In traditional qamis and headgear, the imam sits at the perch of the elected assembly and begins to chant a surah from the Koran for more than three minutes. The scene is unprecedented in a European country. It took place on January 13 at the regional parliament in Brussels-Capital, but was only revealed a month later, when Pakistani imam Muhammad Ansar Butt himself posted a video of it. Relayed by a Flemish nationalist elected official, the images quickly made the rounds on social networks, as Belgium prepares to go to the polls on June 9 for the federal legislative elections.
A “unfortunate sequence”, reacted during a public session in Parliament on February 23, the socialist Secretary of State Nawal Ben Hamou, responsible in particular for equal opportunities in the Brussels government, and who was present during the events. At the heart of the controversy triggered by this video which embarrasses her party and the region, the 36-year-old elected official now says that she has “was misled”. According to her, it was a member of her own political party, Hasan Koyuncu, a regional deputy of Turkish origin, who attracted her to ” the trap “.
It was he who organized the visit to the hemicycle of a group of eighty people offering to take some photos with the Secretary of State to mark the quite ordinary event: the assembly receives every year some ten thousand guests. Except that the visit quickly turned into an obscure awards ceremony. A confidential association, Friends of Europe, wanted, according to its leaders, to reward deserving and creative citizens. First and foremost the Pakistani imam, although presented by the French-speaking liberal opposition as a fundamentalist, best known for his connections with Pakistani night grocery stores in the Belgian capital.
After officials of Parliament were invited to disappear by the delegation and, in front of an empty assembly, “the imam recited verses 41 to 47 of sura 33, “The allies”, which call to embrace Islam and recall the rewards that God reserves for Muslimsindicated, in the daily La Libre Belgiquethe Franco-Algerian Islamologist and philosopher Razika Adnani. So he preached and called for embracing Islam in a parliament.”
An unfortunate “slip”
For this specialist, the Pakistani cleric “knew what he was doing” and wanted to illustrate “the capacity of Islam to impose itself in the West”. Affirming that all this was contrary to his political values and his secular and feminist convictions, Nawal Ben Hamou regretted the decision to decorate the imam. She emerged more or less acquitted of the affair, the opposition contenting itself with questioning her position in a party of which at least one member had deceived her.
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