LIKE much else in Belgium, the administration of the country’s second-largest religion is in a rather chaotic state, and things could get worse.

In a kingdom of 11m people, Islam claims the loyalty of about 800,000 souls, of whom the vast majority originate either from Morocco or Turkey. Most of the country’s 300-plus mosques are Turkish or Moroccan in flavour, and imams who serve them usually come from those countries. In Brussels, which is the country’s capital as well as hub of Europe’s main institutions, the Muslim share of the population is about 25%.

Since the terrorist outrages of March 2016, which targeted Brussels airport and the metro system, both the government, the security services and a parliamentary commission have been delving into the country’s Islamic scene to see whether it has any characteristics that make it prone to produce fanatics. The handling of this problem is complicated by Belgium’s older division between Francophones and the Dutch-speakers of Flanders. Among Flemings on the political right, there is a strong streak of Islamo-scepticism. Many sensitive matters, like the teaching of Islam and the regulation of female headgear, are handled at regional or local level. Flemings sometime accuse French-speakers of being soft on Islam.

Even before last year’s horrors, Belgium had the grim distinction of being the European country that produced the highest number per head of young fanatics who went off to fight in Syria. The heavily immigrant Brussels district of Molenbeek received (and bitterly resents) the nickname of “jihadi central” because it had been a way-station of the perpetrators of terror in France. For the record, it is a pleasanter place to walk the streets than are similar urban areas in England or France.

In recent days, Belgium’s politicians have been focusing not on the smaller mosques thronged by migrants but on the capital’s oldest and grandest place of Muslim worship. Back in 1967, Belgium’s King Baudouin formally transferred to his Saudi counterpart King Faisal a piece of prime property which later became the city’s Great Mosque and main Islamic Centre. This is where diplomats pray; it is also the go-to place of instruction for people who are bent on embracing Islam (including Belgian men who plan to marry Muslim women) and want to study the religion before receiving a certificate. Awkwardly, a few of the thousands of people who have studied there went on to become terrorists.

The investigative panel, representing politicians across the linguistic and ideological spectrum, has come up with a bold proposal: the Great Mosque should be removed from Saudi oversight and instead placed under a panel representing Belgian Islam as a whole. Meanwhile the country’s (Flemish) migration minister, Theo Francken, has declared his intention to expel the mosque’s main imam on grounds that he belongs to the purist Salafi school of Islam. (Its director was expelled in similar circumstances in 2012.)

The Egyptian-trained imam, Abdelhadi Sewif, has indignantly denied any connection with extremism and appealed to the country’s highest migration authority. Another sharp-tongued Flemish politician, Belgium’s deputy premier Jan Jambon, duly retorted that if the imam’s appeal prevails, a fresh revocation of his permit will be decreed on different grounds and the end-result will be the same.

One of Belgium’s best-read Islamic scholars, Yacob Mahi, says he is appalled by the expulsion order and insists it will do nothing to stamp out terrorism. As Mr Mahi argues, the Egyptian imam has never preached hatred or violence and, while theologically conservative, he is not a Salafi. Moreover even if the imam were a Salafi, that would not be ground for his expulsion, given that some forms of that back-to-basics theology are quite eirenic: that is Mr Mahi’s argument, and he has urged co-religionists to find peaceful and polite ways to complain about the impending move.

Elsewhere in Belgium, the authorities are more reliant than ever on deals with the governments of Morocco and Turkey to keep an eye on mosques and their members. The Muslim Executive of Belgium, which advises the government on the generous subsidies that it gives to Islamic groups and teachers, is controlled by people close to Moroccan officialdom. Turkey sends imams to serve its Belgian kin. This sort of approach has its advantages for all three governments, but it means that Belgium’s Muslims are not being allowed to develop a style and sensibility of their own.

Lots of people, ranging from the parliamentary investigators to learned people like Mr Mahi, who holds a doctorate from a French university, say they wish there could be such a thing as Belgian Islam, firmly rooted in Europe’s environment and culture. Similar wishes are expressed in almost every European country which hosts large Muslim minorities.

In a typical expression of this sentiment, the Socialist Belgian parliamentarian Willy Demeyer has said the Great Mosque’s present regime is an outdated throwback to the diplomatic deals of the sixties. “ Today, Muslims are present in every district of Belgium and the vast majority of them wish to live out their beliefs in peace – it is to them that we should be handing over the most representative place of Belgian Islam....”

Maybe the trouble is that nobody in this land of misty canals, detective stories and linguistic ambivalence can predict what exactly a home-grown Belgian Islam would look like, and many do not want to take the risk of finding out.