Connecting with believers in testing times: German religious communities in the face of Covid-19

Germany has one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases of the novel Corona virus (Covid-19) in Europe. Emergency measures designed to slow the spread of the disease mean that ordinary public life has ground to a halt. In a raft of sweeping steps announced on March 16, the German federal and regional governments prohibited…

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Debating ‘neutrality’: Conflict surrounding Berlin’s controversial law on religious symbols enters new round

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,…

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Beaucaire mayor accuses Morocco of terrorism, calls for banning Arabic in schools

Julien Sanchez, who serves as the mayor of the city of Beaucaire in South France, recently released a video in which he expressed his opposition to teaching Arabic in schools. Sanchez accused Morocco of “becoming in recent months a country of origin for terrorist organizations, which exposes French schools to danger” because many of the…

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Nice: Muslim waitress assaulted for serving alcohol on first day of Ramadan

Source: http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/faits-divers/20160607.OBS2086/agression-a-nice-il-m-a-dit-tu-devrais-avoir-honte-de-servir-de-l-alcool-pendant-le-ramadan.html June 7, 2016   A Muslim waitress says she was verbally abused and physically attacked by two men who accused her of shaming Islam by serving alcohol during Ramadan.   The woman, who is in her 30s, said she was working in a bar in Nice on the first day of the holy month of…

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Muslim chaplains in prison, “formidable” work lacking direction

“Formidable work, but not encouraged.” Thirty year-old Ammar Maireche is training in Nièvre to become an imam and chaplain and would like to work in France’s prisons to combat the problem of radicalization. However, the lack of available resources has severely limited his ability to achieve his goal. The European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH)…

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