In his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, U.S. President Barack Obama emphasized that Muslim women in the U.S. are free to don the hijab. Obama’s statements triggered strong criticism among Arab intellectuals in France.. Reformist writer Abdelwahab Meddeb, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X in Nanterre and author of The…
Controversial plans to build Europe’s biggest mosque close to the London Olympics site have been halted. Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic sect behind the proposal, is to be evicted this week from the East London site, where it has been operating illegally a temporary mosque and had planned a complex that would accommodate 12,000 worshippers. The…
One of the organizations hoping to broadcast on Dutch radio and television during programming devoted to Islam recognizes the Ahmadiyya sect as a major current in Islam. The Ahmadiyya sect, popular among many Dutch of Surinamese origin in the Netherlands, is not recognised as Islamic by the main institutions of orthodox Islam. SMO, one of…
Demonstrators calling for shari’a law to be imposed in Britain cancelled a march on October 31 in central London amid security fears. Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Islamic sect Al Muhajiroun, said organizers Islam4UK had been forced to cancel the planned “March for Shari’a” from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square because of…
The head of police in Perpignan, Jean-Pierre Dréno, reported the incarceration of a father of eight for having mistreated and starved his eight children in the name of Islam. “It goes far beyond rigorous religious practice,” explained one official, adding it was more like sect-like behaviour than Islamic. The man, of Moroccan-origin and his wife,…
