stay out Dewinter wants a freeze on immigration into Antwerp
Posted Sunday, February 20, 2005; 12.03 GMT
You won't hear many mainstream political leaders talk that way. With an eye on majority opinion, governments are flying to the defense of their national identities. In the Netherlands earlier this month, Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk announced that immigrants would from now on be compelled to pass an examination on Dutch language and culture — and attend 350 hours of classes — before becoming permanent residents. The French government will begin to teach Western history and law classes this year for all Muslim imams, while in Britain, the Labour Party and opposition Tories are both promising to cut numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers to favor the highly skilled and make it harder to settle permanently. Polls show that because of public disgust with the current system, this is one area where the Tories are beating Labour in the run-up to the general election expected in May (see following story).
Many Muslims see these moves as racist. They argue that only a tiny proportion among them supports extremist views, and that Europeans' fear of extremism is a pretext for discriminatory policies. They insist that Islamic ideals can coexist with European values. And they say that both sides should try to close the gaps in income and hiring through affirmative action and antidiscrimination programs, because second-generation immigrants — born and bred in Europe — are coming of age in large numbers, and continue to have trouble finding places for themselves. It's a fundamental argument — do the immigrants not want to assimilate, or do their hosts not want them to? — that's playing out every day in places like Antwerp North, where an estimated 9,000 Muslims coexist with about 18,000 non-Muslims.
About 5% of Belgium's 10.3 million people are Muslim immigrants, largely from Morocco and Turkey. Some 50,000 of them live in northern and eastern Antwerp. Growing numbers of East Europeans and Asians have also come to Belgium in recent years, but these groups — and to a lesser extent, Africans from Belgium's former colonies — have remained largely irrelevant to the heated arguments about immigration, which Dewinter calls a "Trojan horse for importing Islamic fundamentalism."
To fight this perceived threat, Dewinter wants to cap the number of mosques in Antwerp and freeze all new immigration. "Multiculturalism is an illusion," says the lanky politician, who was first elected to Belgium's federal Parliament at 25 on a campaign to declare the Flanders region an independent country. "Most immigrants are not integrating. They are sticking together in ghettos around the smell of their own food and their own way of life." He wants to prevent Muslim immigrants from marrying in their home countries and bringing their spouses back to Belgium. He wants to deport immigrants who break Belgian laws, and compel immigrants to learn Belgian language and culture. And, following France's lead last year, he wants to prevent Muslim girls from wearing head scarves in public schools. "They have to behave like we do," he says. "There has to be separation of church and state. Rivers of blood have been spilled in Europe to ensure that."
The provocative rhetoric of Dewinter and his Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party has helped attract the support of an estimated 24% of Belgians. In regional elections last June, Dewinter's party captured a third of the vote in Antwerp and nearly a quarter of the national total, making it the biggest single political party in Flanders. At the Vlaams Belang's local office in Antwerp North, just a few blocks from the unfinished mosque, Luisa vanden Bulck, 72, speaks for most party supporters when she says, "The streets are so full of Moroccans and Africans that we don't feel like we are in Antwerp."
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affirmative action and antidiscrimination programs, because second-generation immigrants — born and bred in Europe — are coming of age in large numbers, and continue to have trouble finding places for themselves. It's a fundamental argument — do the immigrants not want to assimilate, or do their hosts not want them to? — that's playing out every day in places like Antwerp North, where an estimated 9,000 Muslims coexist with about 18,000 non-Muslims. 
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