Living The Muslim Atlantic: Gender

Introduction This report—the second of two produced by the British Council Bridging Voices project on ‘The Muslim Atlantic’— represents an analytic synthesis and presentation of insights arising from two workshops organized by the project in 2019 and 2020. The rest of these convenings focused on the question of how debates and discussions about gender compare…

Share Button
Read More

New ‘Academy for Islam’ aims to shape public debates in Germany

Public broadcasters’ political talk shows are a staple of the German television landscape, routinely racking up top spots in TV ratings. Yet although there are a large number of competing programmes on offer, these shows have been criticised for being monothematic. As journalist Dunja Ramadan wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, programming abides by the principle:…

Share Button
Read More

Interreligious bike ride in Berlin sends signal of Jewish-Muslim unity but is overshadowed by accusations

On June 24, 50 bicycle tandems, composed of Jews and Muslims, made their way from Berlin’s central Holocaust memorial, located next to the Brandenburg Gate, to Bebelplatz – a square in front of Humboldt University where the Nazi regime had organised the burning of 20.000 books in 1933.1 The Jewish-Muslim ride sought to send a…

Share Button
Read More

Debating ‘neutrality’: Conflict surrounding Berlin’s controversial law on religious symbols enters new round

In flashy advert campaigns, Berlin, Germany’s capital city, vaunts itself as the world’s “capital of freedom” defined by the coexistence of the widest possible array of diverse lifestyles.1 On a more mundane level, however, successive city administrations have struggled to come to terms with the implications of ethnic and religious diversity. Berlin’s ‘laic exceptionalism’ Unsurprisingly,…

Share Button
Read More
Heinz-Christian Strache

Comparing Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: The State of the Field

An article by Farid Hafez, University of Salzburg, published in ISLAMOPHOBIA STUDIES JOURNAL VOLUME 3, NO. 2, Spring 2016, PP. 16-34. ABSTRACT In the European public discourse on Islamophobia, comparisons of antiSemitism and Islamophobia have provoked heated debates. The academic discourse has also touched on this issue, an example being the works of Edward Said, where…

Share Button
Read More