Germany has prolonged a temporary ban on weapons exports to Saudi Arabia until the end of March. While the question of whether to sell arms to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East has sprung up repeatedly in German public debates over the years, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has put it back in the…
In recent years, civil society-led efforts to prevent Muslim youths’ turn to Salafism have intensified. Often described in terms of ‘preventing violent extremism’ (PVE) or ‘preventing radicalisation’, many of these projects have attracted generous funding by state agencies. Germany is perhaps the paradigmatic case of this development: through successive government funding initiatives, the country has…
A new study by the Bertelsmann Foundation has taken a closer look at Germans’ charitable work for refugees. According to the survey, 44 per cent of German Muslims volunteered their time by helping in asylum shelters or elsewhere over the course of the year 2016. The study’s coordinators emphasised that these numbers could refute the…
When it comes to building mosques, Finland is not any different from other European countries in terms of opposition that such projects receive either from the side of the officials or the public. The Helsinki Grand Mosque project has been on-going since 2015 and now once again, debates over funding have put a spanner in…
It’s official: the Foundation for Islam in France has been launched. The secular foundation, meant to serve as a “public utility,” is one of the pillars of the new Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve’s plan for the future of Islam in France. The current Foundation replaces the Foundation for Islamic Works, launched by former Prime Minister…
