Seyran Ateş, controversial founder of an avowedly ‘liberal’, gender-equal mosque in Berlin at which she serves as female Imam, has been faced with disbelief at her most recent comments on the Muslim headscarf. Women’s rights lawyer turned to the religious field Ateş made a name for herself in the 1990s as a lawyer defending women’s…
Mennel Ibtissem, a singer who became an internet sensation following her performance on France’s The Voice, has quit the TV show after being criticized for comments she had made on social media. French media reported that in a post about the attack in Nice, in which 86 people were killed on Bastille Day, she said: “It…
The far-right group, Britain First, posted about the Finsbury Park Mosque terrorist attack on its Facebook page. Many of the responses to the post tried to justify the attack on Muslims. One respondent said, “The muslims are asking for it [sic]”. Other comments followed similar themes of victim blaming. Others praised the terrorist, Darren Osborne, who…
Periodically, the German discourse on immigration is marked by the resurgence of a distinctly German notion – the idea of a ‘guiding culture’ (Leitkultur), supposed to connote an essence of Germanness that needs to be safeguarded amidst what appear to be accelerating migratory flows. Leitkultur – history of a debate The term was first…
Robert Menard, who is an ally of France’s anti-immigrant National Front party, will face a charge in a Paris court of incitement to hatred or discrimination. “In a class in the city center in my town, 91 percent of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a problem. There are limits to tolerance”, he said in…
