The data refers to primary and secondary schools: “The city has been affected more strongly than the rest of the country by both secularization and immigration”
Bruxelles, the capital of Belgium and Europe, it is an increasingly Islamic city. In its primary and secondary schools now beyond the 50% of students choose Muslim instead of Catholic religion. This is revealed by the data published by the Observatory of Religions and Secularism for the school year 2018-2019 according to which the percentage of primary school students for whom parents chose the Catholic religion class in 2018 it was just the 15,6% in the Brussels region, a sharp decline compared to 18,4% of the 2015 and at a much lower level than 34,8% registered in the French-speaking community, of which Wallonia is part, the southern part of the country. The prevalence of the Islamic religion class is confirmed in the Flemish teaching circuit of Brussels – managed by the Flemish community – with the 60,3% of students against the 17,3% for the Catholic one, il 3,9% for the Protestant one, lo 0,7% for the Orthodox one and the 17,5% for the time of “morale”.
Secularization and immigration
“The Brussels region has been affected more strongly than the rest of the country by secularisation, which distanced the population from the Catholic tradition of the Church, both from immigration, which has strongly diversified the religions present in the capital”, explained Caroline Sagesser, researcher at the Observatory of Religions and Secularism in an article on the association's website. Secondo Wisdom, “the adjective minority is no longer adequate” for the Islamic religion course given that it is chosen by “a majority of students” of the French-speaking schools of Brussels. Read More
