Migrant workers from Christian, Muslim and other backgrounds have common interests and should seek to support each other, the final text of the twelfth plenary session of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People declared last week. Overall the statement also encourages the Catholic Church to move away from a…
The central challenge today is: integration by education, explained North-Rhine/Westphalia Prime Minister Juergen Ruettgers (CDU). Earlier, the cabinet approved a twenty-point “plan of action on integration”. The plan includes the development of an Islamic religious curriculum, in co-operation with Muslim organisations, to be taught in German by trained religious teachers and falling under the official…
According to a new opinion poll, 83% of the Spaniards think of Muslims as “fanatics” and 58% of them believe that there is a “natural conflict” between being a practising Muslim and living in, and adapting to, a modern society. Spain is the only Western country where the perception of Muslims has gone into “free…
President Jacques Chirac paid homage Sunday to the hundreds of thousands of Muslim soldiers from former colonies who fought for France in World War I, unveiling a memorial on the site of the battle of Verdun. “The Verdun army was the army of the people, and all the people took part,” Chirac said, inaugurating a…
PARIS – Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Muslim Council, said that Muslims refuse to continue to be lumped together “with extremists, with fanatics, or with terrorists”. Boubakeur and Abdekkader Bouazza, president of one of the eight regional federations that comprise the Council, delivered a strong statement in support of a modern, tolerant, liberal, republican,…
