Belgium is a world capital of the diamond industry; it is a small but powerful engine of European capitalism, a bastion of conservatism and home to a large population of Orthodox Jews. It has long struggled to reconcile the submerged cultural conflicts between its Flemish, or Dutch-speaking, culture and the French-speaking Walloons. Neighboring Holland, by contrast, is a tiny country with a large reputation for liberalism and tolerance. In "coffeeshops" throughout the country, menu items for "Colombian" and "Purple Mountain" refer not to java but to varieties of marijuana; in the winding streets of Amsterdam's red light district, women pose in lingerie before the windows. It is here that same-sex marriage and doctor-assisted euthanasia were first made legal.

But the two countries share a common dynamic: As their Muslim populations have grown larger and more restive, both have spawned a sometimes fierce anti-immigrant backlash. The result has been a cycle of building hostilities between Muslim and European in which it is usually impossible to tell who threw the first stone.

The influx of Muslims into Holland, Belgium and the other nations of Europe is hardly new. Tens of thousands have arrived, mostly from Turkey and Morocco, since the 1960s and 1970s. Those in the first wave, like immigrants everywhere, often came looking for political freedom and economic opportunity. Even now, though, the grandchildren of those immigrants say they often feel like second-class citizens in the countries they call home. The immigrants' levels of education are generally lower; for them and their children, unemployment rates are higher. In Belgium, unemployment among Muslims is estimated at up to 40 percent.

Still, the population of Muslims in Europe continues to grow. According to one recent report, it could nearly double by 2015, approaching 30 million.

Almost a million Muslims now live in the Netherlands, giving the country the second-highest Muslim population per capita in Europe, after France. In a country still coming to grips with its guilt over the large numbers of Jews deported during the Nazi occupation more than 60 years ago, many are reluctant to discriminate against a different religious group, even if that group stands opposed to Holland's famed liberal and secular mores.

But after some Dutch Moroccans openly celebrated the 9/11 attacks, and after a radical imam in Rotterdam pronounced that "homosexuals are pigs," many among the Dutch were pushed over the brink. The rightist sociology professor Pim Fortuyn rose suddenly to political prominence, inaugurating his own party which he led into Parliamentary elections. Fortuyn, a gay man, ripped Islam as a "backward culture" and called for tough new curbs on immigration. Though he was assassinated in the spring of 2002, his party swept to power with considerable support from voters under 30. Though Fortuyn's party did not hold power long, its powerful influence is still felt in strict new immigration rules and the planned deportation of 26,000 failed asylum-seekers.

The rise of far-right parties like Lijst Pim Fortuyn and Belgium's Vlaams Blok and the popularity of right-wing leaders like France's Jean-Marie le Pen has made European Muslims feel increasingly unwelcome, even hated. "People are getting angry," says Ayhan Tonca, chairman of Holland's largest organization of Turkish mosques.

The international political climate in recent years has further eroded tolerance and goodwill on both sides. The bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict has inflamed Muslim animosity toward the West, a rage fueled by Arab news stations and Internet sites that beam graphic news and propaganda into Muslim homes throughout the West, thousands of miles from the zones of conflict.

In that atmosphere, the rhymes Moroccan youth chant beneath the stormy skies and along the cobbled streets of Holland's Jewish neighborhoods have become frighteningly familiar: "Hamas, Hamas, alle Joden aan het gas!" they cry. ("Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas!) Or: "Joden moet je doden!" which translates with chilling simplicity: "Kill Jews!" On May 4, 2003, during a national moment of silence in remembrance of those who perished in Holocaust, a group of Moroccan boys began playing soccer with the wreath Holland's Queen Beatrix had placed by the Holocaust Memorial at the Palace in Amsterdam. There is an increasing incidence of race-based crimes, such as the recent murder of a teacher by a Turkish student in The Hague. "The teacher dishonored him," one friend of the confessed killer, known only as "Murat D.," explained to the media as other Turkish classmates chanted, "Murat, we love you!"

And while Jewish schoolboys in France now leave yarmulkes at home because the law demands it, in Holland, they do so out of fear. Indeed, the Dutch Center for Information and Documentation on Israel reports a 140 percent increase in anti-Semitic acts in the year 2002 and first half of 2003. That number "omits any act that could be viewed as anti-Israel," says the center's director, Ronny Naftaniel.

"There were some 330 incidents last year," says Naftaniel, who estimates that 75 percent were perpetrated by Moroccan youth. "There is a minimal amount of anti-Semitism that is constant in Holland, of course, but if you blame Jews for being the world power who direct the politics of the world, if you throw stones at Orthodox Jews, if you chant 'Hamas, Hamas' on trams and buses in the cities, that's anti-Semitism, and that's a problem."

Some Muslim leaders also acknowledge rampant, and often rabid, anti-Semitism in the Muslim communities here; even Jahjah and other AEL officials have, on occasion, spoken against it. But not Naima Elmaslouhi, the Arab European League's vice president in Holland. Speaking briefly by cellphone from the Amsterdam police station in December, as she waited for the release of fellow league officers arrested during a pro-Palestinian demonstration, she said the claims of anti-Semitism are exaggerated. "It's just one or two incidents," she said.

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