in the sense of EU27 plus the United Kingdom) and only 24% of Belgian origin.
Moroccans represent 7% of the kingdom's population, but 12% in the Brussels-Capital Region, most also holding Belgian nationality.
The growth in the number of Moroccans in Belgium has been exponential: 460 only in 1961, 39,000 in 1970 and 800,000 forty years later.
As a result of this demographic development and the ease of acquiring Belgian nationality (in some cases after three years of residence without any other condition), the country now has 26 deputies, regional or federal, of Moroccan origin and several mayors, who, often encourage communalism.
Among those under 18, Moroccans outnumber Belgians of Belgian origin and many schools in Brussels are made up exclusively of children of non-European origin.
In those of the public network where parents have the choice of religion course, the Muslim is now followed by a majority of students.
Whether these changes are described as diversification of the population or demographic upheaval is irrelevant, the evolution is considerable in a few decades and modifies the physiognomy and the social life of the large Belgian cities.
The veil is more and more present there and it is worn by a majority of women in certain municipalities.
During Ramadan, almost all shops and restaurants are closed in certain neighborhoods.
The number of mosques is exploding and all currents of Islam are represented in Brussels where tensions between Sunnis and Shiites or even between Moroccans and Turks are sometimes high, particularly within the Executive of the Muslims of Belgium, a structure that the authorities have tried to set up to dialogue with a single interlocutor but who goes from crisis to crisis.
While the slaughter of animals without stunning is prohibited in Flanders and Wallonia, the Muslim lobby in the Brussels Parliament succeeded in blocking a legislative proposal going in this direction.
During assize trials or elections, it is common to see women arrive with their husbands, explaining that they cannot be retained as jurors or as assessors because they do not speak any national language, thus testifying to a complete integration failed.
Living together praised by the French-speaking political world is a myth, the communities rubbing shoulders without dating or mixing.
Moroccans marry Moroccans and Turks marry Turks whom they often seek out in the country, family reunification being the main reason for immigration in Belgium as in France.
slaughtering animals without stunning is prohibited in Flanders and Wallonia, the Muslim lobby in the Brussels Parliament succeeded in blocking a legislative proposal along these lines.
During assize trials or elections, it is common to see women arrive with their husbands, explaining that they cannot be retained as jurors or as assessors because they do not speak any national language, thus testifying to a complete integration missed.
Living together praised by the French-speaking political world is a myth, the communities rubbing shoulders without dating or mixing.
Moroccans marry Moroccans and Turks marry Turks whom they often seek out in the country, family reunification being the main reason for immigration in Belgium as in France.
slaughtering animals without stunning is prohibited in Flanders and Wallonia, the Muslim lobby in the Brussels Parliament succeeded in blocking a legislative proposal along these lines.
During assize trials or elections, it is common to see women arrive with their husbands, explaining that they cannot be retained as jurors or as assessors because they do not speak any national language, thus testifying to a complete integration missed.
Living together praised by the French-speaking political world is a myth, the communities rubbing shoulders without dating or mixing.
Moroccans marry Moroccans and Turks marry Turks whom they often seek out in the country, family reunification being the main reason for immigration in Belgium as in France.
Regularly, the colonial past is evoked to justify the anger of young North Africans in France, an explanation which does not hold since similar incidents take place in Belgium, a country which has no historical link with North Africa.
Alain Destexhe
We remember the match France - Algeria in 2001 which had degenerated.
Regularly, the colonial past is evoked to justify the anger of young North Africans in France, an explanation which does not hold since similar incidents take place in Belgium, a country which has no historical link with North Africa.
It was a 1964 convention that paved the way for economic immigration that has long since ceased to exist, but continues indefinitely through family reunification, which Americans rightly call “chain migration”.
Read alsoMorocco: Belgium repatriates volunteers threatened for wearing shorts
What is most distressing is the denial and the total absence of debate on the issues of immigration and integration on the French-speaking side of the country.
Neither the media nor the political parties talk about it.
The riots of last Sunday were attributed by the mayor of Brussels to "
thugs and scoundrels "
“, a discourse widely taken up, without further clarification or analysis.
The link with excessive immigration, greater than that of France in relative numbers, is never made again.
While in France and Flanders, the debate is lively around this theme, it is as if French-speaking Belgium had given up, accepting its destiny as a multicultural country with, in the short term, a Muslim majority in its capital and a new normal occasional urban riots, shootings and terrorist attacks.
