France’s Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera announced on 3rd September 2023 on France 3 that athletes representing France will be barred from wearing hijabs or other religious symbols while competing at the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.1 The minister stated that the ban upholds France’s principle of “strict secularism” or “la laïcité,” in sports and…
May 6, 2016 A teenage Catholic girl who converted to Islam has been banned from attending a school in the eastern Paris suburbs because her skirt is too long. The principal of the school in Montereau-Fault-Yonne told the 16-year-old that the length of her skirt meant that it was an “ostentatious religious symbol” – something…
22 March 2016 How to give recently arrived Syrians an insight into the workings of German society and the issues animating contemporary German politics? Ramy al-Asheq, himself a Syrian of Palestinian origin living in Germany since 2014 has set out to facilitate this process by founding the country’s first free-of-charge Arabic newspaper catering to the…
25 February 2015 In a case that has received widespread attention in the press, the Technical University of Dortmund has closed down a ‘room of silence’ for reading, relaxation, and mediation, following the growing usage of the space as a prayer room by Muslim students. For the purposes of praying, the room had been divided…
February 20, 2016 Six universities or schools will acquire, in the upcoming academic year, new curricula and instructors, to strengthen research on Islam, as requested by the Ministry of Education. Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem announced the plans with Secretary for Higher Education Thierry Mandon. “The Ministry announces the creation of posts for instructor-researchers which will…
