From Columbia Univeristy Graduate School of Journalism: Belgium has earned an unfortunate superlative in Europe; it has the most Jihadis per capita. Most come from Antwerp, Brussels, and small towns that punctuate the train line between them. Younger brothers sometimes follow their older brothers into war, or even replace them on Syria's battlefields once they are killed. Parents of all faiths blame charismatic recruiters for indoctrinating their children to aspire to battlefield martyrdom. Belgium's most successful recruiter was Fouad Belkacem, who ran a highly-structured radicalization program out of a rented apartment in Antwerp. His group, Sharia4Belgium, drew attention by aggressively demanding that Belgium transform into an Islamic state, but in 2012 after Belkachem was arrested for inciting violent riots, his followers started leaving for Syria. Around fifty Sharia4Belgium members soon joined jihadi groups that were eventually absorbed into ISIS and al-Qaeda. Close to a dozen have already died. These are the despairing parents they left behind. Ben Taub is a Gordon Gray Fellow and a 2015 graduate of Columbia Journalism School. He traveled to Belgium on a Morton Mintz Grant for his Masters thesis, and wrote an investigation into European radicalization for The New Yorker.
© 2015 Ben Taub