Would you like some jihad with that? In Antwerp, Belgium, a former Islamic State militant is running a bakery shop selling bread, sandwiches, pastry and coffee. Born and raised in a Catholic family in an Antwerp suburb, shop owner Michael – his last name is withheld – converted to Islam in 2007 and took on the name Younès, according to reports by the French magazine Paris Match and European television channel RTL. In 2012 the 26-year-old joined the radical Islamic group Sharia4Belgium, which was dissolved in the same year for incitement of hatred and is currently forbidden. At the end of 2013 Younès left Belgium for Syria. ‘The main reason I left is because I wanted to live in an Islamic environment,” he remembers. Younès spent six weeks with an ISIS army faction in Aleppo, where he engaged in battle with the Free Syrian Army. “I slept with my AK47 and two grenades next to my head,” he recalls. He says the reason he stayed in Syria for just six weeks is because he missed his family. Younès is father to two sons and is divorced. He is currently married to a seventeen-year-old Muslim woman. Upon his return, Belgian authorities arrested Younès . He was in pretrial detention for two months, after which a…
Croissants and ISIS: Meet the Belgian National With Experience in Both
September 27, 2015
