Organisers of a festival celebrating Islam in Sheffield built bridges of understanding about their faith with discussions, theatre and poetry. The event at Mount Pleasant Park, Sharrow, gave people an insight into contemporary Muslim life with a chance to discuss spiritual issues, culture and religion. Talks included a focus on what Islam teaches about jihad,…
Strong debate has emerged related to the canceling of a women’s basketball tournament organized by a Muslim Community Organization (l’Association culturelle des musulmans de Vigneux) in a municipal gymnasium in Vigneux-sur-Seine (Essonne) which promised a women’s-only event. The event became so heated that the French minister of Sports, Bernard Laporte, visited the neighbourhood. The city’s…
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, convened the seventh Building Bridges Seminar in Rome this week. The interfaith dialogue event has brought together Muslim and Christian scholars since 2002, when hosted at Lambeth Palace by Dr George Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. The seminar studied Biblical and Qur’anic texts, with a view to…
According to Yahya Pallavicini, vice-president of the Italian Islamic religious community, Italian president Giorgio Napolitano is right to inaugurate the Turin book fair, which is celebrating Israel’s right to exit. “I express my complete solidarity with Italy’s president of the republic, Giorgio Napolitano, on behalf of COREIS, and also with the Turin book fair’s director,…
Several hundred people demonstrated outside the Palace of Justice in Brussels, demanding that currently detained undocumented migrants be released. Police used force to break up the unlicensed protest, and arrested 130 in the event, many of them migrants themselves. Those who are undocumented face penalties for taking part in the demonstration, and may also face…
