Working and living in Brussels can feel like finding yourself marooned in enemy territory. A friend who once worked there on human rights legislation cautioned me that the city is “full of nets” with which to trap you – as well as full of “Satanists”.
It was hard to know how figurative he was being. The current European Commission is pushing the most progressive legislation in the EU’s history, as I heard one MEP with the nationalist Sweden Democrats put it. Not long after I arrived in April, the European Parliament hosted a photographic exhibition that included images suggesting a homosexual Christ surrounded by acolytes in leather clothing typically associated with bondage and fetishism. The obvious objection is: good luck trying that with the Prophet Muhammad and expecting Muslims to acquiesce quietly to such artistic licence.
