Brussels: After Belgium's cats hijacked social media during anti-terrorist operations in Brussels on Monday, they were granted a reward.
Belgian Federal Police posted a picture of a bowl of cat food sporting their logo, with an official thanks for the feline assistance during the counter-terrorism raids in Brussels.
In Belgium, government is a complicated affair. And the crackdown on the Brussels precinct of Molenbeek throws light on an equally complex relationship with religion.
Belgium does not take much space on a world map, but it is home to 11 million people. Heavily urbanised, it sometimes feels as if Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane were all crammed into the southern half of Tasmania.
Belgium is not a secular state like France. It recognises a handful of religions officially, including Islam and Catholicism, which was once dominant.
But the state also recognises secularism (read: organised atheism) as well.
Because it was historically Catholic, Belgium is home to a strong and well-organised secularist and de facto atheist and agnostic movement. A dense network of Centres d'Action Laique (Secular Action Centres) provide a large part of the Belgian population with a place for atheist activism, godless morals and philosophies, and even secular baptisms and weddings.
In Belgium, the powerful freethinking movement is backed by Masonic lodges. Continental Freemasonry, although stemming from the same tradition, has dramatically differentiated itself from Freemasonry as known in Anglo-Saxon countries.
On the other hand, the clergy endures. The Catholics and secularist networks are so obviously present in Belgian society that the trained eye can tell a Belgian Catholic from a Belgian freethinker within a few minutes.
The rift between Catholics and freethinkers is one of the pillars of Belgian society, way beyond its linguistic divide, if only because it pre-dates it.
Historically, Belgian politics are divided between conservative and liberal parties. The former welcomes Catholic-educated scholars, the latter relies on openly and vehemently freethinking universities such as the Universite libre de Bruxelles, Belgium's port of entry to the secular network. The Socialist movement, which entered politics in the early 20th century and has been prominent ever since, also relies on the secular network.
This has allowed Belgium to be governed by Socialist-Liberal coalitions where two parties silenced their differences on economic issues to advance common causes shared by all freethinkers. This is how Belgium adopted gay marriage, gay adoption, euthanasia and the easiest divorce procedure in Western Europe, to the great dismay of Conservatives who sat in opposition.
These Belgian peculiarities made French-speakers and Dutch-speakers alike adamantly opposed to annexation by the Netherlands or France, whose societies and politics are radically different.
Although silently shunned by the most extreme Catholics and freethinkers alike, Belgian Muslims found allies in the ranks of Conservatives who support religious freedom as well as among those freethinkers supportive of multiculturalism.
If Belgium was divided only linguistically, it would be easy to manage. But the language problem itself is amplified by other divisions. French-speakers are mostly on the freethinking side and support Socialists, and to a lesser extent Liberals, whereas the Conservatives pretty much govern the Dutch-speaking part of the country, Flanders, as their own fiefdom.
Flanders has been relentlessly pushing for more autonomy and its majority party openly espouses separatism, but not without Brussels - a city with a French-speaking majority but which lies in the heart of Flemish territory.
For years, Brussels suffered from this battle between the two communities, neither of which is willing to let the capital of Belgium - and the European Union - escape their patronage.
This does not favour good governance, as the unrest in Molenbeek shows. It will take more than cats to change that.
