While Lieven Verstraete, an acclaimed Belgian journalist who hosts the program, “De Zevende Dag” (“The Seventh Day”), was recently interviewing two members of the Green Party, he raised the issue of immigration and called Brussels “the perfect example of a city whose neighborhoods are conquered one by one by newcomers”.
Newcomers? Conquered?
“How?” replied Nadia Naji, a politician of Molenbeek’s Green party.
“Well,” Verstraete, visibly uncomfortable, tried to explain, “more and more people with immigrant origins come to live there and claim their place. Do you feel Belgian in Molenbeek?”
A few hours after the broadcast, he apologized.
“In twenty years”, the French newspaper Le Figaro predicted about Brussels, “the European capital will be Muslim”.
