Voices: No, we're not all terrorists in Molenbeek

BRUSSELS — Let me tell you about Molenbeek.

I lived in this Brussels district off and on for more than two decades, and I can assure you: There’s nothing in the water here.

So turn off the TV; pay no mind to that article.

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the streets of my former neighborhood aren’t filled with sleeper terrorists who are just a failed job interview, a Friday prayer, a racist insult away from mass murder.

Yet it’s precisely that narrative I could see building the minute I learned the Paris terrorists had organized their attacks in Molenbeek. It’s the one that was predictably repeated not just by my interior minister (who assured viewers he would “clean up” the area like one might a mold-covered fridge), but also by people I consider among my closest friends.

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There’s something about Molenbeek, that echo chamber of half-truths and multi-purpose statistics goes, something that is making “those” people — his pronoun of choice — vulnerable to radicalization. They’ll point to my former neighborhood’s 30% unemployment rate — reportedly the highest in Belgium. They’ll pause and ask if I knew we’re the second-poorest of Brussels’ 19 districts by average income. And that no other Brussels area has as many mosques, a few of which are known to be run by imams with Salafist ideas.

That narrative, built upon a bed of approximate truths at best and gross exaggerations at worst, would have you believe that slim job prospects and a deep well of anger at the world could turn any disaffected youth into a mass murderer.

That’s offensive to anyone who’s ever been down and out. And it’s just not true.

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If you’re going to place blame at our doorstep, fault us for not being a particularly tight-knit community. Most of us mind our own business and are more focused on the daily grind and our next paycheck than policing our neighbors. And in an 80% Muslim area just a two-hour train ride from Paris, it’s easy to slip into anonymity if you look Arab. It’s not quantum physics. If I were a would-be terrorist, I would come here to plot my attacks, too.

Over the last few days, I have seen drive-by reporters swarm into the area, determined to find easily digestible answers to slippery, complex questions, and I worry that all this is being lost on undiscerning news consumers. Mostly though, I worry that the distinction between thuggery and terrorism I’ve insisted on making since the Molenbeek connections first surfaced is fast being blurred. Ordinary residents, on-welfare youths and mass murderers are being lumped together as if one of a kind.

The only thing you should really know about Molenbeek is that we have long had a crime problem — from the petty to the stomach-churning. It’s why you won’t find a neighborhood with a more notorious reputation in this country of 11 million people than ours.

During my childhood and teens, the area often felt like a lawless, urban wasteland, one lorded over by a couple dozen youths with an unquenchable thirst for trouble. On good days, they taunted and humiliated whoever’s face they didn’t like. On bad days, they left a trail of destruction behind them, harassing and molesting girls, robbing and beating up young men, ever ready to riot.

Molenbeek isn’t like that anymore, but the reputation has stuck. Instead, it’s become a cool place for a certain kind of cash-strapped, left-leaning person to move into.

As for me, like most locals with migrant roots, I left the district the minute my finances allowed it.

All in all, it took me 24 years and an Ivy League degree to no longer be ashamed of where I grew up. It took me two more years to push back when another friend, co-worker or relative insisting on dishing up their hearsay version of wretched life in Molenbeek.

Now, truth be told, I have no idea where we go from here.

I know that long after the reporters and commentators have gone, we’ll still be hearing all the things they said.

I know already that when my neighborhood comes up in conversation again, I’ll probably bite my tongue but keep quiet.

Maybe then, even I will begin to wonder if there is something in the water.

Thompson is a Brussels-based reporter who writes for Associated Reporters Abroad.