Belgium's Arab Nationalist Touches Nerve

AP ^ | 05/16/03 | RAF CASERT

[nypokerface]

ANTWERP, Belgium - A Lebanese refugee running for parliament is giving a confrontational twist to elections in this Belgian city, a center of anti-immigrant feelings in Europe.

Dyab Abou Jahjah's demands for immigrant empowerment, his brief jailing on charges of incitement to riot and his portrayal as an enemy of democracy and integration have caught the eye of the nation, even though the publicity is unlikely to be reflected in success at the polls.

The prime minister calls Dyab Abou Jahjah a threat who thrives on "confrontation and provocation." The interior minister wants to create a law just to keep him off the streets.

The 31-year-old Abou Jahjah dreams of an upset and a parliamentary seat. "The impact of that one seat will be so jarring that a lot of things will change," he said.

His Antwerp-based Arab-European League has just 2,000 members in Belgium, but is expanding internationally. It has 1,000 supporters in the Netherlands, and 300 members in France.

In a country of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Turkish immigrants, several politicians with immigrant backgrounds are running for parliament representing traditional parties. Abou Jahjah, who fled Lebanon and the continued violence at 19 to seek a new life in Europe, denounces them as sellouts.

Abou Jahjah sought political asylum in 1991 but gained Belgian nationality through a brief marriage. His group opposes assimilation and demands that Muslims be educated in separate schools. He also wants Arabic to be given greater recognition in Belgium alongside the official languages of Dutch, French and German.

Groups of his supporters have organized unarmed patrols in the streets of Antwerp, saying they are countering a racist police force. The city happens to be a stronghold of the right-wing Flemish Bloc party.

Over the past six months, Abou Jahjah has spent a week in jail and was barred from attending public meetings for allegedly inciting race riots. He denies the charge.

Dressed in blue jeans and a casual black jacket amid a throng of young admirers at a recent rally, Abou Jahjah accused Belgium's political mainstream of trying to force Muslims to adopt Belgian culture. Instead, the prime minister should come to the immigrant neighborhoods of Antwerp and speak Arabic, he said.

"We are not submissive," Abou Jahjah told the meeting.

Abou Jahjah said his resistance authority was ingrained during his youth in Sidon, Lebanon, when Israel invaded the country in 1982.

Since fleeing Lebanon, he has gained Belgian citizenship and studied international politics. In 1993, he founded the Arab-European League to promote the rights of Arab immigrants in a city that was quickly becoming a racial powderkeg.

He hit national headlines early last year when a march in Antwerp to support the Palestinian cause turned into a riot. Jewish businesses in the city's diamond district were attacked.

In November, a teacher of Moroccan origin was killed by a neighbor, a murder that many immigrants saw as racially motivated. The killing sparked two nights of violence, and police detained some 160 youths of North African descent.

Abou Jahjah, who often stood face-to-face with police, was accused of inciting the riots. He was jailed until it was decided there were insufficient grounds to prosecute. Suddenly, he became a hero to many immigrant youths in this city of 400,000 people.

"It made me even more combative," Abou Jahjah told The Associated Press. "When you're in jail and you realize you're innocent, you increasingly realize how politics work and you know your cause is a just one."

[fourdeuce82d]

the prime minister should come to the immigrant neighborhoods of Antwerp and speak Arabic, he said.

all in good time.

[CommandoFrank]

This should be a wake-up call to the rest of Europe, Canada and the USA. It will only intensify and spread...