.... The city, like Belgium as a whole, has long been split between French-speakers and Dutch-speaking Flemings. These days, a still more obvious social gap divides people of loosely Catholic heritage and the more introvert parts of a Muslim community which now accounts for a quarter of the city’s population, and could be in the majority by mid-century, on present trends.
.... In March, following the recommendations of a parliamentary commission set up after the bomb attacks, the government formally terminated the arrangement under which a body with Saudi affiliations oversaw the city’s Great Mosque (pictured above). Responsibility for the Mosque, which is the city’s most prestigious place of Islamic worship and instruction, will be transferred to the Executif de Musulmans en Belgique (Executive of Muslims in Belgium, or EMB), a powerful but often dysfunctional organisation which has a broad remit to administer the affairs of Islam in the country. [The Economist] Read more
