Not much was missing for Fadila Maaroufi to be unable to tell her story. She simply expressed a desire to live her own way – freely, without a hijab or other restrictions. But in her childhood neighborhoods in Brussels, where radical Islam kept gaining ground, she nearly paid the ultimate price. "First came warnings, then threats. One day it escalated to something far more serious – a group of about 15 young men surrounded me. They poured gasoline around me and lit a lighter. Behind me was a wooden fence – I had nowhere to run. They laughed and filmed me. The gasoline ignited, and a fire broke out. A colleague who saw what was happening from a distance came running and put out the flames. He saved me."
Her story should have resonated throughout Europe. A Belgian woman of Moroccan origin who doesn't fold even under threats of violence, continuing to lead – sometimes almost alone – the battle against the Islamism that's drowning her country. Everywhere decent people live, she should have become a cultural hero – someone the West, and perhaps the entire sane world, must listen to. And in Israel, unlike Belgium, people actually want to listen. This coming Sunday she'll deliver a lecture at the Begin Center in Jerusalem, and would be happy, she said, to speak face-to-face with anyone who lends an ear.
She was born in 1976, from a family of eight children. Born in the Belgian capital, third generation to hardworking immigrants from North Africa, and grew up in neighborhoods now considered off-limits for anyone not belonging to Islam. Back then, in the 1980s, it was different.
"In my childhood there, 'Belgian Belgians' still mixed with Italian, Spanish, Moroccan and Turkish immigrants," she recalls with longing. "It was a time of carefree joy and happy closeness. Children played in the street, mothers chatted through open windows, or gossiped in the street when they went shopping."
Maaroufi witnessed the shattering of this idyll up close. According to her, it was a slow process that continued in one dangerous direction – one that now threatens not just her. "Things changed. Mosques were built in the neighborhood. The sermons heard within them took on a tone of fanaticism, of control, of fear. Young people – my friends, my neighbors – surrendered to the charms of a faith different from that of our grandparents. Those first arrivals from the villages didn't know how to read or write and lived a simple Islam, almost rural, full of traditions, celebrations and quiet modesty. Their dream was to work, save money, and return to die in their homeland. Our parents, for their part, lived according to the fashion of their time, torn between two worlds. But since the 1990s a strange revolution occurred – their children began judging them, accusing them that their Islam was too soft and supposedly not authentic. Thus was born a generation of little inquisitors, educated in Brussels schools but thirstily drinking in the Wahhabist sermons coming from Saudi Arabia, and the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood imported from Egypt."
Q: So radical Islam swept the children's minds, specifically in Belgium?
"In my public school, each group had a religion class – Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, or secular ethics. The teacher of Islam who taught us, as I discovered years later, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Five years later, I saw him in a newspaper photo, smiling broadly and marketing the new school, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, somewhere in Brussels. What I felt as a teenager received full confirmation – the radicalization wasn't born from nowhere, it took root and grew slowly in our classrooms, in the organizations around us, in our homes. Over the years, I watched how the youth in Brussels changed. The gaze hardened, speech came under supervision, and faith became a matter of internal policing. Everyone observed the other, judged, calculated the neighbor's 'sins' and felt obligated to preach to others to spread the religion, as Islam commands."
Streets of rage
Fadila Maaroufi didn't leave the alleys of her childhood, even after they began changing their face. She studied, became a social worker, and spent 20 years in the increasingly radicalized neighborhoods trying to listen, calm, and understand their residents. The experience of this encounter troubles her peace to this day. "I saw there domestic violence, daily humiliations, girls dying of fear because of 'what will they say,' boys going crazy with shame over getting closer to the West and aspiring to atone for the 'sin' of their 'betrayal,'" she recounts. That's also when the attack that nearly cost her life occurred, and afterward, she could no longer remain silent.
"I wanted to understand, to know where the hatred came from that uglified my city and my childhood. In the years that followed, young people I knew, some barely adults, traveled to fight in Syria. Some died there for an imaginary caliphate. Meanwhile, in Belgian media and universities, experts discussed social poverty, discrimination, and the search for meaning. They clung to convenient but wrong explanations. I knew it wasn't poverty leading to jihad, but rather ideology taught over a long time, receiving justification in the name of political Islam, and mixed with difficult feelings stemming from experiences of violence within the family. In Islam, waging jihad to spread the faith isn't a deviation but an ancient tradition, considered an obligation. It was necessary to call evil by its name. To look it in the face, otherwise it will repeat itself endlessly. Therefore, I chose to speak for the young people who grew up with Muslim backgrounds and rejected violence, and to warn the others – the non-Muslims, the disconnected Europeans – about what awaits them if they continue to close their eyes. And I started by saying loudly and clearly – the first victims will always be the Jews."
Q: Was there a specific moment when you understood the depth of Islamist radicalization in Belgian society?
"The awareness awakened gradually, starting from the end of my adolescence. The speeches of people from the 'Islamic Salvation Front' in Algeria, heard in some mosques and among families, heralded what was to come. It was clear that sooner or later, this violence would also erupt in the West. We were aware of it, but no one shared the warnings with non-Muslims. Such things weren't customary to share with them. Then, on September 11, 2001, everything became clear. When you come from a Muslim family, you pick up the codes, the hints. The young people who traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq only accelerated a movement that already existed, born from the Mujahideen war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it was a marginal phenomenon, but after 2001, everything changed. The giant collapsed before the eyes of the Muslim world. The attacks in Europe, our leaders' inaction, and especially the experts' inability to give a real explanation for the problem – all these made me understand we're facing big trouble. The peace we knew wouldn't hold. Since 2005, the attacks and assaults no longer surprised me – but the West's inaction actually did surprise."
Q: The Islamists actually acted – they threatened to murder you.
"They directly called to punish and kill me. The most frightening threat came with an ISIS video showing different execution methods – slaughter, burning alive in a cage, and beheading. It displayed real scenes, alongside wishes that I die a slow and painful death. It didn't stop there. They chased me, threatened to harm me physically, conducted a campaign of legal harassment against me. I lost my job, they no longer give me the right to speak in French-language media in Belgium. I can't work anymore."
Q: How did family members and friends react?
"My family has shunned me since I supported Israel, and over time it's gotten worse. Some of my friends are afraid to meet with me, others don't want to talk about these things, they prefer to live in denial. In the end, my real friends stayed and I built myself a different family, one I chose."
Willfully blind
Q: What do you think is the scope of radical Islamist influence today in Belgium, compared to the previous decade or two?
"The influence is absolute. In my view Belgium has fallen under Islamist control, especially that of the Muslim Brotherhood. And it will only get worse, because Hamas members and Hamas supporters have been welcome in Belgium since October 7, 2023. We literally brought here people who will turn Belgium into Lebanon. The danger already looms from within Belgium, while the state still sleeps, whether out of opportunism or cowardice. Ultimately this will affect all the West, because Belgium houses the European institutions and NATO."
Q: Haven't the authorities in Belgium internalized the severity of the problem?
"I think at first they really weren't aware of it. When they started to catch on, they thought they could control the Islamists to win Muslim votes. In the end, when they understood, it was already too late."
Q: In what forms does the radicalization express itself?
"The Islamists advance quietly in every sector and every area of society – in schools, children and parents pressure teachers and administration on issues like wearing hijab and supplying halal meals. At universities, student organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood movements invite lectures by terrorists, or extreme figures like Francesca Albanese and Rima Hassan. Islamist influence reaches everywhere – political parties, associations, mosques, transportation, security services, social networks, the justice system and other arenas."
Q: What role does foreign funding from Qatar or Turkey play in spreading Islamism in Europe?
"Very large sums, which fueled the process, indeed arrived from abroad. Now there's slightly more supervision of this matter, but the Islamists receive funding for non-profit projects also through European institutions and from Belgian authorities. And we mustn't forget the phenomenon of dual citizenship, which allows transferring money to Belgium from the country of origin without declaring it."
The deterioration Maaroufi describes could have been prevented if Europe hadn't been blind to what was happening. In her view, this is willful blindness. Those charged with protecting Europe from the Islamist plague refuse to admit its existence and silence the watchmen at the gate. "It's a tyranny of political correctness," Maaroufi said. "They even forbid using terms that define the problem, with claims of 'Islamophobia.' Increasingly, people are preventing themselves from thinking and speaking. There's real self-censorship – as if not to offend Muslims, or simply out of fear they'll slap you with an extreme right label or murder you. Since the assassinations of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, people are very frightened. European elites hesitate to speak openly about Islamist extremism, because they're already infected by Islamists who did the work from within – carried out a value inversion, where victims become the convicted and the convicted become victims."
Maaroufi's battle against Islamization is inseparable from her feminist views. For her, these are two faces of the same aspiration for freedom. "To be feminist is to demand for women full autonomy over their bodies, thoughts, and destinies," she explained. "Feminism fights a hierarchy based on gender affiliation; Islamism sanctifies it. It accepts male rule as a moral obligation, turns women's bodies into a religious and social issue, and confines women to the role of guardians of the group's honor. The hijab, according to this logic, isn't a simple clothing item – it's the flag of the Islamism project. It marks that the woman doesn't completely belong to herself – she becomes symbolic territory that must be protected from the 'impurities' of the modern world.
"I refuse to have them explain to girls born in Europe that they must hide themselves to 'respect' themselves. I refuse to have them learn that their freedom is a provocation, or that their liberation endangers community morality. My feminism isn't a slogan – it stems from personal experience. For more than 20 years, as a social worker, I saw the real effects of Islamization in working-class neighborhoods – regression in women's freedoms, pressure on the female body, insults over jeans considered too tight, refusal to meet with others, and fear of shame. I saw girls erasing themselves so stigmas won't be cast on them, women giving up work, recreation, and laughter. Feminism, for me, is refusing this erasure."
Q: Here again, you're headed for an unavoidable collision with Belgian elites, who are strong in talking about feminism but surrender immediately when the harm to women comes from the direction of Islamism.
"The hardest challenge is really the blindness of the left and non-Muslims, who gave up on the idea of helping liberate Muslim women. In effect, they're telling us to stay in our place, stay imprisoned. I think they made me a deterring example. Many people see the prices I was required to pay, understand the risks are enormous, including mortal danger, and don't dare express themselves openly."
Q: What's your opinion on bans on wearing hijab and niqab, a subject discussed more and more throughout Europe?
"I think they should be banned in schools, universities, and among minors. This is a norm that draws separation between devout believers and non-believers, and also between men and women. This norm is imposed as an obligation, and when someone decides to remove the covering, she must expect trouble, pressure, attacks, and harassment."
Q: Do Muslim girls in Europe feel torn between Islam and modernity?
"Not necessarily. Many of them simply fear rejection by family and community if they choose to be themselves. Becoming free sometimes means risking everything – family status, relationships, social security. Personally, I've never felt as good as I do now that I've freed myself from the pressure and lies my community taught me from childhood. The last three generations of Muslim women in the West underwent Islamist brainwashing, and it worked – the first and second generations of women aspired to freedom, while the current young generation is confused. The women in it allow others to influence them, and get dragged into believing they want to become slaves by choice."
"Democracy for us, not for Jews"
Although two years have passed since the October 7 massacre, Maaroufi doesn't forget how the Muslim communities reacted to the horrors the Gazans committed in the Gaza border communities. The initial reaction was silence, and immediately after, hostility toward Jews and Israel erupted. "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always served as glue for uniting the Muslim community," Maaroufi noted. "There's no longer room for any thinking, and whoever raises doubt about the justification for the attacks becomes an enemy of the Islamic nation."
Unlike most Muslims in Belgium, Maaroufi expressed solidarity with the victims of the Israeli massacre. "I was deeply horrified by the horrific acts the terrorists committed – the lives of children, babies, women, and men, cut down horrifyingly. If we support humanism, we can't ignore the massacre victims. I salute in my heart all the victims of the October 7 massacre, their family members, and the IDF soldiers who fell. Israel defended its people, but in my view, also the stability of our entire Western democracy. On October 7, the monster was released. I fear this isn't an isolated incident – as long as we don't fight Islamic antisemitism firmly, we'll remain vulnerable."
Q: What image does Israel have in the Belgian public, and how much does Islamist propaganda influence it?
"Many Belgians support Israel and Jews, but fear is felt – people who aren't Jewish tell me, in secret, that they support Israel but suffer verbal or physical attacks when they express it publicly. In practice, only support for Palestinians can be expressed without risk. As long as political leaders don't adopt clear discourse, and as long as part of the media funded by our tax money continues spreading narratives that favor Hamas and Islamists, the dark ideologies will strengthen."
Q: Have you faced backlash in Belgium for your support of Israel?
"Yes, and it only intensified since October 7. Since 2023, the pressure and propaganda against me have pushed me to increase appearances and conferences, to explain the situation and mobilize support for the Jewish community, which often falls victim to attacks. To illustrate, consider the following recent case. Last month, I participated in a rally for the hostages and against antisemitism. After we marched, a group of about 15 rally participants entered a cafe in Albertine Square. When we wanted to leave, two people approached us shouting, 'We'll beat you, we'll beat the Israelis and Jews.' A very tense atmosphere developed, and we were forced to escape inside. I called the police. The place manager helped some people hide behind the bar, and friends intervened to protect the most vulnerable. One attacker, apparently the leader, shouted at those trying to calm down, 'Democracy is for us, not for Jews.' Police finally intervened, and two people were arrested thanks to a photo taken by a witness of the incident. They finally escorted us to a safe place, but the harassment continued even there, when one car honked, aiming to frighten us. We submitted all the material to the police, including photos, but to this day, no real legal action has been taken."
Q: What message would you like to convey to the Israeli public, which also lives under the threat of radical Islamism?
"Don't give up. Here too, in Belgium, we're fighting for you and for our society. We share the same enemies, so we must learn from our shared experiences and cooperate. We aspire to protect our children and ensure a future of peace. We must fight to prevent violence and Islamist ideology from taking over."
