10-14 October 2010 Campaigning almost exclusively on an anti-Islam and anti-immigration platform, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has succeeded in augmenting their standing by 10% and attracting over a quarter of all voters in Vienna – a height not seen since Jörg Haider had achieved the same scores in 1996 in Vienna and…
News Agencies – October 7, 2010 France’s constitutional watchdog has endorsed a divisive law forbidding face-covering Islamic veils anywhere in public, but expressed concern about applying it in places of worship such as a mosque. The decision of the Constitutional Council removes a key hurdle for the law, overwhelmingly approved in both houses of parliament…
5 October 2010 Leading conservative German politicians assailed President Christian Wulff on Tuesday for comments intimating Islam had gained a status comparable to Christianity and Judaism in Germany. Wulff riled his fellow Christian Democrats by saying Islam had become an important part of German society in a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of German reunification…
7 October 2010 In front of a crowd of 1500 supporters and 300 counter-demonstrators, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache, ended his campaign for the Viennese elections with a rally in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Strache spent most of his time attacking the Social-Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)…
7 October 2010 “My dialect gives me away,” says Sara Rahman smiling, “I’m from Upper Austria.” Rahman, a practicing Muslim who wears a hijab, is 29th on the electoral list for the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), a Christian democratic political party. For Rahman there is no contradiction between being Muslim and being part of a…
