The Globe and Mail – April 11, 2012 The conservative French government unveiled new counterterrorism measures to punish those who visit extremist websites or travel to weapons-training camps abroad, in the wake of deadly shootings by a suspected Islamic extremist in southern France last month. The measures now go to Parliament, where it may…
7 February 2012 The Dutch cabinet’s plans to introduce a ban on the burqa continues to draw criticism. The Dutch Council of State, the government’s highest advisory body, as announced that it does not see the need for the ban, and suggests the government is being led by “subjective feelings of insecurity”. The advisory body…
31 January 2012 Immigration minister Geerd Leers has called for elimination of the term allochtoon, a designation connoting “non-native” and widely \applied in popular use to describe non-western immigrants (particularly from Turkey and Morocco) and their children, up to third generation. Leers commented in a magazine interview, “I want people born in the Netherlands…
28 January 2012 Following last week’s announcement that the Dutch cabinet had adopted a ban on face coverings despite the grave reservations of the government’s advisory body and highest court, media coverage has reported a range of response. Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that the chair of the police works council has criticized the ban as…
News Agencies – December 14, 2011 Rachida Dati, the first Muslim woman of North African origin to hold a senior French government post, focused a public complaint against the prime minister, François Fillon, in whose cabinet she served as justice minister. Fillon, she wrote in a scathing letter to Le Monde, represented a staid…
