The Italian Supreme Court on Friday upheld a sentence for abuse and aggravated assault by a Moroccan father against his 12-year-old daughter.
Defense lawyers maintained that the father, who allegedly beat his daughter with a broom handle for "corrective" purposes after she could not properly recite the Koran, did so because of "cultural" reasons and should be given a lighter sentence accordingly.
(source)
Charges of supporting terrorism have been filed in a Czech court for the first time in recent history against three suspects from the Russian republic of Dagestan and one from Moldava, according to a court spokesman.
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The suspects were part of a bigger group detained in Prague and Berlin last year which is believed to have links with Jamaat Shariat — an organization that seeks to establish an Islamic state under Sharia Law in Russia’s North Caucasus region.(source)
France's president has dismissed the far-right's use of a recent killing spree as evidence of a need for tougher immigration laws, saying Monday the call makes no sense in the wake of the massacre by a "monster" who was French-born.
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"We can't equate Mohamed Merah — who was born in France, and is French — with the children of immigrants who arrive by boat," Sarkozy told France-Info radio. "This Mohamed Merah, if you'll excuse me, was a monster."
(source)
A secondary school student near Paris was accused of wearing provocative clothing and sent back home. The school thought her skirt was too long, and conveyed religious values.
"Other students come dressed up as hippies or goths and nobody says anything," the girl, Khadija, told the French daily Le Parisien, "but I’m not even allowed to wear a gypsy skirt."
Nearly 60 percent of the French say they distrust youth from the 'banlieues', France's impoverished, immigrant-dominated suburbs, according to a new survey that has laid bare the country's divisions.
"The results are extremely worrying," Thibault Renaudin, national secretary of Afev, the youth organisation which published the poll, told The Local.
"Youths from the banlieues already suffer from discrimination, unemployment, and this suspicion just adds their difficulties."
A poll conducted by Afev shows that while 75 percent of the French have a positive opinion of young people, 57 percent have a negative opinion of youths from improverished suburbs.(source)
Switzerland’s economy minister said on Wednesday that the Swiss government is concerned with a possible boycott of Swiss products overseas because xenophobic tendencies have found more ground in the wealthy European country.
Answering Today’s Zaman’s question in a written interview before boarding a plane to Ankara for an official visit on Thursday, Johann Schneider-Ammann,
the Swiss head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, said: “This is a big concern for my government. The key to solving this issue is dialogue; dialogue with Muslim communities in Switzerland and, on the international level, dialogue with Muslim countries.”(source)
While the number of ethnic Danes on incapacity pensions has dropped considerably over the past 20 years, the number of non-westerners has increased dramatically.
Since 1990, the number of immigrants from non-Western countries on incapacity pensions has risen from 2,979 to 27,375, according to a Rockwool Foundation Research Unit report in Berlingske today.
The government's counter-terrorism strategy is facing opposition on university campuses over concerns it is discriminatory and encourages spying.
Student groups and lecturers have moved to distance themselves from Prevent, a Home Office initiative that aims to combat violent extremism, after being asked to report Muslim students deemed vulnerable to radicalisation.
The National Union of Students (NUS) is expected to table a motion at its conference next month condemning as "totally unacceptable" approaches by Prevent officers asking for details of student Islamic society members.(source)
President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that France would speed up expulsions and block the entry of extremists in the wake of shootings by an Islamist radical who killed seven people.
"We will speed up expulsion procedures for reasons of public order," Sarkozy said in a speech praising security services for their handling of the attacks carried out in southern France by Mohamed Merah.
"I am saying this in the strongest way possible, all of those who have made defamatory attacks on France or against the values of the republic will not be authorised to enter our country. It is not France's role to accept those who violate its values," he said.(source)
A group of Kurds belonging to the banned Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) was arrested in Venice on Tuesday on suspicion of extorting money to use for armed operations in their native Turkey.
The suspects are accused by Italian investigators of using violence to force Kurdish immigrants living in northern Italy to pay a ''revolutionary tax'' to fund the PKK's fight against Turkey.
(source)
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The parents argued that, in accordance with the teachings of the Koran, they wanted to instil a sense of shame in their children before they reached puberty. Mixed swimming lessons in primary school, the family claimed, would be incompatible with such an aim.
Following the family’s appeal of the original Administrative Court verdict, the Federal Court decided to uphold the fine. The court stated that the obligation to participate in mixed swimming classes did not represent a significant assault on the family’s religious freedom.(source)
Belgium's largest party, the opposition Flemish nationalist N-VA, wants to ensure that only non-EU foreigners who speak the local language can exercise their vote.
Lawmaker Ben Weyts: "There should be conditions linked to integration, e.g. knowledge of the language of the local area where you are living. In Flanders this means knowledge of Dutch. If you want to have a say in the administration of your municipality, you should also have the politeness to become familiar with the language of the municipality. If it's up to us, then we favour linking language conditions, integration conditions, to acquiring Belgian nationality and casting your vote."(source)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy got himself into hot water on Monday morning when he spoke of a ‘Muslim appearance’ in a radio interview. His remark unleashed a Twitter storm as thousands of people questioned the idea of a physical look to identify Muslims. Many called Sarkozy’s remarks racist.
He made his blunder in a radio interview with public radio station France Info, as he dismissed claims by Front National leader Marine Le Pen that unchecked immigration was to blame for the recent killings in Toulouse. Sarkozy said the claim that immigration resulted in people like gunman Mohamed Merah entering France was nonsensical, before adding that two of soldiers he shot were, “how shall we say, Muslims, at least in appearance, since one was Catholic”".(source)
An official says French police detained a radical preacher in December who was ready to lead dozens of young Muslims from the southern city of Nice to Afghanistan.
The official said Monday that Omar Diaby, a 37-year-old Senegalese man, was meeting up with two followers on Dec. 9 when he was stopped by police for an ID check that upended his plans.
(source)
(left: employment by nationality, right: employment by land of birth. red: women, blue: men)
Oslo District Court has sentenced Mullah Krekar to five years imprisonment for death threats against several named people.
The 55-year-old Mullah, whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, made alleged menaces against several Kurds for burning a Koran on a video uploaded to YouTube.(source)
The Government is drawing up plans to prevent schools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues from serving halal meat secretly to customers.
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Now Environment Minister Lord Taylor of Holbeach has said that if the European Union fails to agree on a new food labelling scheme, the UK will take action. The European Commission is considering the matter as part of its animal welfare strategy and is expected to report by the summer.
Lord Taylor told peers: ‘The Government welcomes this approach as it will allow consumer information to be considered alongside measures to minimise the suffering of animals slaughtered without stunning. In the meantime we are considering how we can use domestic legislation.’(source)
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Mohamed, a Toulouse construction worker in his 30s, noted Merah reportedly turned to radicalism after being rejected twice by the army. "You think that's only because of the dumb things he did as a kid?" he asked. "Your name and the color of your skin also count."
Mohamed said divisions in French society were widening. "There are also big tensions between the communities," he said, referring to Muslims and Jews. "This sort of event, given how it's distorted in the media, will make that worse."
Albanian religious leaders on Sunday slammed a planned gay pride parade, with a spokesman for the Muslim community saying it would pose a "danger" to society.
"Such public demonstration is an abuse of human rights and freedoms and presents a danger for the morals and tradition of the Albanian family," Agron Hoxha told local media.(source)
euronews: “From the point of view of communities, in this case the Jewish and Muslim communities, what psychological interplay is involved in these cases?”
Romano: “It can lead to people feeling like very persecuted victims, along the lines of, ‘we were killed because we’re Jews!’ Or: ‘we were killed because we’re Muslim!’ There are various confusions. We feel like taking positions. It doesn’t allow much of a margin for trust in the other. Communities hardening feelings that they are being persecuted can make difficulties worse. Here’s an example: the minute of silence observed in schools. There were some very aggressive reactions in some state schools where most of the students are Muslims, because it was a minute of silence related to what had happened in a Jewish school. Aggression can be created when either side feels attacked by the other. Political leaders play an essential role in trying to contain these difficulties, and not making them bigger.”(source)
Ministers on Friday agreed to tighten up the laws on marriage in the hope of reducing forced marriages, particularly those involving minors.
Ministers have agreed to stop the under-18s getting married in the Netherlands. In addition, officials will only recognise marriages involving minors which were carried out abroad if both partners are 18 when they apply to have their wedding approved in the Netherlands.
(source)
Danish students used to only learn about other religions once they had reached seventh grade, but a recent decision by parliament has introduced the teaching of other religions, such as Islam, into the Christianity studies curriculum at a much younger age
The letter comes following an interview published on Thursday in the liberal-leaning magazine NEO in which Reepalu discussed the "strong ties" between the Jewish community and the Sweden Democrats, a political party with a clear anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim line which has its roots in Sweden's neo-Nazi movement.
According to Reepalu, "Sweden Democrats have infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push their hate of Muslims".
The statements were immediately dismissed by Fred Kahn, chair of the Jewish Community in Malmö (Judiska församlingen) as "pure fantasy".
Reepalu, a Social Democrat, quickly backtracked on Thursday, admitting to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily that he "had no basis" for his claims and that he "shouldn't have said it that way".(source)
A bomb blast in Russia's restive North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Friday killed an imam and his police guard, officials said.
The home-made explosive device went off at around 0200 GMT in the centre of the town of Buinaksk, killing the imam of the city's mosque, Gitinomagomed Abdulgapurov, and a policeman who acted as his guard, Magomedrasul Magomedov.(source)
Several Muslim and Jewish leaders appeared united on French television after the attack in Toulouse, but officials within the Jewish community have no illusions: French Jews and Muslims are deeply divided.
"Don't tell me French Muslims appreciate Jews - 50 percent of them hate Jews," Rabbi Michel Sarfati told Haaretz on Thursday. The rabbi created the Jewish-Muslim friendship group and has traveled across France for several years preaching moderation.
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Another member of the Jewish-Muslim friendship association was alarmed by Muslims who admire the killer. "To them Mohamed Merah is a hero. Unfortunately, that view isn't as rare as you'd think," he said.(source)
Alzheimer's sufferer Dorothy Griffiths, 87, was found sitting down after staff heard a bang and a carer went to the office for help to lift her.
But agency nurse Abdul Bhutto, who was in charge, said they would have to wait.
Carer Zoe Shaw told the Sheffield hearing: "It took between five and ten minutes because he was praying upstairs in the office on his prayer mat. A staff member told me we had to wait for him to finish."(source)
An Østerbro family trapped their daughter for three days so she could be forcibly married off to her cousin in Afghanistan
The Copenhagen Police arrested three members of an Afghan-origin family on the charges of forcing their 19-year-old daughter to marry her cousin in Afghanistan against her will, TV2 news reported. The three members involved in the crime are the woman’s mother, father and brother.(source)
Approximately 85 Frenchmen have been training with the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan tribal area for the past three years, according to the intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Most of the men have dual nationality with France and North African countries.
The Frenchmen operate under the name Jihad-e-Islami and are being trained to use explosives and other weapons at camps near the town of Miran Shah and in the Datta Khel area, the officials said. They are led by a French commander who goes by the name Abu Tarek. Five of the men returned to France in January 2011 to find new recruits, according to the officials. It's unclear whether Merah was among that group.
(source)
Brutal punishments like whipping and stoning could become widespread in Britain if Islamic Sharia law is allowed to thrive, a member of the House of Lords has warned.
Baroness Cox said a growing number of British Muslims are shunning the official court system in favour of Sharia councils to settle legal disputes.
(source)
The Bosanski Pokret Nacionalnog Ponosa (Bosnian National Pride Movement), founded about two years ago, describes itself as a National Socialist (Nazi) movement championing white supremacy and Bosnian national revival. What differentiates the BPNP from other European neo-Nazi groups is that it was founded by, and is intended for, Muslim Bosnians – as evident from its spheres of operation, which are listed on its website.(source)
"There are too many of us," says Ulugbek, a young migrant from Uzbekistan. "We have to be grateful that there are mosques in Moscow. The city was not ready to host millions of us all of a sudden."
But others think that the authorities are ignoring the needs of the Muslim population.
Hasan Fakhritdinov, imam of what is known as the city's Historical Mosque, says that the existing facilities are just not enough.
"We are asking the authorities to let us build new mosques, but they are ignoring our demands," he says. "Now people have to pray outside in the rain or the snow."(source)
Many immigrants faced harassment on the streets of Oslo in the hours before it emerged that a Norwegian far-right extremist had set off the car bomb outside government offices that killed eight people last July, a new report reveals.
In one incident, a 21-year-old woman of Somali origin was advised to “leave the country” by schoolmates travelling on the same bus.
After getting off at the same stop, one girl pulled her braids so hard that she ripped them from her head, leaving her bruised and with a serious scalp wound, according to the report from the Norwegian Centre against Racism (NCR).(source)
In May 2012, Bilkay Öney will have been in office as Integration Minister in the German state of Baden-Württemberg for one year. The Turkish-born politician says she is privileged and told DW about her work.
If you look at integration policies in Germany: what seems to work?
I wish I could answer that question with a lot of positive aspects. But in general, the integration debate is often difficult. We often talk at cross purposes. The migrants don't know what the majority wants and what it regards as integration and vice versa. In that respect, I believe we have to articulate much more clearly what it is we want - so do the migrants. Accusations from the one side are followed by explanations from the other. Somehow, we can't see eye to eye and I get the impression that the battle lines are drawn. It would be good if we could break that up - which can only work if we open up to an honest debate and dare address issues that might be uncomfortable or might be viewed in a critical light. More self-criticism on the part of the migrants as well as the majority society is called for.
What else can migrants do to contribute to integration?
They could more often take up offers to integrate. What good is the best concept for integration if migrants don't take advantage of it. We have to pitch integration; it has to be clear that efforts toward integration are worthwhile. Otherwise, migrants will feel offended and withdraw into their corner.(source)
A step forward has been taken to unify the Italian Islamic community. It's also a move towards picking up once again the dialogue with the State and work towards signing an agreement document. After a long planning period, the first Italian Islamic Confederation is born, unifying 250 mosques all over the nation and who have chosen to share common values. The Italian Islamic Culture Centre and great mosque of Rome have wanted and worked on this project since 2009 - as also its Secretary General, Abdellah Redouane.
(source)
The process of Islamization was voluntary in the beginning. Women who wore a headscarf were rewarded with a prize. Now all women and girls, regardless of their religion, must observe Islamic dress code by wearing a head covering, long sleeves, and skirts below the knee in public schools and government buildings. Those who refuse become targets.
Human Rights Watch released a report last year documenting a spate of attacks on women without head coverings. The females reported being harassed, some physically harmed for not observing the Islamic dress code.
Alcohol is now all but banned, and authorities encourage taking multiple wives. Gender-segregated hair salons and gyms are becoming the norm. Many Muslims here object to what they call an improper interpretation of Islamic law.(source)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a new crackdown on violent Islamism after the death of Toulouse killer Mohamed Merah on Thursday. He pledged to step up monitoring of activity on the web and to punish anyone who has travelled abroad to take part in "terrorism".
"Our Muslim compatriots have nothing to do with the crazy motivations of a terrorist," Sarkozy said in a brief televised speech roughly two hours after Merah's death.
But he pledged a crackdown on anyone tempted to become involved with violent Islamist groups, including monitoring activity on the internet.(source)
A local French newspaper published on Thursday an in-depth testimony of a woman claiming that she had warned authorities multiple times that the suspect in the Toulouse killings, Mohamed Merah, was a danger to the public.
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The mother filed a complaint with the police, which according to her caused Merah to become upset. “He came to the front of our home, threatened me and hit me. He said that I was an atheist and that I must pay like all the rest of France’s citizens,” she said.
She further stated that Merah claimed he would “wipe out all those who kill Muslims.”(source)
Several thousand people turned out for an open-air concert in Denmark's second city of Aarhus on Wednesday to protest against a far-right anti-Islam rally planned for March 31, officials said.
Aarhus city officials said they organised the concert as a way of showing the city's tolerance and because "Aarhus does not want to be associated with extremist groups" that represent "everything we want to distance ourselves from."
Around 5,000 people attended Wednesday's concert, a spokesman for the mayor's office said.(source)
France's top Muslim leader said Wednesday that a besieged suspected Islamist who claims to have carried out a string of shootings to avenge Palestinian children had acted against Islam.
"These acts are in total contradiction with the foundations of this religion," said the head of the French Muslim Council, Mohammed Moussaoui. "France's Muslims are offended by this claim of belonging to this religion."
(source)
French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen broke a tentative campaign truce on Wednesday, saying an attack on a Jewish school showed it was time to "wage war" on Islamist groups that had flourished due to a lax government.
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"It is time to wage war on these fundamentalist political religious groups who are killing our children," Le Pen said on TV news channel i>tele.
"The fundamentalist threat has been underestimated."
(source)
Ireland: Muslims asked to remove headscarves for new Garda cardREPRESENTATIVES OF Ireland’s largest Sunni mosque have raised concerns over incidents in which a number of Muslim women were asked to remove their headscarves to comply with new identification procedures at the Garda National Immigration Bureau in Dublin.
The new procedures, which include a biometric fingerprint-capture system, were introduced in recent weeks.(source)
Two French police officers have been injured in a shoot-out during a raid on a house in Toulouse on Wednesday to arrest suspects in the killings of three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in south-west France this week, a police source said.(source)
Last week, ministers published a consultation on how the changes to civil marriage laws will be introduced. The plans explicitly rule out alterations to religious marriage.
However, the Muslim Council of Britain said case for the government’s proposals was “strikingly weak”.
Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said: “Whilst we remain opposed to all forms of discrimination, including homophobia, redefining the meaning of marriage is in our opinion unnecessary and unhelpful.(source)
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Many Norwegian communities far from Oslo see these new settlers as their hope for the future of regions otherwise threatened by depopulation.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported over the weekend that fully 118 municipalities in Norway would have registered population declines last year if it weren’t for the immigrants moving in. Just as Norwegian and other European immigrants helped populate desolate areas of the US Midwest and prairie in the 1800s, asylum seekers and immigrants are playing an important role in Norway’s “district politics” of today.(source)
Nine Islamists accused of planning terrorist attacks aimed at "liberating" Spain for Islam are standing trial in Madrid.
Spanish public prosecutors say the men -- Salafi-Jihadists who belonged to an Islamist cell known as the "Army of the Messiah" (Ansar al-Mahdi) -- sought to "free" the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves in northern Africa, from Spanish rule and thus begin the Islamic re-conquest of Spain.(source)
A Muslim woman was barred from serving on a jury yesterday because she refused to remove her veil.
In an extraordinary ruling, a judge said she could not sit on an attempted murder trial because her full face covering, known as the niqab, concealed her expressions.(source)
Last Thursday a gunman riding a scooter and wearing a black helmet opened fire on three French soldiers in uniform at a shopping mall in Montauban, a city 50 kilometers north of Toulouse. Abel Chennouf, 24, and Mohamed Legouad, 26, both of North African descent, were killed. Loic Liber, 28, of Afro-Caribbean descent, was left in a coma.(source)
Ken Livingstone has promised to turn London into a “beacon” for the words of the Prophet Mohammed in a sermon at one of the capital’s most controversial mosques.
Mr Livingstone, Labour’s candidate for mayor of London, pledged to “educate the mass of Londoners” in Islam, saying: “That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet.” Mr Livingstone described Mohammed’s words in his last sermon as “an agenda for all humanity.”
He praised the Prophet’s last sermon, telling his audience: “I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [its] words and message.” He also promised to “make your life a bit easier financially.”(source)
Police have opened an inquiry after two synagogues in Paris received a threatening letter, a source close to the probe said Monday, making no link to a shooting at a Jewish school that killed four.
The letter, reading "You are the people of Satan, Hell is waiting for you," was received at one of the synagogues during the weekend and the other on Monday morning, the source said.(source)
CHRISTIANS are being targeted by "anxious" athiests because the rise of radical Islam and terrorist attacks have created a deep-seated suspicion of religion, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.
Dr Rowan Williams said Christians are being viewed with growing suspicion and treated as “surrogates” for some extremist branches of Islam in the minds of “anxious secularists”.
(source)He also accused the Government of assuming all vicars were “imams in dog collars” while imams were “vicars in turbans”.
A referee on Sunday refused to officiate a French women's football match, when players for one of the teams took the pitch wearing Muslim headscarves, the club involved said.
The official sent a report to the Languedoc-Roussillon league in the south of the country about the incident involving players from Petit-Bard Montpellier, who had been due to play Narbonne in the regional promotion tie.(source)
In Belgium, more than 2000 people joined a “white march” on Sunday in memory of the Imam who died during a recent arson attack on a Brussels mosque. (source)
Two-thirds of young British Asians agree that families should live according to the concept of "honour", a poll for BBC Panorama suggests.
Of 500 young Asians questioned, 18% also felt that certain behaviour by women that could affect her family's honour justified physical punishment.
These included disobeying their father, and wanting to leave an exisiting or prearranged marriage.(source)
Police said a shooting Monday outside a Jewish secondary school in southwestern France had left victims, with eyewitnesses speaking of three killed, two of them children.
A man fled on a motorbike from the scene in Toulouse, where in the same region last week three paratroopers were shot dead by a man on a motorbike.(source)
A Syrian expat in Berlin has teamed up with Germans to launch a donation drive similar to long-distance "adoption" programs for children in poor countries. Though they fear the wrath of Syrian intelligence agents and for the safety of aid recipients in the country, they are determined to foster peaceful revolution on the home front.
Aktham Abazid and two German friends lead the way into an office that looks more like a storage room off a courtyard in Berlin. The men would like to keep this location secret because they are fighting against Syrian leader Bashir Assad from here. Even in Berlin, they believe that one can't feel completely safe.
Darkness falls as the men flip open their laptops. The seats are plastic, but they have Internet access -- and that's all they need. Abazid, 38, writes three names on a scrap of paper: Hama, Aleppo and Derik. In these three Syrian cities, people are sitting in clandestine offices waiting for their help. The men in Berlin plan to add these locations to the aid program they have devised for Syrian opposition activists.(source)
A group of Swiss Muslims has published recommendations for integration in response to a nationwide vote which banned the construction of minarets in Switzerland.
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The Grouping of Swiss Muslims said its recommendations were not only for the attention of federal, cantonal and communal authorities, political parties, the media and business, but “in a large part, for Muslims”.
“Muslims must make more of an effort, but society also needs to open their arms,” one of the group members, Khaldoun Dia-Eddine, told reporters. The group was set up a day after the vote as an informal think tank, but does not claim to be representative of all Muslims in Switzerland.(source)
A man armed with a baseball bat has attacked worshippers at a mosque in France, killing one person and seriously wounding another, police say.
A suspect was detained after the incident in the northern city of Arras in Pas-de-Calais.
Police sources quoted by Reuters news agency say the man is a 32-year-old French national of Moroccan origin.(source)
The top French official responsible for immigration said the EU should build a wall along the 130-kilometre Greek-Turkish border, comparing it to the one between the USA and Mexico.
Arno Klarsfeld, recently appointed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to head the Office for Immigration and Integration, said in a televised interview that the proposed wall was a matter of "common sense".
The official appears to bring other ideas recently developed by Sarkozy, who has repeatedly called the Greek-Turkish border "a sieve". According to analysts, Sarkozy has turned to anti-immigration rhetoric in his campaign against Socialist challenger François Hollande in the 22 April first-round election that is likely to propel the two men to a run-off on 6 May.(source)
A Swedish court has ruled that a 17-year-old girl's marriage by a Sharia court in the West Bank is invalid in Sweden, overturning a lower court's decision.
The girl, who is now 19-years-old, was married in June 2010 in a Sharia court located in the West Bank town of Hebron, ten days before her 18th birthday, according to Swedish court documents.
When she and her husband moved to Sweden they sought to have their marriage registered with the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket).
But the agency denied the couple's application, arguing the marriage couldn't be registered in Sweden because the woman hadn't turned 18 at the time of the wedding.(source)
Oslo’s mayor Fabian Stang has said he is unconcerned by statistics showing that immigrants will make up half of Oslo’s population three decades from now.
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The mayor pointed out that 2040 remains a distant point in time: by then, many immigrants will have lived in Norway for almost 100 years.
“It’s an interesting question as to how long one should be considered an immigrant. For me, the most important thing is to be able to provide all immigrants with the best possible schools so they can receive a good education and get a job. It’s then of lesser importance what skin colour, religion or sexual orientation one has,” said Stand.(source)
The UMP, the party led by Nicolas Sarkozy (running for a second term in the French presidential elections in April and May), is courting Muslims, and reportedly made long-distance buses available to them with separate sections for women and men. The buses were used to bring them to the large elections rally the presidential candidate held on Sunday in Villepinte.
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Contacted by Le Monde.fr, the head of the ''Diversities'' section of Sarkozy's election campaign Patrick Karam, brusquely denied the news. ''We have never engaged in this type of separation. We simply made specific buses available to some Muslim associations.''(source)
Police arrested a suspected terrorist in the northern city of Brescia early on Thursday who they believe may have been planning an attack on Milan's synagogue.
The 20-year-old, a Moroccan citizen who has lived in Italy since he was six, is also suspected of setting up secret Facebook pages providing training on making bombs and using weapons for budding terrorists.(source)
They call it the “Saba program,” after the German name for the legendary Queen of Sheba, who traveled from her home country to seek knowledge from King Solomon and to test him with questions.
And the mostly Muslim women who attend and also have come from afar say they acquire not only the education they lacked, or the German language they didn’t know, but the ability to integrate into a society where the integration of Muslims is a matter of hot debate.
Shabana, a 29-year-old Afghan woman, says the escape from an environment “where men thought women shouldn’t attend any school” was like being “born again” after years of suffering in a restrictive, arranged marriage.(source)
Immigrants are set to make up almost half of Oslo’s population by 2040, according to Statistics Norway, new figures show, prompting an immediate call for more restrictive immigration policies from Progress Party leader Siv Jensen.
In less than 30 years from now, 70 percent of the Norwegian capital’s first and second generation immigrants will have their roots in countries outside the 30-member European Economic Area, Statistics Norway said.
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According to Statistics Norway’s most likely scenario, Oslo’s immigrant population will rise from today’s 28 percent to 47 percent in 2040.
In the country as a whole, the immigrant population is expected to jump from 12 to 24 percent, or from 600,000 people today to 1.5 million in 2040.(source)
A car crashed into the police escort waiting for the ambassador of Qatar outside the royal palace of Laken in Brussels on Tuesday morning. Eight people were injured. One officer, who was fighting for his life, is now on the mend.
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Police spokeswoman Astrid Kaisin was keen to emphasize that the driver was not targeting the ambassador of Qatar: “It was an act of desperation. The driver wanted to commit suicide. We are working on the thesis that this was not an attack.”
The driver, who had Belgian number plates, was also injured and had to be taken to hospital. He is a 40year-old Algerian national, who 18 months ago benefited from an amnesty allowing undocumented people to stay in the country. He has been detained.(source)
About 30 people gathered in Prague's centre Friday to protest against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and present an improvised exhibition of photos of victims of the people's revolution in Syria.
The Asylum and Migration Department has received 27 million euros extra despite the whole range of austerity measures the federal government announced.
The cash will be used to keep reception centres for asylum seekers open longer, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Maggie De Block (Flemish liberal) announced.(source)
A West Yorkshire teenager will appear in court on Friday after allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six soldiers in Afghanistan.
Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Fir Avenue, Ravensthorpe, faces a racially aggravated public order charge.
He was arrested on Friday and charged over the weekend, police said.(source)
Voters in Solothurn, north-western Switzerland, voted on Sunday for an amendment to the law requiring police and judicial officers to record the nationalities of offenders and suspects.(source)
A mosque near Brussels has been targeted in an arson attack in which the imam died.
A Muslim man was arrested in the attack on the mosque in Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, the Belgian capital, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels Prosecutor's Office.
"It seemed that this person showed up and pulled out a knife and an axe, and that he spread flammable products - petrol, we assume - in order to start a fire and threaten the mosque occupants," Mr Meilleur said.
(source)
A Norwegian group called “Stop Islamisation of Norway” (SIAN) has doubled membership levels in the last two years, its representatives claim.
The group, who’s most active membership is located in Rogaland, has also been awarded a government concession to transmit on Radio Kos in Sandnes, western Norway. It alleges Internet radio capacity had to be increased from 25,000 to 200,000 listeners recently because of popularity.
Merete Hodne and Kjersti Margrethe Addehaid Gilje told NRK from Bryne, a small town in Rogaland County, “We have a duty to our country to preserve our Christian values, and not least to protect our children against the terrible, evil forces of Islam.”(source)
Muslim career women in Britain are choosing to become involved in polygamous relationships because of a lack of suitable men.
Some of them even choosing to become second or third wives to married men, according to the Islamic Sharia Council.
The charity, based in Britain, gives legal guidance to Muslims and has said it is receiving a high number of queries from women struggling to find suitable partners.
Many of the women have also said they would prefer to hold down high-profile jobs rather than look after their husbands.(source)
Miss James, who grew up in a rural village near the Kashmir mountains, said her problems began when she was 15 and the family lived in the Austrian city of Linz.
While she enjoyed the freedoms of Western culture, such as wearing lipstick and eyeliner, her conservative parents, who were brought together in an arranged marriage, disapproved.
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So began three years of violence between them, Miss James claimed, based on her refusal to be in a forced marriage and the embarrassment it caused the family's Pakistani peers in Austria.(source)
Valby culinary college backs down from demand that all students must taste all foods to graduate
Ikram Korkmaz, the Turkish Muslim culinary student told by his school in Valby that he would fail to graduate if he refused to taste dishes containing pork or wine, has been informed by the school’s headteacher that he is now exempt from such measures. However, it is unclear at present how this will affect the complaint Korkmaz submitted to the Education Ministry last month.
“The school’s headteacher [Søren Kühlwein Kristiansen] has indicated that in cases like Ikram Korkmaz’s, the student can ask other students to taste the dish on their behalf, if they themselves don’t wish to,” Mette Klingsey Møller, a spokesperson for the Education Ministry, told The Copenhagen Post.(source)
President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to make the labelling of halal meat pivotal to his re-election campaign has infuriated, alienated and dismayed France's Muslim community, which may number as many as six million, and the backlash is growing. Members of the booming educated and entrepreneurial Muslim middle class say they are tired of being cast as scapegoats in Sarkozy's wooing of the extreme right and have accused him of dangerous and divisive election tactics.
Fateh Kimouche, a high-profile Muslim blogger, said the new class of second- and third-generation Muslims in France was not prepared to lie down and let the French republic roll over it as their parents had done.
"My parents came from Algeria and, like many others, they didn't make a fuss because they felt like invited guests who had to be on their best behaviour. But I was born here. We are Muslims and we are French, but every day we are attacked, insulted and treated like terrorists or extraterrestrials," he said. "France educated us; we have energy and enthusiasm and we have brains, businesses and money. The old generation of politicians don't seem to realise this."(source)
Several incidents between ethnic Albanians and Macedonians were reported last night in Macedonia.
Four ethnic Albanians attacked three minors in the capital of Skopje late on Friday.
Macedonian police have confirmed that the attackers beat up the three victims with fists and metal bars and that one of them was in the hospital.(source)
EU countries have become increasingly critical of Greece's lax control of its border with Turkey, as the number of immigrants crossing it has risen due to political unrest in the Middle East.
A group of seven EU ministers of justice and home affairs urged Greece to improve border controls using available EU funds.
The asylum process in Greece proceeds slowly, if at all. Many refugees are leaving Greece and heading for other EU countries; something the interior ministers of Germany, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, France, the UK and the Netherlands want to prevent.(source)
Racism is on the rise in Italy, especially in the media and on the Internet, said a report by the National Office against Racial Discrimination (UNAR) presented to Parliament on Thursday.
One out of four victims of racially-motivated discrimination in Italy comes from Eastern European countries and the Balkans, the report said. North Africans are the targets of 16.6% of discriminatory acts and Latin Americans 13.8%, it said.(source)
UK: Far right hardcore 'willing to prepare for armed conflict'
Via the Guardian (h/t DW):
The study, From Voting to Violence? Rightwing Extremists in Modern Britain, by Matthew Goodwin, of the University of Nottingham, and Jocelyn Evans, of Salford University, was launched at Chatham House on Thursday .
The report questioned more than 2,000 supporters of "radical-right" and "far-right" groups and found that many endorsed violence, with a "hostile inner core" apparently willing to plan for and prepare for attacks.
The study defined migrants as people living in another country in 2010 for over a year, including estimates of illegal immigrants and long-term refugees including Palestinians and their descendants.
"Perhaps contrary to popular perception, ... Christian immigrants outnumber Muslim immigrants in the European Union as a whole," the report said, indirectly referring to far-right parties that have long campaigned against Muslim newcomers.
Of the 47 million migrants in the EU, 26 million (56 percent) are Christians, double the 13 million Muslim migrants, who make up only 27 percent of the total, it said.
The gap narrows when intra-EU migration - for example, Christian Greeks to Germany or French-born Muslims to Britain - is excluded, but Christians migrating from outside the EU still outnumber non-EU Muslim migrants by about 13 million to 12 million.(source)
Seven Algerian nationals suspected of terrorism have resisted attempts to deport them by turning the tables on the government's support for using secret evidence in court.
In a complex judgment affecting the procedures of the special immigration appeals commission (Siac), the supreme court dismissed the home secretary's objection to material being presented that could not be tested in a hearing.
Five justices at the supreme court, including the president, Lord Phillips, unanimously allowed the appeals of the Algerians, who fear they will be tortured if returned to north Africa.(source)
An increasing number of the students at the Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) courses are illiterates according to the public radio broadcaster SR International. Compared with 2006, the number of students with only one or two years of elementary school has doubled. However, according to SR International, the SFI courses are not adapted to this new reality.
One example is an SFI-course in Tensta, northwest Stockholm, where one out of four students has small or none school experience. Most of them are women and they have big difficulties to manage in everyday life.(source)
A pizza delivery boy who left racist notes inside boxes he took to customers he thought were immigrants is facing three years in jail, say prosecutors in Olsztyn, Poland.
Lukasz Miechowicz, 25, left hate notes saying "Choke and Die" or "Get Out of Mt F***ing Country" whenever he made a delivery to a home where he thought Asian or Arabic people were living.(source)
The Christian Democratic Party has tabled a motion to introduce specially built villages for asylum-seekers.
The idea is to build three “villages” in Canton Aargau in eastern Switzerland in order to house some 500 asylum-seekers.
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But the far-right Swiss People’s Party thinks that such a system would create the wrong incentives for would-be asylum seekers, as it could make asylum in Switzerland even more attractive.
Others consider the plans for the villages to be similar to a kind of apartheid.(source)
An imam in the Catalan city of Terrassa has been arrested for calling upon his followers to "discipline errant women" in their community who do not follow their husband’s orders or strict Islamic law.
In his sermons, the imam, Abdeslam Laaroussi, a Moroccan, would allegedly offer examples on how to beat women and isolate them, and discourage men from having sexual relations with them.
According to police, Laaroussi told his followers that it was best to punch women or use a stick on different parts of their bodies "without breaking their bones or making them bleed".(source)
Italy's Council of Imams and Islamic Leaders named its first woman to serve on the board of directors Wednesday.
The daughter of an imam, 35-year-old Nibras Breigheche is also in charge of the association's intercultural and interrelgious dialogue programs.(source)
France’s prime minister scrambled Wednesday to dispel concerns in the Jewish and Muslim communities after criticizing the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat.
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But for many, Fillon’s comments went too far. He hosted Jewish leaders Wednesday and was expected to meet with Muslim leaders Thursday in what appeared to be an attempt to ease concerns about his comments on French radio this week.
The Jewish leaders he met with Wednesday said Fillon assured them that Judaism wasn’t targeted, but insisted they would keep an eye on government policy. France also has a large Jewish community, estimated at about half a million.(source)
