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The Changing Face of Europe
Belgium
Paul Martin
BRUSSELS ? Inside a warehouse in suburban Cologne, 2500 Turkish workers kneel in stockinged feet facing Mecca. It is Friday, the Muslim Sabbath. With their voices rising in a great crescendo they proclaim: ?Allah Akbar?.
In several thousand mosques throughout Europe ? most of them makeshift places of worship in the backstreets of Muslim ghettos ? the same fervent cry echoes out. It is a demonstration of the power of Islam among Europe?s millions of Middle Eastern immigrants who have now become prey to a new and potentially dangerous fundamentalism.
France?s role in the current Algerian conflict is but one catalyst for the upsurge in fundamentalism among Europe?s Muslims. The anti-Iraq Western coalition in the Gulf War caused resentment. Europe?s inability to protect the Bosnia Muslims in the face of Christian Serbia?s onslaught has caused alienation. However, the main reasons for its growth are largely social, economic and cultural. Recruits for the Islamic groups are readily found among the socially disadvantaged who feel the state has failed them.
Muslims make up the lion?s share of Europe?s estimated seven million Third World migrant workers. France, with 2.4 million Muslims, has the continent?s biggest Islamic population. One million Algerians were born in France and as many more emigrated. Another great concentration is Germany which has more than two million Turkish workers and their families (350,000 of whom are Kurds). Britain has its own, largely indigenous, Muslim population of almost one million. And large pockets are to be found elsewhere across Western Europe.
The infrastructure for the spread of Islam is to be found everywhere and is centered on the mosques, cultural centers and social clubs that have proliferated wherever Muslim communities have taken root. In Germany alone there are more than 300 community centers complete with mosques, meeting halls and Koran schools. Twenty-five years ago there were only about a dozen prayer centers in France. Today there are probably more than 1,000. Over the last decade it is estimated that tens of thousands of Muslim children, some of whom are third and fourth generation European citizens, have received a religious education at Koran schools.
The cultural centers boast stacks of newly printed Korans, massive libraries of books in Arabic, Turkish, and the language of their host country and posters depicting the Kaaba at Mecca, St. Sofia Mosque and other religious landmarks. Each year, hundreds of Imams from all of the Muslim world are invited to make preaching tours throughout Europe. A popular poster in the more militant Islamic centers features a Kalashnikov rifle, shaped into a calligraphic rendition of the opening words of the Koran. Islamic propaganda on video, fax and computer is often available. So far their rate of penetration has been low.
Germany has become a major base for fundamentalists in Europe with some 21,250 activists on the lists of the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the country?s equivalent of the FBI. Turks and Kurds predominate among the known activists with 19,000 Turks, 700 Arabs, 350 Iranians and 1,200 from a whole range of Muslim countries. The BKA admits that every Islamic organization has a network of agents in the country. The weapons are mainly bought in the Czech and Slovak republics and spirited across the border to France and on to Algeria.
Iran has targeted the Turkish community for its campaign to spread the fundamentalist gospel. German intelligence maintains that Iranian agents, operating out of the country?s Bonn embassy, now direct the militant Turkish Islamic Movement in Cologne. A Turkish speaking radio and television station based in Amsterdam and beamed toward an audience across the border in Germany, was set up and financed from this source. In Berlin alone, 13,000 Arabs are legal residents, though there are believed to be twice as many living there. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah all have their own cells in the city.
France?s crackdown on a major network of Islamic activists last November revealed the extent of the potential security problem. The network provided military and financial backing for Islamic extremists in Algeria. In their raid, the French police netted a dozen AK-47 assault rifles, other weapons, explosives, grenades and a print shop used to make forged documents. The ringleaders ran a Koran school and youth center on the outskirts of Paris.
Tiny Belgium, with a population of more than 500,000 immigrants from Muslim countries, is particularly vulnerable to the rising tide of extremism lapping its borders. So far, the estimated 150,000 Turks and 160,000 North Africans living in the ethnic ghettos of Brussels, Antwerp, Gent and other major cities have remained generally peaceful, if not disaffected. However, there is growing evidence that the fundamental extremism from co-religionists in Germany and France has begun to penetrate sections of these communities.
As the crackdown on Algerian extremists has gathered steam in France, increasing numbers of Muslim activists and their supporters have crossed the border into Belgium to seek asylum. They have received a firm thumbs down. Security forces have also observed growing attempts by fundamentalists to infiltrate mosques and cultural centers that have proliferated in Muslim communities.
The doomsday scenarios are horrific, including one which paints a picture of a Mediterranean Muslim version of the ?boat people? drama that unfolded in Asia. This scenario raises the prospect of as many as 30 million North African immigrants seeking entry into Western Europe over the next two decades with economic disruption in affected Western European countries and the resulting xenophobic backlash.
Such are the perceived dangers in North Africa as the Algerian conflict raises alarm bells over the future of the Mediterranean?s increasing troublesome Arc of Crisis.
The essence of the crisis is demographic. North African states are experiencing annual population growth rates of between 2.5 and 3 percent, and their combined populations are expected to rise from the current 70 million to 140 million by the year 2025. Even now, growth in employment opportunities satisfies only about half the demand at 200,000 places annually. Add to this the already huge populations of the eastern end of the Mediterranean ? Egypt and Turkey ? both of which are expected to increase by 70 percent in the same period, and are experiencing similar internal difficulties.
As it turns out, there is already considerable traffic across the narrow straits of Gibraltar. Thousands of Moroccan ?illegals? set off in tiny boats headed for the Spanish coast. Many do not make it and no statistics exist to record their fate. Racketeers land boatloads of immigrants on desolate areas of Spain?s south, where they are picked up by trucks and driven into the countryside, into obscurity and eventually the underground economy. Others make their way to Portugal, Italy and Greece. Italy, with a population of 57 million, plays host to some 1.8 million immigrant workers, 1.2 million of them illegal, and largely from North Africa.
Stability within the EU is threatened on three counts by developments in Algeria and its feared spill-over effect. Firstly, there is the prospect of a growing number of refugees and would-be immigrants coming there. Secondly, there is the very real danger that the conflict itself could be transplanted to the immigrant communities already within the EU. Thirdly, a massive influx of new immigrants would not only put a strain on European communities already facing unemployment problems themselves, but would cause a violent backlash from Europe?s far right.
France, Switzerland and West Germany closed their borders for foreign workers in 1973. As a result, Spain and Italy, and to a lesser extent Portugal, became de facto receiving countries with large concentrations of ?waiting foreigners.? The rapidly expanded ?new underground economy? in the booming southern EU countries was fed by labor from the illegal immigrants. Now, migration from North Africa is seen as one of the biggest threats to security in Southern Europe in the medium term. | |
