75-year-old “The Satanic Verses” author Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie was attacked on Friday 12th August at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York where he was to speak about the importance of America giving asylum to exiled writers.He sustained multiple life-threatening injuries and was put on a ventilator1. 24-year old Hadi Matar has been arrested…
On June 17, 2020, human rights advocates filed a potentially path-breaking complaint with the German federal public prosecutor: brought by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on behalf of seven Syrians, the complaint demands that Germany prosecute nine high-ranking Syrian government officials for sexual and gender-based violence committed during Syria’s 9-year-long war….
Like other European countries, Germany has witnessed a wave of demonstrations in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a US policeman. According to official (police) figures, on the first weekend of June 15,000 protesters attended a rally on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz square, and the largest demonstration in…
North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), the most populous of Germany’s 16 federal states, has rolled out a new anti-terrorism programme: a satirical YouTube channel called Jihadi Fool. Run by the state’s domestic intelligence agency, the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the channel’s videos are supposed to “fight fire with fire” and drive home “the absurdity of radicalisation, terrorism and…
As Germany’s politicians ceaselessly question Islam’s place in the country, more and more Muslims take issue with being side-lined in these public debates: it is a discussion about them rather than a conversation with them. As a response, Muslims have striven to organise themselves and to enhance their public visibility. Sociologist Aladin El-Mafaalani describes this…
