Germany’s Bundestag Could See a First Syrian Refugee Member

Tareq Alaows is a Syrian politician, activist and legal advisor living in Germany, and is making his mark as the first Syrian refugee candidate for the German parliament, the Bundestag. Representing the Green Party, he plans to stand as representative of the electoral district of Oberhausen, come the state elections of North-Rhine Westphalia in the…

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Hamza Yusuf’s comments on Syria provokes deeper debate on the Islamic tradition on opposing oppressive rulers

Prominent American Muslim Scholar Shaykh Hamza Yusuf has encountered yet another controversy in the past few weeks, after a video begun to be widely shared in which Yusuf critiques the Syrian revolution in a manner many considered to be a derisive tone. The video shows a clip from a 2016 Islamic retreat trip  in Turkey…

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The potential return of French jihadists to France: French government has change of heart

The United States’ withdrawal from Syria, which should be effective in the next few months, has caused a major change in French government policy towards the French jihadists in captivity. Initiated in December 2018 by Donald Trump, the departure of the 2000 American soldiers in Syria constitutes a turning point in the geopolitical context of…

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“He was there with his heart and soul”: The mother of a German ‘foreign fighter’ speaks

In 2014 and 2015, European publics were kept in suspense by daily press reports on the rising numbers of European citizens travelling to Syria in order to join jihadi groups (and, to a lesser extent, Kurdish rebel forces). By early 2018, security agencies estimated that 960 men and women had made their way to Syria…

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Social and economic marginalisation in European cities is a key factor in radicalisation, sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar warns

In his recent article, the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar writes that a significant factor in jihadist radicalisation in Europe is the “jihadogenous urban structure”, a type of city district which produces jihadists at a much higher rate than other districts by shaping “the identity of those who are socially excluded and culturally stigmatised”.

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