A letter to Jacques Chirac
A prominent Muslim scholar appealed in a letter to French President Jacques Chirac to go back on his decision backing a ban on Hijab in public schools.?
2003
New Mosque In Spain
Five hundred years after being hounded out by the Catholic monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand, Spain’s Muslims have built a mosque overlooking what was once Islam’s most important outpost in Europe, the Alhambra palace in Granada.
Jacques Chirac’s speech on the hijab controversy
President Jacques Chirac has called on for a law banning Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from French state schools. “In all conscience, I consider that the wearing of dress or symbols which conspicuously show religious affiliation should be banned in schools,” he said in a speech on the long controversy over the…
Headscarf and French Civil Servant
A court has ruled that a French civil servant who wore an Islamic headscarf on the job committed a “particularly serious offense” and may face disciplinary action because she violated the separation of church and state. Nadjet ben Abdallah, a 33-year-old work inspector in the central city of Lyon, had argued that a disciplinary committee’s…
Europe’s Muslims Treated As Outsiders
Fatima Yaakoub, 24 years old, born in Morocco, living in the Netherlands since she was 12, says she wants nothing more than to fit in. She works hard, cleaning offices in the early mornings, going to college during the day, taking English classes on weekends-trying to get ahead, trying to do what is expected of…