The Problem with Belgium

There is an old joke about Belgium that goes something like this:

The problem with Belgium is that there is almost no unity. The Walloons hate the state because it is not French enough. The Flemish hate the state because it is not Dutch enough. The Muslims hate the state because it is not Islamic enough. Only the Jews love Belgium. The only thing that unites the others is they all hate the Jews.

Like all decent jokes this one has more than a kernel of truth, though I added the part about Muslims -- in its original form it dealt only with the Walloons, the Flemish, and the Jews.   But since Muslims now make up 6% of Belgium’s population (much more than Jews at about 0.5%) and their views of the state and Jews mirror that of the other two major groups, the joke still works -- though it is clear that Belgium’s increasingly threatened Jews love it a lot less today. But the jest mostly points to Belgium’s fundamental existential problem, which now threatens to create a failed state in the heart of Western Europe, and therein a sanctuary for the worst radical Islamists.......

Successive “mayors” of Molenbeek ignored or encouraged (via fashionable political correctness) Islamic separatism...... counter-terrorism officials have reportedly been stunned by the sloth and incompetence of their Belgian counterparts.....grown men and women who consciously have failed to act in a normative and reasonable fashion to protect their nation, in large part because they have no emotional or political interest in doing so.....

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