In the coming weeks, a new instalment of Germany’s controversial Islam Conference (Deutsche Islam Konferenz, DIK) will take place under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The DIK functions as a discussion forum at which state-picked ‘Muslim representatives’ meet with high-level policy-makers in order to debate the place of Islam in German…
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…
Germany’s Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, has announced his intention to restart the country’s controversial German Islam Conference (Deutsche Islamkonferenz, DIK) in autumn. The DIK first convened in 2006, upon the request of Seehofer’s predecessor in office, Wolfgang Schäuble. In Schäuble’s words, the DIK’s stated aim has been to “facilitate the integration of Muslims…
Austria has long been among the fore-runners of the right-wing populist wave in Europe. Since late 2017, the country has been ruled by a government bringing together the traditional conservatives of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, this coalition heralds the final arrival of the…
Germany’s Christian Social Union (CSU), conservative sister party to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has governed its home state of Bavaria since 1946. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a three-year spell by a Social Democrat in the 1950s, by now long forgotten. In particular, the CSU prides itself on having been…
