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By November 29, police discovered the infant’s cloth head had been severed and stolen overnight. CCTV footage only showed a blurry silhouette, and no suspects have been identified.
Experts say the faceless design was intentional, aimed at accommodating Islamic norms. Professor Wouter Duyck of Ghent University explained: “In Islam, the faces of prophets are not depicted. This is the nativity scene in the capital of Europe. Whoever decided to impose a hierarchy on religions in favour of the least tolerant one?”¹
Brussels is roughly 25% Muslim, and the population is rising.² City leaders apparently wanted to avoid offending the growing community by erasing recognizable Christian imagery.
Mayor Close defended similar initiatives in the past. In 2012, Brussels replaced its traditional Christmas tree with an abstract steel sculpture. “The Christmas tree is not a religious symbol and actually lots of Muslims have a Christmas tree at home,” he said.
Duyck criticized this trend, calling it a “misplaced fallacy” that abandoning Western traditions aids integration.¹
Belgian Senator Georges-Louis Bouchez also denounced the nativity scene. “How ugly, a society that denies its values,” he wrote on X. “This nativity scene is terrible and an insult to our traditions. It is unacceptable to see our traditions erode time and again because of so-called inclusivity.”³
Bouchez compared the faceless figures to “zombies at Brussels stations” and called for an immediate replacement.³
Columnist Fouad Gandoul captured the frustration felt by many Belgians: “I grew up with warm, familiar nativity scenes and all the Christian traditions that shaped this country,” he wrote. “What’s happening now is absurd: a small, self-appointed progressive elite is dismantling our own culture in the name of a hollow idea of ‘inclusion.’ No minority demanded this. No one is offended by a nativity scene.”⁴
This isn’t Brussels’ first move to erase Christian traditions. The 2012 Christmas tree controversy and the renaming of the annual Christmas market to “Winter Wonders” show a pattern of stripping religious meaning while claiming modernization.
Authorities downplayed the beheading. Mayor Close’s spokesman, Victor Kanyanzira, said, “such incidents are not unusual in open holiday displays” and claimed public nativity scenes often face theft or tampering.⁵ But the old wooden nativity stood for 25 years without a single incident. The violent vandalism occurred within 48 hours of the faceless experiment.
Past incidents hint at a growing hostility toward public Christian symbols. Baby Jesus was stolen in 2014 to protest the government, damaged by vandals in 2015, and disappeared again in 2017. This time, no explanation was left, and CCTV captured only a shadowy figure.
The beheading carries cultural weight. Muslims make up roughly 23% of Brussels’ population, concentrated in neighborhoods like Molenbeek and Schaerbeek.² Islamic tradition forbids depicting prophets’ faces. European officials removed Christ’s face to accommodate that belief—yet someone responded by cutting off His head entirely.
Brussels represents a cautionary tale for America. Open borders, mass immigration from incompatible cultures, and systematic erasure of Christian heritage produce the same unrest.
Officials plan to keep the faceless nativity for five years, signaling their belief that bureaucrats know better than citizens. Nobody voted to erase Christianity from public life, and no Muslim group demanded faceless figures.
The lesson is clear: cultural surrender invites contempt, not harmony. Less than 48 hours after Brussels tried to sanitize its nativity, Christ was beheaded—a stark warning ignored by European elites.
