Meet the Mayor of Brussels: She's a Muslim

Monday, January 16, 2006
The Brussels Journal
by Paul Belien

Faouzia Hariche (38) is the acting mayor (or “bourgmestre” – burgomaster, from the Dutch burgemeester) of Brussels, the capital of Belgium and of the European Union. Ms Hariche was born in Algeria in 1967. She moved to Belgium when she was seven years old.[...].
[...]
This has upset many Flemings, who no longer feel at home in their own city with a mayor who does not speak their language. The Belgian regime has encouraged North African immigrants, who come from former French colonies, to apply for Belgian citizenship. This was done in a deliberate attempt to force the Flemings into an ever shrinking minority position in what used to be one of their most important towns.[...].

[...] After 175 years of Belgian rule Brussels has almost completely lost its original Dutch (Flemish) identity. It has been left with an identity vacuum, which is now being filled up by a Muslim identity.[...].
[...]
In an attempt to persuade the Muslim immigrants to vote for them, the Socialists are selling out to them. Particularly Philippe Moureaux, the leader of the Brussels PS and the mayor of Molenbeek, a Brussels suburb with one of the largest concentrations of North African immigrants, prides himself on this.[...].
[...]
When Freddy Thielemans, the Brussels mayor and also a PS politician, had to go to hospital in December, the official procedure would have been to replace him by his first deputy. The PS opted for Ms Hariche, who was only the 7th in line, because she is a Muslim. Hariche immediately appointed Mohamed Laghmiche, her own husband, as the well-paid director of one of the city’s heavily subsidized non-profit youth organisations over which she presides.
[...]
Another Socialist member of the government is Turkish born Emir Kir, the Brussels secretary for public monuments.[...].

[...] This is Brussels, the capital of Europe, in the year 2006. At present 14 of the 26 representatives of the Parti Socialiste, the largest party in the Brussels regional parliament, are Muslim immigrants (ten of Moroccan origin, two Turkish, one Tunisian and one from the West-African state of Guinea).

The Muslim influence on Belgian politics has tangible consequences. Secretary Kir wants to demolish the monument commemorating the 1915 Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christian civilians. According to Kir, who is responsible for public monuments, the “so-called Armenian genocide” is a hoax, concocted by “imperialists.” Last year Kir lodged a complaint against two journalists who had criticized him for taking part in a May 2004 demonstration to demand the destruction of the Armenian monument. The journalists had described the secretary as a “genocide denier.” On November 14, 2005, a Brussels court ruled against the PS politician, confirming that the Armenian Genocide was a crime against humanity.

The verdict said that the journalists were “by no means wrong” in branding Emir Kir as a genocide denier. It went on to note that this type of clear labelling serves the common good and advances the purposes established by Belgian law to penalize genocide denial. Secretary Kir has appealed against the verdict. Genocide denial is a criminal offence in Belgium. Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian minister of Justice and the PS deputy Prime Minister, told the Belgian Senate on 17 November that “additional legal and historic research” is needed to ascertain what really happened in Armenia in 1915. Clearly, courting the Muslim vote has led the Belgian government to doubt the Armenian genocide. How long will it take before Belgian parties start questioning the Shoah in order to attract Muslim votes?

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.