Vincent Van Quickenborne has announced that he has initiated the procedure aimed at withdrawing the EMB’s status as official interlocutor of the State. De facto, “we will no longer subsidize this organization (currently up to 600,000 euros per year), and its role will disappear”, he explained to Dutch-speaking public radio. Radio 1. According to the Minister, the EMB is “not representative of all Muslims in Belgium”. Also, he accuses the Muslim organization of ignoring calls to open up to young people, in the ongoing renewal of its governing bodies.
To read: Expulsion of Imam Mohamed Toujgani: a signal in Morocco?
According to the explanations of a spokesman for the minister, what prevails in this process is “a logic of mosques”, that is to say that only Muslim leaders already working in a mosque, often elderly, can claim sit on the main governing body of the EMB. Without forgetting an “ethnic” conception of responsibilities favoring Moroccan and Turkish imams. “After three or four generations (of immigrants), still reserving the right to apply for a Turk or a Moroccan, it’s not right, it opens the door to interference,” he lamented, noting that this approach is “really harmful for the development of modern Islam” in Belgium.
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