Mourning for the Dead Condemned for Terrorism: The Case of Belgian Families with Relatives Who Left for Syria

What does mourning mean in the context of families stigmatised by the counter-terrorism discourse that has affected Muslim communities in the West since the 9/11 attacks? Focusing on the case of Belgium and the families who lost members who went to fight in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, we aim to interrogate the experience of mourning when the death of a family member is overshadowed by the taboos of terrorism, jihad and war rooted in an Islamic framework. This presentation will explore the worlds of families confronted with the absence of the body and the lack of precise information about the circumstances of the death. It will highlight the strategies used by these families to preserve the memory of their children despite the widespread official discourse that associates Europeans who have died in Syria with categories of terrorism, monstrosity, disloyalty to the nation and hatred of Western values. Among these strategies, we will describe forms of solidarity and mobilisation, the use of legal counter-discourses, holding the state accountable, but also silence, reversal of stigma, and sometimes the need for forgetting. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research with Belgian families who have lost their children, we seek to understand how an existence disrupted by a major political event - the departure of young Belgian Muslims to Syria and the government's counter-terrorism response - manifests itself in the reality of affected families and communities. We will also interrogate Belgian policy on the (non-)management of these tragic deaths: non-repatriation until death, lack of administrative recognition, failure to repatriate bodies, and the nature of communication with grieving families. Finally, our presentation will explore the problem faced by families whose children have disappeared in Syria and have been tried in absentia, without any confirmation of their death.