Molenbeek’s bad name sticks to its young people

taketonews

He did manage to succeed in the Brussels ‘problem district’ Molenbeek. And that certainly did not happen automatically. It was sometimes downright difficult growing up in a place where opportunities were not there for the taking. Where unemployment was high and so were crime rates. Since the attacks in Paris in 2015 and those at Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station a few months later – for which eight terrorists partly from the neighborhood were sentenced to long prison terms last week – it is believed that every young man with a tanned appearance, a beard and a djellaba is potentially a terrorist.

A district featured in international media like a hellhole was labeled, a place that the world had to turn its hands away from. It had to be “cleaned up”, wiped clean – as the then Flemish Minister of the Interior Jan Jambon said in 2015. But he, Hassan Al Hilou, swam against the current. Despite, and perhaps because of, the stigma that many of his peers suffered from, he wanted things to improve in Molenbeek. He had one important asset: his parents.

Hassan Al Hilou Photo Caroline Dupont

They had fled from the Iraqi city of Basra because of their activism when he was yet to be born. They regularly cried in front of the television when they saw images from Iraq, first in their apartment in Vlaardingen, later, when Al Hilou was eight years old, in Molenbeek. And it is thanks to them that he is now sitting here, on a couch in his own office, as founder and boss of Capital, an organization just outside Molenbeek that has already helped fifteen thousand young people in Brussels find a job.

American invasion

They have always encouraged him to use his voice. At home at the kitchen table, he, barely ten years old, was also asked what he thought of the American invasion of his home country, Iraq. “We hardly had any money at that time,” says Al Hilou. “But we had a base. And that is knowledge.”

At the age of 12, Al Hilou wrote a political manifesto that shocked his high school teachers, but not his parents. “I was actually radicalized then,” he says. “In my manifesto I was strongly against the system in Belgium, against the entire structure of politics, how young people in Molenbeek were left to fend for themselves. But I was lucky to have the right people around me, who ensured that my radical ideas remained just words and not put into action.”

I always tried to look at the opportunities I still had

Hassan Al Hilou entrepreneur

Also read this report from 2015: Molenbeek – chronicle of a declared disaster

Al Hilou grew up on Gentsesteenweg, now one of the busiest shopping streets in Brussels. It is full of tea houses, bakers, butchers and clothing stores. “But three years ago there was still plenty of drug dealing going on,” says Al Hilou. “Many of my peers have fallen for the temptations of that world. Yes, some of them also fell under the spell of radical Islam and left for Syria to join the Islamic State. Because without a safety net at home, they had nowhere to go. Facilities in Molenbeek were so fragmented that no one knew where to go. It lacked perspective. Molenbeek was an introverted, introverted place, where young people could do no more than survive.”

Suffering from the stigma

But according to Al Hilou, a lot has changed since the 2016 attacks in Brussels. Of course, he too suffered from the stigma of ‘hell hole’. It just so happened that Molenbeek was known worldwide as the place where dozens of terrorists had grown up. Al Hilou: “I always tried to look at the opportunities I still had. When people said: ‘Oh, there’s another Arab’, I replied: ‘But don’t you happen to need someone who knows the Arab market well?’ Of course, you cannot dismiss an entire city district as rotten because of the few criminals who came from there.”

House in Molenbeek where some of the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks met.

Photo Aurelien Goubau

That this image has still not disappeared became clear last year when Connor Rousseau, chairman of the social democratic party Vooruit, in conversation with weekly magazine Humo said that he doesn’t feel like he’s in Belgium when he drives through Molenbeek. He received a lot of criticism for that statement, but he stuck to his point. Rousseau is said to have visited a Dutch-speaking school where he was told by a teacher that they were looking for volunteers to interpret when contacting parents.

The persistent negative sentiment about Molenbeek means that many people involved no longer want to talk to the media. Chief of Police Johan Berckmans of the Brussels West police zone, which includes Molenbeek, writes in an email: “The problem of radicalism can hardly be reduced to a problem of Molenbeek alone.” Shopkeepers on Gentsesteenweg all say they want to think about the future, instead of talking about the tarnished past. Aboubakr Bensaihi, the actor who made a name for himself with his leading role in the film Rebelabout the attacks, did not respond to repeated phone calls.

Also read: Long prison sentences do not heal all wounds from the attacks at Zaventem airport

Nearly a hundred thousand people now live in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, as the district in the west of Brussels is fully called. The district is considered a ‘city of arrival’; Migrants have been starting their search for a better life here since the years after the Second World War. Houses are relatively affordable and the costs for food, clothing and furniture are low.

Molenbeek is a survival economy, former councilor of the municipality Jef Van Damme wrote in April this year a blog post. That also means that people leave as soon as they start making money. This concerns about fifteen thousand inhabitants per year. According to Van Damme, this also means that a lot of knowledge and money is lost. And this in turn means that public services, including the police, face chronic shortages.

More companies

Out figures from the Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis it appears that things are going somewhat in the right direction for Molenbeek. Unemployment may have fallen in 2019 compared to 2014, but the district is still doing poorly in Belgium with 21.5 percent unemployed. More companies were founded during that period and almost two thousand more homes became available between 2017 and 2022. The average house price in Molenbeek increased from 155,000 to 210,000 euros, but that is still far below the average in the Brussels region.

Immediately after the Paris attacks, it became safer in Molenbeek. The so-called Canal Plan was launched, in which seven Brussels municipalities started working together in the fight against radicalization and terrorism. Thousands of homes were checked and suspicious organizations were vetted. These included ‘basement mosques’, an underground network of places in Molenbeek where people were recruited to commit attacks in Europe, it can be read in a research report into radicalization in Molenbeek by Belgian criminologists Elke Devroe and Paul Ponsaers from 2017. They point to the confusing administrative structure in Brussels, with nineteen different mayors and six police zones, as one of the reasons why the prevention of radicalization in the city was initially difficult. Today, around fifty Molenbeek residents who are at risk of radicalization are still closely monitored.

Crime rates in Molenbeek fell for a while. Trendy shops opened branches there and various entrepreneurs who grew up in the neighborhood started a foundation to help young people. For example, Oussama Ouassari (44) founded MolenGeek in 2015, a place where young people can become acquainted with the technology sector and be trained in IT. Ouassari’s company secured Google as a backer and was highlighted in 2017 during a conference on digital innovation at the United Nations office in New York.

At MolenGeek, young people are trained in IT.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
Residents of Molenbeek Stony (22) and Djenaba (18) live in the district.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
Left: At MolenGeek, young people are trained in IT

Right: Molenbeek residents Stony (22) and Djenaba (18) live in the district.


Photos Aurelien Goubau

Ouassari’s success story is comparable to that of Hassan Al Hilou and his Capital. Both men regularly receive questions from young people in Molenbeek about how they got this far. “I then say to them: let’s stop being angry and shouting and ranting, and start building a society. And for that you first have to build yourself.” Al Hilou regularly speaks with Belgian CEOs and politicians. He tries to sell the cultural diversity in Molenbeek and Brussels as an opportunity. “A Mohammed is still five times less likely to be invited for a job application in Belgium,” he says. “This means that structures must become more inclusive. I regularly give speeches about this. Brussels has enormous potential. It is a laboratory of talent. But that talent is not always utilized.”

Migrants

Until a few years ago, many young people from Molenbeek did not know where they could go to build their future, according to Al Hilou. “That is the core for me,” he says. That has changed since the establishment of his Capital foundation in 2020. During a tour of his large building on Antwerpse-laan in Brussels, groups of young people are working everywhere. They are based on, among other things virtual reality introduced to various professional groups and find a job through Al Hilou. “We ask young people: don’t be fatalistic. Work on yourself. So that you form an identity. Then you become less sensitive to radicalism.”

Mohammed El Marcouchi has had a boxing gym on the basement floor of Capital since 2020. He grew up in Molenbeek and has seen fundamental improvements there in recent years. “In the past it was always neighborhood against neighborhood,” he says. “Someone from Ixelles [een rijke gemeente in Brussel, red.] continued to box there. In Molenbeek we were closed before the attacks. We didn’t want to know anything about other neighborhoods. But after the attacks we started visiting each other. Molenbekers sports in Ixelles and vice versa. We learn from each other’s mentality. There is an exchange of knowledge, norms and values. That is an important change. But there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Drug crime

Despite the many good initiatives in Molenbeek, El Marcouchi still sees many young people end up in drug crime. “They want to make money easily,” he says. “But what doesn’t help is that everyone always thinks we are bad in Molenbeek. At one point, policymakers handed out free soccer balls. To kill time. But we didn’t need that. We needed people to show us where we could go with our other talents.”

Last year, dozens of shooting incidents took place in Molenbeek, which were attributed to rival drug clans. “We see a period before and after Covid,” Mayor Catherine Moureaux said to the website bruzz.be. “Since then there have been much tougher conflicts, more weapons and money circulating. We are really waging a war against the drug gangs.”

The problems will probably not go away completely in Molenbeek,” El Marcouchi concludes sadly. “Molenbeek simply has a bad name. And it’s going to stick.”

Shopping street in Molenbeek. Photo Aurelien Goubau

A version of this article also appeared in the September 21, 2023 newspaper.

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