Burqa law ban in Catalonia

In 2010 a ban against women wearing burqas in public buildings was approved by the city of Lleida in Catalonia. Women who would disobey such ban would incur in a fine between €300 and €600. The ban was adopted by several other localities in the area on the basis of public space control and public…

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Unity in a Strange Land: Photographing New York City’s Islamic Communities

July 13, 2014 Philip Montgomery calls his photographs of New York City’s various Islamic communities an unfinished project, one driven by changing perspectives and questions. He began in 2009 as a new arrival from California and fresh from photographing Sufi Muslims in Kashmir. In an unfamiliar city, Mr. Montgomery, now 26, said he felt a…

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Breaking the Ramadan fast in the company of Jews

July 10, 2014 (RNS) Muslim tradition calls for breaking the Ramadan fast in the evening with a date and a sip of water, and increasingly these days, the company of Jews. Muslim-Jewish iftars are popping up across the nation, bringing together dozens and sometimes hundreds of people for a celebratory Ramadan meal and a chance to forge interfaith…

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Saudi student may have been murdered because she was wearing a hijab

June 18, 2014 Detectives are investigating whether a Saudi student was murdered in a frenzied knife attack because her traditional Islamic dress marked her out as a Muslim. Nahid Almanea, a 31-year-old student at the University of Essex, was wearing a hijab and a full-length navy blue robe, called an abaya, when she was knifed…

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‘Trojan Horse schools plot’: What was the Trojan Horse letter?

July 6, 2014   In March, an anonymous letter was made public that claimed to be a template illustrating how state schools could be taken over and pushed into adopting a more Islamic culture. The document – now thought to be a hoax – proposed a campaign of installing governors and undermining and then replacing…

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