Al-Okaz, Saudi Arabia, Originally posted in Arabic on March 24
It has been a bloody week in Europe. In Brussels alone, roughly 40 people were killed and some 140 others were wounded in two terror attacks in the city. Just days earlier, in Turkey, several tourists were slain in Istanbul’s central shopping district, only a week after an explosive car rammed into a packed commuter bus.
These attacks come after the arrest of Salah Abd Abdelsalam, the Moroccan-French national who stood behind the November attacks in Paris. Now Europe is beginning to understand that it is facing a new terror threat emanating in its own backyard. And within Europe, authorities are realizing that Belgium has become one of the biggest hotbeds for terror in the entire region.
Brussels’s Molenbeek neighborhood alone gave rise to numerous terrorists, many of whom were involved in deadly activity inside and outside Europe. A recent study even showed that Brussels yielded the highest rate of terrorists per capita – more than any other European city.
Currently, some 250 Belgian nationals are fighting in Iraq and Syria, alongside the Islamic State. This is the new face of Islam that emerges in the region, and it poses a big threat not only to Europeans, but also to the majority of Muslims who condemn such acts of terror.
Europeans now fear Islam, and conflate it with treason and terror. Islam has been hijacked by a group of pirates, and they are redefining the way the world views our religion. – Turki al-Dakhil