After months of arduous negotiations following September 2017’s federal elections, the new German government was sworn in on March 14. Complex personnel choices After the cornerstones of the coalition deal had been agreed upon in early February, the three participating parties – Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its conservative Bavarian sister party CSU, and…
Germany’s long-running judicial wrangling over the ability of Muslim women to wear the hijab in public employment has been enriched by a further episode. The Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich decreed that prohibitions banning court personnel from wearing the Islamic headcovering were permissible. Decisions based on formal criteria The case concerns a legal trainee who,…
A German charity organisation distributing food to the poor has been accused of racist bias after one of its branches excluded “foreigners” from its distribution activities. The organisation in question, named Tafel, essentially functions as a food bank, giving away groceries for free to the needy. Founded in 1993, the organisation has steadily grown, along…
After one year and two days in Turkish prison – mostly spent in solitary confinement – journalist Deniz Yücel was set free by the Turkish authorities on February 16, 2018. The case of Yücel, a German and Turkish dual national working for the German Die Welt newspaper, had been a severe stumbling block in German-Turkish…
20 years on from their ground-breaking report on the topic, the Runnymede Trust has published a new report stating Islamophobia is “still a challenge for us all”
