Second Anniversary

This week I mark the 2nd anniversary of this blog, with about 840 articles and over 180,000 page views. With my interest in Norwegian rape reports, I expanded my blog to also include the Norwegian, Danish, and a bit of the Swedish language press.

This year I have also started reading more serious studies of Islam in Europe. Again, I would like to thank those of my readers who answered my request to support my book fund. Your support is very much appreciated. I had brought several book and study summary reviews, but I have yet to summarize everything I have read.

There were several 'big' stories during the year: terror attacks prevented in Germany and Denmark, a new cartoon crisis in Sweden, Afghan asylum seekers and Somali female circumcisers in Norway, riots in the Netherlands, continuing debates on the hijab and stories of teachers or parents refusing to shake hands.

The stories that most attracted my reader's attention where two that featured on Little Green Football. Ironically, both were related to Vlaams Belang: Antwerp: No Jihad street and Nazis!!!. Amazingly, though, the most continuously popular article this year was about the first halal McDonald's in the UK, a run-of-the-mill article copied directly from the Daily Express.

As time passes, I realize some stories are continuously repeating themselves, and there are times when I wonder if its even worth reporting of yet another such story. Don't journalists get bored writing the same stories over and over again?

Just these past weeks, I also stepped into the big debate started by Little Green Footballs about right wing extremism in Europe. There are many sides to this debate about racism-ethnicism-nationalism and everything in between. On the connection between Muslims and the rise of the extreme right, take a look at an interview about Jewish/Muslim relations in Europe with Rabbi Aba Dunner of the Conference of European Rabbis.

See also: First Anniversary