The Khalil Gibran International Academy was conceived as a public embrace of New York City’s growing Arab population and of internationalism, the first public school dedicated to the study of the Arabic language and culture and open to students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. But nearly three months after plans for the middle school…
Right-wing politicians from Switzerland’s largest political party on Thursday launched a campaign for a referendum to ban the construction of minarets on mosques, claiming they symbolized an Islamist bid for power. The group, including more than half of the Swiss People’s Party’s (SVP) parliamentarians, said in a statement that a ban would help stop “attempts…
The former spokesman of the Mosque in Geneva, Hafid Ouardiri, is considering launching an initiative to help Muslims integrate themselves into Swiss society. He shared this idea in an interview on Wednesday in the weekly publication “GHI.” “We hope to utitilize the tools of citizenship to participate in public debate,” he emphasized in a column…
Dutch ex-Muslim youth have united under a new organization in Amsterdam, the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims, according reports on Wednesday. Ehsan Jami, one of the founders of the committee and a city council member for the PvdA Labour Party in Leidschendam-Voorburg, a small city near The Hague, said the committee aimed to help other so-called…
Writers Andrea Camilleri and Hanif Kureishi, filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, journalist Eugenio Scalfari, Oscar-winning musician Nicola Piovani and architect Peter Eisenmann will be among those attending Borders at Rome’s second Philosophy Festival this month. The festival will tackle such issues as West versus East, Faith versus Reason, contemporary threats to Enlightenment thinking, Freedom from dogma, and…
