Skrämmande! När man då kritiserar denna utveckling, vänder sig man då framförallt mot vår egen undfallande kultur eller den revirmedvetna och socialt expansiva arabisk-muslimska kulturen? Antingen gör du som japanerna och stänger ditt land för andra kulturer eller så spottar du upp din egen kultur och börjar ställa oavvisliga krav på en långgående anpassning som betyder någonting för inflyttare. Lars-Erik Eriksson
23 november 2015 11:18
[Image]
Molenbeeks framtid. "Amokmakers" kallas de. Bråkstakar helt enkelt. Räcker det som beskrivning? Tror inte det.
Jag läser denna söndag i Politico.eu om Bryssel och Molenbeek. Det är skrämmande läsning om en stadsdel dit det tidigare mest flyttade in hippa och avslappade belgare. Teun Voeten, som är antropolog och krigsfotograf har levt där. Han berättar på Politico.eu varför han packade väskan och flyttade. Jag citerar frikostigt ur artikeln eftersom jag betraktar den som en unik ögonvittnesskildring av en kuffar, en som islamisterna ändå skulle ha fördrivit förr eller senare
Last Saturday
in Paris, at the Boulevard Voltaire near the Bataclan club, I found myself staring
at a pool of blood. I wondered what was happening with the world, and refocused
my camera on the aftermath of the terror. When it became clear the attacks were
planned in Molenbeek, I was not surprised. The real surprise? That Belgium
expressed shock at the connection (...)
I was part of a
new wave of young urban professionals, mostly white and college-educated — what
the Belgians called bobo, (“bourgeois bohémiens”) — who settled in the area out
of pragmatism. We had good intentions. Our contractor’s name was Hassan. He was
Moroccan, and we thought that was very cool. We imagined that our kids would
one day play happily with his on the street. We hoped for less garbage on the
streets, less petty crime. We were confident our block would slowly improve,
and that our lofts would increase in value. (We even dared to hope for a hip
art gallery or a trendy bar.) We felt like pioneers of the Far West, like we
were living in the trenches of the fight for a multicultural society. Slowly,
we woke up to reality. Hassan turned out to be a crook and disappeared with €95,000,
the entire budget the tenants had pooled together for our building’s
renovation. The neighborhood was hardly multicultural. Rather, with roughly 80
percent of the population of Moroccan origin, it was tragically
conformist and homogenous. There may be a vibrant alternative culture in
Casablanca and Marrakech, but certainly not in Molenbeek. Over nine years, as I
witnessed the neighborhood become increasingly
intolerant. Alcohol became unavailable in most shops and
supermarkets; I heard stories of fanatics at the Comte des Flandres metro
station who pressured women to wear the veil; Islamic bookshops
proliferated, and it became impossible to buy a decent newspaper. With an
unemployment rate of 30 percent, the streets were eerily empty until late in
the morning. Nowhere was there a bar or café where white, black and brown
people would mingle. Instead, I witnessed petty crime, aggression, and
frustrated youths who spat at our girlfriends and called them “filthy whores.”
If you made a remark, you were inevitably scolded and called a racist. There
used to be Jewish shops on Chaussée de Gand, but these were terrorized by gangs
of young kids and most closed their
doors around 2008. Openly gay people were routinely intimidated, and
also packed up their bags.
I finally left
Molenbeek in 2014. It was not out of fear. The tipping point, I remember, was
an encounter with a Salafist, who tried to convert me on my street. It boiled
down to this: I could no longer stand to live in this despondent, destitute,
fatalistic neighborhood.
[Image]
Jihadisterna luftar sitt hat mot det Molenbeek där de lever.
It is nearly
impossible to explain to an outsider, but Belgium is a country of six
governments, Brussels a city with 19 mayors. These many administrative posts
are not filled with competent people. Security services are fragmented and tend
to compete with one another. The lack of a strong, central authority may be one
of the many quirks of this sometimes charmingly dysfunctional country, but just
as it resulted in many botched trials — notably of the Brabant Killers, or “Nijvel Gang”
who committed a series of violent raids between 1982 and 1985, and
the Dutroux scandal
in 1995, to name just two — it also creates the perfect breeding ground for
potential terrorists.
But the most
important factor is Belgium’s culture of denial. The country’s political debate
has been dominated by a complacent progressive elite who firmly believes
society can be designed and planned. Observers who point to unpleasant truths
such as the high incidence of crime among Moroccan youth and violent tendencies
in radical Islam are accused of being propagandists of the extreme-right, and
are subsequently ignored and ostracized (...)
In 2008, Arthur
van Amerongen was tarred and feathered for “Brussels Eurabia,” and
called a “Batavian Fascist” by a francophone newspaper. When he and I went back
to Molenbeek in March and I subsequently described
it as an “ethnic and religious enclave and a parochial, closed
community” in an interview with
Brussel Deze Week, that too provoked the wrath of progressive
Belgium and an ensuing media storm.
I always
thought as myself as a defender of human rights and human dignity, beyond left-
or right-wing categories. Now suddenly I was painted as a right-wing firebrand.
For some people I became an “untouchable” and I even lost a few friends, who
refused to talk to me.
1 kommentar
Stäng det här fönstret Hoppa till kommentarsformulärSkrämmande!
När man då kritiserar denna utveckling, vänder sig man då framförallt mot vår egen undfallande kultur eller den revirmedvetna och socialt expansiva arabisk-muslimska kulturen?
Antingen gör du som japanerna och stänger ditt land för andra kulturer eller så spottar du upp din egen kultur och börjar ställa oavvisliga krav på en långgående anpassning som betyder någonting för inflyttare.
Lars-Erik Eriksson
23 november 2015 11:18