European Report

Is this the End?

If I Get Hurt, Blame Father Leman

By Paul Belien

During the past few weeks I have been under attack from the Belgian Left and the media. In February the editor in chief of the mass circulation weekly Knack (a supposedly centrist publication) wrote a piece entitled "Paul Belien and His Pals,” claiming that I was part of a neo-con conspiracy, led by Daniel Pipes (whom until then I had never met or spoken) and the Danish journalist Flemming Rose (of the Muhammad cartoons), who wanted "to anger radical but also moderate Muslims into violent action. Their [=the conspirators'] goal is to persuade public opinion in Europe and America once and for all that all Muslims are violent and dangerous, so that the ‘clash' [=the world war against Muslims] in Palestine, Iran and Syria can really kick off.”

This goal, according to Knack, would be the real reason why The Brussels Journal reported about the Danish cartoon affair (although in our reporting we have always stressed the important role of moderate Muslims – which, if we did not believe moderate Muslims existed, we would not have done).

Today Father Johan Leman, a Catholic priest of the Order of Saint Dominic (the inquisition order) and a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, has joined the chorus. Father Leman is the previous president of the CEOOR (Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism), the inquisition center of the Belgian government. In today's news broadcast on the national radio he says that the CEOOR has been negligent because it has not already started prosecutions against me.

According to Father Leman I have incited racial hatred, with the result that extremist or unbalanced people, such as Hans Van Themsche, have decided to take the law into their own hands and shoot immigrants. Father Leman blames the Belgian authorities and the CEOOR for not punishing me. In the reverend father's own logic, if his hate speech against me should lead to extremist and unbalanced people threatening or hurting ("punish”) me in any way he is the culprit.

Paul Belien is the editor of the Flemish quarterly Secessie and the editor-in-chief of The Brussels Journal. He is a columnist at the Flemish weekly Pallieterke and at the Flemish monthly Doorbraak and a regular contributor to the Flemish conservative monthly Nucleus, which he co-founded in 1990. Paul can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com