On November 1, the Dutch Parliament adopted a motion that children visiting mosques as part of school outings must not be compelled to pray according to Muslim rite. The motion, which the government must now implement in law, came after the emergence of video material showing blonde Dutch pupils kneeling and bowing according to Islamic…
With roughly 10 to 20 million members, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat (AMJ) comprises only one per cent of the worldwide Muslim population. The Ahmadiyya’s growth in Germany In Germany, too, the Ahmadiyya represents roughly 1 out of every 100 Muslims, counting approximately 45,000 members. This still makes the German Ahmadi community the largest in Europe,…
Under the tagline #Unteilbar – which translates as #Indivisible – close to 250,000 men and women took to the streets on a warm and sunny October day in Berlin. Long expected as “the climax of a summer of protests”1, the demonstration sought to address a number of progressive social causes; yet it was race and…
On October 7, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party welcomed the creation of its newest inner-party pressure group: up to 20 Jewish AfD members gathered in the Hessian city of Offenbach to form a circle aiming to represent Jewish interests within and through the AfD. The move has been trumpeted by a number of…
In recent weeks, Mesut Özil’s resignation from Germany’s national football team and the ensuing debate on racism, spearheaded by the #MeTwo hashtag, have galvanised public attention in Germany. Mainstreaming of the far-right This comes as many Muslim and/or anti-racist civil society organisations see themselves at a crossroads. The rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany…
