15 December 2011 The members of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) with seats in the European parliament refused to acknowledge the five activists in the Arab Spring uprising who were awarded with the Sacharov prize for freedom of thought. The four members refused to applaud or stand for the winners, and the leader of…
14 December 2011 A debate in the Netherlands over a proposed ban on ritual slaughter continues with a majority of senators in the upper house of parliament now opposing the ban. A large majority of MPs in the lower house voted in favour of a ban in June, though Jewish and Muslim groups oppose…
12./13./14.12.2011 Last week, Ahmed Faraz, an Islamic bookshop owner an alleged Muslim radical from Birmingham, was sentenced to three years in prison for running a business publishing extremist texts and DVDs and distributing material that ‘encouraged terrorism’ (Daily Mail). Among the radical material distributed by Faraz was an Al Qaeda training manual and bomb-making…
News Agencies – December 12, 2011 A requirement for new Canadians to show their faces while taking the oath of citizenship puts the federal government on one side of a simmering debate over how far the state should go to accommodate minorities. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that Muslim women who wear…
News Agencies – December 14, 2011 Rachida Dati, the first Muslim woman of North African origin to hold a senior French government post, focused a public complaint against the prime minister, François Fillon, in whose cabinet she served as justice minister. Fillon, she wrote in a scathing letter to Le Monde, represented a staid…
