A Belgian man and his son were brutally beaten by several men on Saturday afternoon in Antwerp after they sat down on the terrace of a halal restaurant while drinking alcohol.
The two men, who were described as being under the influence of alcohol, are said to have brought alcoholic beverages with them to the Express pita restaurant at Rooseveltplaats in Antwerp which is located in close proximity to the shisha cafe Fayrouz and a Persian restaurant.
The two men were asked by the owner of the restaurant to not drink alcohol. When the younger of the pair refused, the tensions rapidly escalated and violence broke out between employees and the two men after the son attacked an employee, Gazet van Antwerpen reports.
Video of the incident was posted to Twitter by Filip Dewinter of the populist Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang party claiming that the pair had been brutally beaten for drinking alcohol on the terrace of the restaurant.
In the short clip, several men can be seen beating the father with chairs while others threw chairs at the two men. Both men required hospitalisation after the violence occurred with the father suffering a bone fracture and the son receiving a serious wound to the head.
The incident bears some similarity to another violent episode in 2016 in which a group of Muslims beat a waitress in the French city of Nice for serving alcohol during Ramadan. The waitress was left with a severe facial hematoma as a result of the beating she incurred.
The attack in Antwerp comes only days after a poll showed that only 18 per cent of Flemish residents believe that Islamic values were compatible with their way of life. 40 per cent of Belgians with a Moroccan background also agreed that Muslims were not adapting to western European societies.