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Assignment: Molenbeek Through the Looking Glass

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Molenbeek Through the Looking Glass

14/01/2016 GMT

BBC World Service - Assignment, Molenbeek Through the Looking Glass

Why has Molenbeek in Belgium been dubbed  ‘jihadi-central’ and what can be done about it?

Tim Whewell spends time in Brussels inner-city district of Molenbeek – home to several of the Paris attackers – to investigate the cause of its alienation.

After the terror attacks in Paris, the world’s attention turned to an inner-city district of the Belgian capital, Brussels, where several of the attackers came from. Molenbeek has been notorious for many years as a breeding-ground for Islamist extremism – and the Belgian government vowed to “clean it up”. But do the authorities really have any plan to prevent the radicalisation of young Belgians? Tim Whewell has been travelling back and forth to Brussels since the Paris attacks to talk to local people as they hold up a mirror to themselves and search for explanations – and attempt to have a dialogue with a sometimes dysfunctional state. 

(Photo: A candle light vigil to the victims of the Paris attacks in Brussels' Molenbeek district. Credt: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

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