10 July 2011 A doctoral student at Amsterdam’s Free University (VU) has investigated the attitude of European countries towards headscarves and concluded that ‘national ideas about religion and ethnicity play an important role’. Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports on Doutje Lettinga’s thesis and summarizes her findings that women wearing the headscarf are being ignored in the…
14 July 2011 Radio Netherlands Worldwide carries a feature on upcoming elections in Egypt this fall, describing the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country as ‘the party to beat’. It follows the attendance of two party representatives at a workshop, given by the Dutch consultancy bureau BKB at the Dutch embassy, which…
16 July 2011 Following a description of Muslim women who wear burqa as ‘scum’ in an online clip, Dutch Parliamentary Aide Sam van Rooy of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) has been suspended. The footage has since been removed from YouTube, and a PVV spokeswoman noted that the clip “goes much to far”.
July 12 The ever controversial Mullah Krekar, one of the founders and original leader of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, has been confirmed indicted for threats made last summer against the head of Norway’s Conservative Party (Høyre), Erna Solberg. The threats were made during a press conference for international media in June last year, where…
07.07.2011 The Central Council of Muslims in Germany has welcomed the draft bill on pre-implantation diagnostics (PID) that was passed by the German government last week. The bill allows pre-implantation diagnosis (which involves genetic testing on embryos) under certain circumstances. The chair of the Council, Aiman Mazyek, stated that the Central Council has long pleaded…
