News and Analysis on Islam in Europe and North America
Many German Turks are pressured to marry only within their ethnic and religious group. But the practice of “importing” partners from Turkey creates new immigrants and stands in the way of integration. “Whether Turks are prepared to marry Germans depends a lot on the importance of religion,” said Amparo Gonzalez-Ferrer, a comparative sociologist at the
The new Dutch government has been by sworn in by Queen Beatrix after meeting for the first time to formally adopt its policy guidelines. (…) The new governing coalition, led by Jan Peter Balkenende, the incumbent prime minister and head of the Christian Democrats party, will be further to the political left than the previous
ROME – When Zeinep Ozbek told her parents how she planned to pursue her education, they were shocked. Not only was the young Muslim woman about to leave her native Turkey, she was venturing into a strict traditional bastion of Christianity: Rome. Ozbek, 25, is now one of several Muslim students ensconced in the Vatican’s
BERLIN – At the “Trialogue of Religions” interfaith meeting Jewish, Christian and Muslim experts, opinion-makers and social representatives sat down with students and the public to discuss both wide and specific problems of tolerance, integration and assimilation.
Migrant workers from Christian, Muslim and other backgrounds have common interests and should seek to support each other, the final text of the twelfth plenary session of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People declared last week. Overall the statement also encourages the Catholic Church to move away from a