written by Simon Sorgenfrei Demographics Even though Sweden, or what today is Sweden, has a long history of commercial and political contacts with countries dominated by Muslim culture – dating back to the Viking era1 and peaking with Swedish-Ottoman contacts in the seventeenth and especially eighteenth centuries2– Muslim presence in Sweden is a fairly recent…
In the ongoing debate of German Muslim integration, two politicians have asserted that Germany does not need a “liberal racism” as propagated by Geert Wilders in the neighboring Netherlands. Both conservative politician Alois Glück and social democrat and interior minister of Berlin, Erhart Körting, talk about accommodating Muslims, including potential worries, without drawing on prejudices….
In an interview with two German-language newspapers (“Tages-Anzeiger” and “Bund”), Muslim intellectual and Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan stated that “most Muslims in Switzerland come from the Balkans, have been here for quite some time, and have integrated well into society.” According to him, despite the minaret ban the situation of Muslims in Switzerland is significantly…
Amsterdam’s liberal Polder mosque is behind on rent payments and may face closure if it cannot solicit enough in donations to cover its bills. The Polder mosque is a special place in the eyes of its attendees. As one Dutch Muslim describes his experience there, “normally it’s in Arabic but here they translate it. So…
The actions of Canadian spies and apparent indifference to the fate of trucker Ahmad El Maati “likely contributed indirectly” to his torture, writes former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci. The comments come in a once-secret supplement to Iacobucci’s 2008 report on the overseas imprisonment and torture of El Maati and two other Arab-Canadian…
