On February 22 the Supreme Court decided in favor of a school that had expelled a 12-year-old Muslim student who exercized her right to wear the niqab, the full face veil, during class. In other news, in the trial of those accused of the July 21, 2005 attacks in London, a surveillance video showed that…
The Saudi ambassador to the Netherlands, Waleed al-Khareejy, has demanded that a Dutch anti-immigration politician apologise and retract his recent attack on Islam and the Koran. The demand, made informally, was immediately rejected by Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV).
Many German Turks are pressured to marry only within their ethnic and religious group. But the practice of “importing” partners from Turkey creates new immigrants and stands in the way of integration. “Whether Turks are prepared to marry Germans depends a lot on the importance of religion,” said Amparo Gonzalez-Ferrer, a comparative sociologist at the…
The appointment of two Muslim politicians to the new Dutch cabinet has reawakened a row in the country over dual nationality. Nebahat Albayrak and Ahmed Aboutaleb are both Dutch passport holders, but also have Turkish and Moroccan passports respectively. Right-wing opposition parties want to see an end to dual nationality. The row has led to…
The new Dutch government has been by sworn in by Queen Beatrix after meeting for the first time to formally adopt its policy guidelines. (…) The new governing coalition, led by Jan Peter Balkenende, the incumbent prime minister and head of the Christian Democrats party, will be further to the political left than the previous…
