Belgium has the highest per capita number of Islamic terrorists gone to fight in Syria and Iraq than any other European country. Brussels is the capital of the holy war, as well as of the European Union.
And the terror cell of Madrid's 2004 bombings came from the town of Maaseik.
How could Maaseik, the city of the Christian painter Van Eyck, become the center of Islamic terrorism in Europe?
Brussels was destined to become, like London, Paris or Athens, the place par excellence of Europe's national merger. Homo Belgicus should have been the highest example of synthesis of the European everyman. Yet, the country is sick.
Belgium doesn't only hold the record for jihadists in Europe, it is also the European country with the highest suicide rate. The most notorious suicide is the Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine, Christian de Duve, who, two years ago, killed himself in front of his four children.
The tragic statistic would grow if we counted the thousands of deaths that occur under the law of euthanasia, with six deaths per day. Belgium is also the site of the first "supermarket of death." In Flémalle, a Belgian town not far from Liege. The tombstones? In the fourth row. The crowns? In the right corner. The coffins? To the left.
Already today, in Brussels, one in three people is Muslim, the most common name is Mohammed, and by 2035 it will be a city with a Muslim majority.
The great moments of life, such as baptisms, weddings and funerals in Belgium are no longer tied to Christianity, this in a country whose symbols have long been the cathedral of Antwerp, the dog of St. Hubert and the University of Leuven (founded by Pope Martin V).
In Brussels today only 7.2 percent of marriages are Catholic, only 14.8 percent of children are baptized, and there only 22.6 percent of funerals were Catholic. It is the end of Catholicism.
Recently, the Belgian authorities decided that the cornerstone holidays of European culture, such as All Saints' Day, Christmas and Easter, had to be replaced by the more neutral "Holiday Autumn", "Winter Holidays" and "Spring Break ". And two years ago, the new secularized Christmas tree made its debut, a symbol of a country which has become transparent, soulless. An Xmas Tree of steel, lights and video projections.
"A radicalized youth, which rejects Western values", writes the Flemish journalist Hind Fraihi: "In Brussels, there are islands such as Molenbeek, where it is hard to believe that it is Belgium."
In recent years in many areas of Brussels women have disappeared and reappeared under their full veils. A stone's throw from the European institutions, the imams preach against Brussels, the "capital of the infidels."
The Jews are under attack everywhere.
It has withered. The symbol of a dried and lost Europe.