Interview with Naika Foroutan on Germany’s Islam Conference

February 24, 2014   Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has announced that the German Islam Conference will no longer concern itself with security issues. For sociologist Naika Foroutan of Berlin’s Humboldt University, this is a positive sign. At last, the conference will be able to concentrate on ensuring religious equality for Muslims in Germany….

Share Button
Read More

Dutch Staffing Agency Refuses Job to Woman “If She Wears a Headscarf”

February 7, 2014   An 18 year old woman applying for a job with the staffing agency All-In was told that she could not work there if she wore a headscarf. The woman did not wear a headscarf to the interview, but had done so during a previous internship. The company asked her about the…

Share Button
Read More

Zaman interview with Dounia Bouzar on radical Islam

January 16, 2014   Anthropologist of religion and expert at the National Observatory of Secularism, Dounia Bazar addresses the issue of radical Islam in her latest work, ‘Countering Radical Islam’ in which she delivers the fruits of her fifteen years of analyses on this minority phenomena that nonetheless often gets conflated with the entirety of…

Share Button
Read More

‘The Square’ filmmakers capture a revolution — and then an Oscar nomination

January 17, 2014   On a recent afternoon, Jehane Noujaim apologized for checking her cellphone in the middle of an interview. The director of “The Square,” an immersion into the Egyptian revolution, wanted to make sure her producer, Karim Amer, was going to be able to get back into the country — his country —…

Share Button
Read More

Sundance premiere ‘Camp X-Ray’ explores Gitmo life

January 18, 2014   Kristen Stewart takes a lot of abuse in her latest film, a gritty drama about detainees at Guantanamo Bay. “Camp X-Ray,” which premiered Friday at the Sundance Film Festival to boisterous applause, features Stewart as Amy Cole, a guard stationed at the controversial U.S. prison in Cuba, where suspected terrorists are being detained. Stewart’s…

Share Button
Read More