News and Analysis on Islam in Europe and North America
Former French actor and animal activist Brigitte Bardot went on trial in a Paris courtroom charged with inciting racial hatred over remarks made in a letter to French president Nicolas Sarkozy in December 2006 regarding the Muslim festival of Aïd el-Kebir and the slaughter of sheep. Bardot wrote, I am fed up with being under
Italy’s center-right leader Silvio Berlusconi won a return to power this week, and concerns over immigration resulted in gains by the anti-immigrant Northern League. While the two maintain some differences, both have concerns about Italy’s increasing foreign-born population. “One of the first things to do is to close the frontiers and set up more camps
According to experts interviewed by Knack magazine, thousands of women and girls in Belgium deal with honor-related violence. Commissioner Marc Van de Plas of the federal police cites 17 honor murders in the last five years in Belgium, notwithstanding the so many other forms of honor-violence: abuse, confinement, kidnapping, forced marriage, etc… Immigrant women are
Two immigrants have been elected to the new Italian parliament – Souad Sbai and Jean Leonard Touadi. Selegalese born Touadi has been elected as an MP for the centre-left Italy of Values Party, and Sbai, the president of Italy’s Association of Moroccan women has been elected an MP for Berlusconi’s conservative People of Freedom Party.
Spanish bishops who refused to respond to a survey about Muslim immigration are drawing criticism for turning the backs on inter-religious relations. “We feel sad at this silence that we do not understand and which hurts us as Christians,” noted Emilio Galindo Aguilar, the head of the Centre for Hispano-Arabic and Islamic-Christian Research, which conducted