While accusations of sexual misconduct against Tariq Ramadan have sparked French debate about wider issues to do with the Muslim community, the same debate has not emerged in Britain.
In flashy advert campaigns, Berlin, Germany’s capital city, vaunts itself as the world’s “capital of freedom” defined by the coexistence of the widest possible array of diverse lifestyles.1 On a more mundane level, however, successive city administrations have struggled to come to terms with the implications of ethnic and religious diversity. Berlin’s ‘laic exceptionalism’ Unsurprisingly,…
Tariq Ramadan might be seen as a voice for the voiceless among the Muslim and Arab youth in the banlieues, but it doesn’t make him their hero.
France will welcome the first refugees from Libya by the High Commissioner on Refugees, announced Pascal Brice, General Director of the French Office for the Protection of Refugee and Stateless Persons (OFPRA). According to the interior ministry, they are set to arrive by the end of January. The HCR presented OFPRA with a list of…
Interior Minister Gérard Collomb vowed that there “will not be prayers in the street” in Clichy-la-Garenne when the Union of Muslim Associations of Clichy-la-Garenne announced its intention to organize street prayers on November 24. It is protesting the closure of its place of worship, which occurred last march. The association’s lawyer Arié Alimi stated that…
