“What’s in a Name?”: Molenbeek

Written by John (the other John).

Molenbeek is one of the nineteen municipalities in Brussels, Belgium, which is known today as a hotbed in the formation of Islamic para-military bases in Europe, thus it is able to serve as a sanctuary residence for terrorists. In recent times, it is most known as the residence of the Paris Bataclan murderers. But has it always been this way?

Let us go back in time to when this location was formed under the current legal name. Molenbeek was founded by Christians, so they named this location in honour of Saint John the Baptist, hence the legal name given to this locale was Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (or Molenbeek -Saint-Jean) in the 8 th Century. For 12 centuries, Molenbeek was the geographical center of Christian Western Europe; but then something happened. In the latter half of the 20 th Century, there came an influx of AfrArabistanis into Molenbeek due to the “welcoming” nature of Western Europeans. And what better place to infiltrate Europe than its geographical center (and the home of NATO and the EU). But  his “welcome”-nature of Europeans resulted in indigenous Christian Europeans becoming minorities in Molenbeek -Saint-Jean, to now becoming practically extinct.

But I will not get too deep into the history here, so I will just jump ahead to the present. Today, this locale is not known as Sint-Jans-Molenbeek or Molenbeek -Saint-Jean; instead, today it is merely referred to as Molenbeek. Any reference to St. John has been removed both in name and in culture. Today, you will find more mosques than churches in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. Today, you will find more anti-Christians than Christians in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. Today, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean is a no-go zone.

So you may ask “what’s in a name”? Evidently, not much. Even with the legal name still being Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, it does not change what this locale has become; if anything, the name might as well be Molenbeekistan-Mohammad.