Consumer culture in the Muslim world, or Muslims as a specific target group who participate actively in a consumer market, are rather new realms for academic researchers. For many Muslims, consumption plays an increasing role in identity formation. Their growing cultural and religious self-awareness transforms markets, advertising strategies and consumer behavior. Muslim consumer culture is…
Three Democratic senators are seeking “bare-minimum” civil rights protection for those Americans who might be targeted in FBI security investigations, even without evidence of wrongdoing. Senators Dick Durban, Russ Feingold, and Edward Kennedy made demands on the measures in a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, saying that the new policies could allow surveillance of…
Eighty asylum-seekers in Brussels are nearing death after going for eighty days without food. The hunger strikers are protesting the government’s refusal to grand them resident permits in the country. The asylum-seekers come from a variety of places – Nepal, the Ivory Coast, Congo, Iran, Algeria, Guinea, and Brazil, and whose applications have either been…
A new “confidential defense” report from the Penitentiary Administration of France claims that 442 “Islamicists” currently incarcerated have a worrisome comportment. Le Figaro reports that one highly ranked official told the newspaper that these “secretive religious inmates have radicalized themselves by surfing the Internet,” and far from learning and teaching from the Qur’an they are…
Protesters and other citizens in Cologne worked en masse on Saturday to shut down their city and prevent a demonstration by Europe’s radical right. But have they given too much attention to the fringe group, Pro Cologne, which organized the rally? When radical-right activists from around Europe arrived in Cologne on Saturday for a rally,…
