French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently defended the notion of “positive secularism” which allows place for religion in the public sphere. While Sarkozy has not introduced any real reform, making the statement in speeches in Rome in December 2007 and in Riyad in January 2008, the suggestion has created fierce debate. In the past Sarkozy has…
Organized Islam in Germany faces a major reconstruction and reorganization period in order to provide adequate representation of Muslims in the public sphere and to react quicker in situations of crises and public debates (such as debates on extremism, cartoon crises or Mosque controversies), Mounir Azzaoui, speaker of the Central Consistory of the Muslims in…
The EU parliamentarian (Green party) Daniel Cohn-Bendit has argued in favor for visible Mosques in the public sphere – as the only alternative the backyard Mosques.
This book takes into view a large variety of Muslim actors who, in recent years, made their entry into the European public sphere. Without excluding the phenomenon of terrorists, it maps the whole field of Muslim visibility. The nine contributions present unpublished ethnographic materials that have been collected between 2003 and 2005. They track down…
KOLN: With about 3.4 million believers, Islam is, after Christianity, the second-largest religion in Germany. This becomes ever more visible: the construction of mosques is booming. Of course, as with all representations of religion in the state and public sphere, this boom comes with conflict. According to the Islam-Archiv, there are 143 “classical mosques” in…
