Islam

ISLAM (backronym for the , ) is a Belgian Islamist political party. It aims at the establishment of an Islamic state in Belgium and the replacement of the current and historically existing legal system in Belgium (civil law) with Sharia. The party claims to "wait" for Belgium to "inevitably become an Islamic state". History The party's founder is Redouane Ahrouch, who helped establish one of the first Shia mosques in Brussels in the early 1990s. He was first active in the Noor party, which had limited success in the parliamentary elections of 1999 (0.15%) and 2003 (0.14%), before continuing his political work more successfully under the new name 'Islam'. The party was founded with the intention of participating in the 2012 local elections. Lists were submitted in the City of Brussels, Anderlecht and Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. In Anderlecht and Molenbeek, one seat was won with just over 4% of the votes. In Brussels, party chairman Abdelhay Bakkali Tahiri narrowly mised being elected with 2.9% of the votes. Both seats were lost in the 2018 local elections. In 2013, the party briefly gained a member of the Chamber of Representatives after Laurent Louis defected to the party. Louis, who is not Muslim, had been sitting as an independent member of the Chamber following his expulsion from the right-wing populist People's Party for antisemitism in 2011. Louis soon had a falling out with party leadership, although he continued to claim to be the party's president, with a spokesman for the party noting, "We had been warned that he was not a stable person, but had decided to give him a chance."