The French government is under growing pressure to make a clear ruling on whether schoolgirls can wear long skirts in state schools. Around 150 Muslim girls have been sent home in the last 18 months for turning up in long skirts or robes which were judged by their head-teachers to break the 11-year-old law…
The Dubrovnik summer festival has cancelled a planned premiere of a play by French author Michel Houellebecq, who has caused controversy with his views of Islam, after police said it would present a security concern. The play, based on his novel Les Particules Élémentaires, was to open in Dubrovnik in July but the Dubrovnik…
Radical Islam has become a top security threat in many countries. But why are young people attracted to it? That is a big question facing France, where authorities estimate nearly 1,500 people have left to join jihadist groups in the Middle East. A former Guantanamo Bay detainee may not have all the answers, but is…
A mayor of a French town has been suspended from former president Nikolas Sarkozy’s UMP party after urging a ban on Islam in the country and the immediate “escorting to the border” of those practicing the religion. “The Muslim religion must be banned in France,” Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern town of Venelles, wrote on…
A French mayor backed by the far-right Front National has been accused of racism after using the names of schoolchildren in his town to decide how many were Muslim. Under France’s strict secularism laws, the government does not keep statistics on people’s religion or ethnicity. But Robert Ménard, mayor of Béziers in the south of…
