A Church of England bishop said in comments published Sunday that officials should have the power to ban veils that cover the face in public, continuing the divisive debate in Britain over the traditional garment for Muslim women. The Pakistani-born bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, urged Muslims not to wear the veil under some circumstances….
Pope Benedict XVI on Friday urged intensified dialogue with Islam, saying in a Christmas speech that 2006 will be remembered as a year marked by the danger of a clash between cultures and religions. Benedict compared the situation in the Muslim world to that faced by Christians beginning in the Enlightenment, the 18th-century movement to…
Pope Benedict XVI declared Friday in the Vatican that the Muslim world must accept human rights and the freedom of religion as the Catholic Church had been forced to do in the past. “The Muslim world is posed today with an urgent task, quite similar to the one that was posed to Christians at the…
The European Union Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia made public, on the 18th of December, a report on Islamophobia in the countries of the EU. It is the first time that this organization has published a study on the population of Islamic origin, estimated at 13 million, or 3.5% of the EU population. This…
The freedom for Muslims to express their identity in Europe is today under attack. Implicit in this attack is the view that Islam is intrinsically repressive, and embodies values alien to western values of liberty, tolerance and democracy. The memory of the Holocaust stands against such a grossly sanitised view of European history. It reminds…
