just like home Evening prayers at a makeshift Antwerp mosque
Muslim leaders are enraged by such sentiments. Belgian-Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah is trying to do something about it. At one recent appearance, Abou Jahjah told a packed hall in Antwerp that it was time to mobilize to fight right-wingers like Dewinter. "The problem is the ignorance and stupidity of the Belgian people," he stormed during a long, rabble-rousing speech to an audience of about 500. Four years ago, when he was 29, he founded the radical Arab European League and recently moved to Brussels from Antwerp to try to confront his right-wing foes in Parliament through the Muslim Democratic Party, the League's new political wing. Many children of Antwerp's Muslim immigrants, young people born and raised in Belgium, say they want to assimilate — but worry that they'll be treated as foreigners no matter what. "People are afraid of the unknown, but they don't want to know us," says Moussa Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Antwerp-born accountant standing at the back of the hall during Jahjah's speech.
Abdulaziz's parents moved from Morocco to Belgium during the 1960s. His father worked as a silver smelter in an Antwerp factory for 30 years. He and his wife had 10 children, all of whom now have Belgian passports. Abdulaziz himself speaks Dutch as well as Arabic, French and Berber. "We are not foreigners," he says. "We were born here, yet we are born with this stamp on our forehead that says 'foreigner' that will never go away."
Some members of Belgium's Muslim community agree with Dewinter that certain aspects of Islam — like insisting women are veiled in public or condoning the murder of women who commit adultery — are incompatible with European values. Indeed, some Muslims say they follow the teachings of their clerics as closely as they do Belgium's national laws; for a few of them, religious teachings remain more important. Hence some French Muslim girls have defied the law banning head scarves in public schools.
In the small working-class town of Mechelen, halfway between Antwerp and Brussels, young men gather each morning at the Rzoezie immigrant advice center, which offers job-hunting advice to unemployed Muslims. Staff have already called several prospective employers, frequently noting in pencil on job advertisements, "Doesn't want Moroccans." Those stipulations are illegal, but Rzoezie employees don't have the resources to sue employers. Says Yassin El-Abdi, 23, who came to Rzoezie hoping to find a job: "It's hopeless. It's too late for Belgium to change."
Yet many companies know they need immigrant labor. With European birth rates at historically low levels, immigrants have become the most dependable source of population growth for many countries, including Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. In Spain, which has one of the world's lowest birth rates, the government this month began offering permanent residence to some illegal immigrants who could prove they had jobs. The program could legalize as many as 800,000 immigrants. Dewinter fears plans like these will create an "explosive cocktail" of ethnic groups. "Islamization is Europe's biggest problem right now," he says, "and if we don't do something fast, it will be too late."
Dewinter plans to run for mayor of Antwerp next year. His main rival is likely to be Ahmed Azzuz, a goateed 28-year-old son of Moroccan immigrant factory workers. Azzuz is the local head of Jahjah's Arab European League, and is seen as a test candidate in the new Muslim Democratic Party's strategy to win local races. "Dewinter can probably win in 2006," says Azzuz, sitting in a teahouse and wearing a sweatshirt that reads muslim by nature. "But in 2012, we can." Until the two sides learn to live together, nobody wins.
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Muslims say they follow the teachings of their clerics as closely as they do Belgium's national laws; for a few of them, religious teachings remain more important. Hence some French Muslim girls have defied the law banning head scarves in public schools. 
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