This Europe: Belgian Arabs find a radical new champion (and pin-up)

Strolling the stage with a cordless mike, the young man with a telegenic smile and designer stubble has all the ease of a seasoned game-show host. The audience whoops with delight and giggling young women in Islamic headscarves jostle outside his dressing room for autographs.

But Dyab Abou Jahjah is no light entertainer. A radical campaigner for the rights of Europe's disenchanted Arab communities, he is one of the most controversial – and charismatic – figures in Belgium's bland political arena.

Next month he will stand for parliament. And as he takes his message further afield in Europe, Mr Abou Jahjah, 31, is being called the new Malcolm X.

Although he is of Lebanese origin, his support comes mostly from the second generation of Belgium's large Moroccan immigrant community. Technically they have full Belgian citizenship. In reality their status is second class. Mr Abou Jahjah demands more jobs, better schools and housing for Belgian Arabs. In Antwerp, he sends out "civilian patrols", of smart young Arab men and women with mobile phones to shadow police and report racial harassment.

He recently toured Dutch and English universities to drum up support for his fledgling lobby organisation, the Arab European League. He dismisses "integration" and "assimilation" as degrading.

Instead Mr Abou Jahjah pushes Middle East issues on to Belgium's political agenda. His website is openly anti-Zionist and makes jibes at Antwerp's Jewish community, which for centuries has worked in the city's diamond industry.

While his supporters see him as a vital counter-balance to the the anti-immigration Vlaams Blok party which won a staggering 33 per cent in Antwerp in the last elections, his critics say he puts personal ambition before the disaffected young Arabs he claims to represent. "He's giving them an identity and respect they don't have and that's why they consider him their hero," says Fauzia Talhaoui, a Green party MP who is of Moroccan origin.

Meriel Beattie reports on Dyab Abou Jahjah in 'Crossing Continents', on Radio 4 today at 11am