Germany has been rocked by what media outlets have called the country’s “first attack by [a] radicalised asylum seeker”.1 On the evening of July 18, 2016, a 17-year-old Afghan, who had arrived in Germany in the summer of 2015 as an unaccompanied minor, attacked passengers on a regional train in northern Bavaria with a knife…
Two controversial contributors In a new book – Zur Freiheit gehört, den Koran zu kritisieren: Ein Streitgespräch (It is a part of freedom to criticise the Qur’an: A disputation) – two of the most prominent voices on Islam in Germany, Hamed Abdel-Samad and Mouhanad Khorchide, debate the nature of the Quran and of the Islamic…
New case brought by an aspiring lawyer A 25-year-old junior lawyer, Aqilah Sandhu, won a court case against the Bavarian state regarding her right to wear her headscarf while at work1. In July 2014, the Munich Higher Regional Court had denied Sandhu, at the time a legal intern at the court, the right to wear…
A research unit dedicated to the study of the interaction of religion and politics at the University of Münster has published the results of a survey in which a sample Germany’s population of Turkish descent was asked to assess their own situation in the country.1 40 per cent of respondents were born in Germany; 36…
(RNS) While Germany’s politicians are loudly debating whether Islam is compatible with democracy, five of its state universities are quietly developing pioneering new Islamic theology faculties to try to ensure that it is. The five universities — in Muenster, Osnabrueck, Frankfurt, Tubingen and Erlangen-Nuremberg — recently passed their first official evaluations by Muslim and Christian…
