Excerpt:
With Muhammad being classified as the most popular first name chosen for newborns in Brussels, the EU capital was recently named "one of the most Muslim cities in the Western world", according to political scientist Corinne Torrekens.
The city's great mosque — the Islamic and Cultural Centre of Belgium — is where this community's growth has been felt most remarkably. While in the 1970s, soon after the mosque's foundation, only two lines of the huge prayer hall were filled in the best cases, the mosque today has to be widened with tents that are pitched around the building in peak seasons like Ramadan and the two Muslim festivities. The number of people who attended last Ramadan's night prayers is estimated at 7,000.
But with its high crime-rates, this large community is still at an immature stage, if not heading towards a social failure. While Muslims represent between 4 and 5 per cent of Belgium's entire population, 35 per cent of the incarcerated population is of Muslim descent.