(Brussels Times) The federal state security agency has listed more than 100 organisations in Belgium representing the extremist religious Salafist tendency of Islam, according to a written answer provided to justice minister Koen Geens.
Salafism is a tendency of Islam developed in Egypt in the 19th century as an anti-imperialist movement, related to the hardline Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia. It is considered one of the most fundamentalist Islamist movements, rightly or wrongly claimed by the perpetrators of terrorist acts across the world.
State security is keen to mitigate its conclusions, however. While Salafist tendencies were discovered in … a number of messages on social media, for example, they nevertheless represent a small minority of the views represented by more moderate Islamic tendencies, which tend in any case to be less vocal.
