Belgium as a country is surreal-a fact that makes Belgians proud. However, the recent ISIS attack in France with Belgium’s role in it reveals the country’s link with terrorism. #desp{display:none;} Two months ago, like any other self-respecting Belgian, I was watching the friendly football match Belgium-Italy from my temporary flat in Mumbai. Even if you are not especially fond of football you can’t miss a game between your country’s team and one of the best football teams of all times. For the record, our national team has been recently ranked first even though we have never won any football trophy and neither have we been selected to play the UEFA European Football Championship since 2000 (we automatically qualified because we were the host country with The Netherlands). This is totally surreal. Actually, Belgium is a surrealist country and we Belgian people, are quite proud of it. We are internationally recognized for our surrealism, from the painter Magritte to maybe more recently, the singer Stromae. To add to my surrealist claim, our Belgian Red Devils actually won 3-1 against the SquadraAzzura, and our substitute goalkeeper was elected Man of the Match. Surrealism again. But what shocked me the most happened while I was half-listening to the post-match interviews. They were talking about bomb blasts outside the Stade de France in Paris. I quickly changed channels and saw French journalists speaking about 3 people being killed in Paris. Because of the time-difference, it was 4am in India and I went to sleep. When I woke up, the number of deaths had considerably risen. The facts are now well-known: 130 people were killed that night and more than 350 were injured. Daesh, the Islamic ‘State’, had struck in France. The investigations that followed these terrible attacks, showed my home-country Belgium as the breeding ground for extremists. The Brussels municipality of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, was where some of the attackers had lived for a short period of time and the November 13 Paris attacks had been organized. But is Molenbeek really the new Islamic fiefdom in Europe as described in the news media? Belgium, as a hub of terrorism–really? The statistics that have come up after the attacks are indeed quite frightening: on a per capita basis, Belgium seems to be the biggest exporter of jihadists to Syria.[1] SURREAL. People walk in a street in the suburb of Molenbeek, after security was tightened in Belgium following the fatal attacks in Paris in Brussels, Belgium, November 17, 2015. REUTERS/Yves Herman The attacks and the statistics throw up many questions: I ask myself how could it be possible? Is it due to the decision of the Belgian Government to entrust ‘control’ of mosques and religious institutions in the country to Saudi Arabia which helped gain affordable energy supplies from the Middle East country? Does this imply that Islam had been taken over by Wahhabism and Salafism?[2] Or is it a failure of the Belgian Government’s integration system of the migrants that have been coming over from across the world for over two-decades? A cursory look at some of the problems that Belgium as a country faces starts with the fact that we are unable to feel like a united nation (except during our national football matches). Indeed, Belgium is geographically-linguistically-politically-culturally-economically divided among our three regions (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels) and three Communities (Dutch-speaking, French-speaking, German-speaking). Surrealism again! It would take me hours to explain to you how the Belgium structure works, but I think this 5-minute video could give you a good overview of the Belgian mess (even if there are some mistakes in it). [video type='youtube' id='QlwHotpl9DA' height='365'] Nevertheless, to come back to the first point, it is true that this is not the first time there has been a link between Molenbeek and terrorism (speaking at the least): the assassination of the Afghan anti-Taliban commander Massoud two days before 9/11, the Madrid train bombings in 2004, the Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting in Brussels last year, the dismantling of a terrorist cell in Verviers (Belgium) a few days after Charlie Hebdo shootings, and more recently the aborted attack on a Thalys train between Brussels and Paris.[3] But where could this link come from? Some claim it is because of a certain laxity in policies of the political party which was governing Molenbeek during the last decades and had facilitated an immigration wave (12% in 5 years and 30% in 15 years) in the interests of creating a vote-bank but without any view towards integration. Surrealism, but in the wrong way. Indeed, this ‘community model’could just explain the development of a radical Islam in this neighbourhood. Actually in this case we can’t talk about ‘integration’ but about ‘separation’ (regarding Berry’s Model of Acculturation): we have welcomed immigrants but ‘accommodated’ them in underprivileged districts where social...