Banning the construction of minarets is more likely to serve the cause of religious fanatics than to halt extremism, the Swiss justice minister said on Thursday. Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told a news conference in Bern that banning minarets would infringe basic human rights and endanger religious peace. A nationwide vote on the issue is to be…
Jack Straw, Britain’s Justice Secretary, wrote a letter of introduction for his friend and political ally, Lord Patel of Blackburn, who persuaded the emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, to spend £1.5m, half the total needed to build the five-story mosque. Liberal Democrats in Blackburn, Mr. Straw’s constituency, claimed the Labour party had used the…
The construction of minarets is controversial not just in Switzerland – where a vote on the issue takes place in November – but also in neighboring Austria. Yet Austria is unique in western Europe in that Islam has been a recognized religion in the country for more than 100 years, since the time when the…
Whenever a mosque is to be built in a European country, the construction is subject to a years-long legal battle. There is a larger hostility across Europe as the continent’s 20 million Muslims seek to anchor the most tangible foundations of their faith — mosques and minarets — on ground that has traditionally nurtured spires…
Muslims in Athens are voicing their displeasure concerning the delay of a mosque construction that would house tens of thousands of worshipers. The mosque would allow for many Athenian Muslims adequate place to pray and gather, instead of using abandoned factories or converted coffee shops as makeshift prayer houses, as they have been doing for…
