In an interview with Qantara magazine, German writer Feridun Zaimoğlu takes stock of the country’s heated, at times hysterical debates on Islam and identity. He criticises both Interior Minister Seehofer’s identitarian overtures that come at the expense of Muslims living in the country – and the position taken by many Muslims themselves. In particular, he…
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,…
The elections to the National Council, the lower house of the Austrian Parliament on October 15, have marked a firm shift to the right in Austrian politics, particularly on matters of immigration, integration, and Islam. Sebastian Kurz headed for an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition After an electoral campaign dominated by at times vicious diatribes against Muslims and…
Germany has gone to the polls – and the results have thoroughly shaken the country’s political scene. The impression, prevailing at times in sections of the liberal international media, of Germany as a beacon of stability in a Western world marred by the rise of populism had for a long time been a faulty one….
In preparation for the upcoming federal elections on September 24th, three German Muslim institutions have joined hands in order to provide an electoral guidance on topics of particularly high relevance to the country’s Muslim population. The Islamische Zeitung newspaper (IZ), the German Muslim League (DML), and the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD) have…
