Minister Koen Geens said Europe 'may not realise this but this is the reality’

Europe will ‘soon have more Muslims than Christians’: Belgium warns against ‘making an enemy of Islam’ at Brussels attacks hearing

Muslims will soon outnumber Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister has

claimed.

Speaking at a hearing into the Brussels attacks, Koen Geens said the European

Community may not realise it “but this is the reality”.

His comments were followed by Belgian deputy prime minister Jan Jambon warning

against Europeans “making an enemy of Islam” describing it as “the worst

thing we can do”.

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Speaking at the EU Parliament, Mr Geens said: “In Europe, very shortly we’re

soon going to have more practising Muslims than practising Christians.”

“That is not because there are too many Muslims, it is because Christian are

generally less practising¿ Europe does not realise this, but this is the

reality.

Mr Jambon then added: “I’ve said a thousand times, the worst thing we can do

is to make an enemy of Islam. That is the very worst thing we could do.

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“We have 600,000 to 700,000 Muslims in Belgium and the overwhelming majority

of those people share our values.

“To make an enemy of all of those people, we really will be creating problems.

We need to see who the terrorists are, who supports the terrorists, what

networks are there to support them.

“That is who we need to tackle and we need to get all of the rest of the

Muslims on our side not working against us.”

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Elsewhere in his speech, Mr Geens said: “terrorists are using Viber, WhatsApp,

Twitter, Skype or Facebook to communicate with each other.”

He told EU lawmakers that in the past governments could rely on

telecommunications operators to cooperate with investigators, but that

social media firms haven’t been as forthcoming.

Mr Geens said “communication with these providers is far from optimal,

and that has been a major obstacle for the investigations.”

He said “the EU needs to step in urgently to coordinate national

responses and a discussion with providers.”

The March 22 suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and subway killed 32

people.