Tag Archives: Country: Germany

Paul Driessen writes at Townhall: “Welcome to the Third World, Europeans, where costly electricity is available only from time to time, at unexpected hours, depending on bureaucratic whims and how much power wind turbines and other “environment-friendly” generators can muster.”

Europe News: “An Egyptian-born imam lost a court fight Wednesday to stave off his expulsion from Germany after he was accused of preaching hatred towards Christians and Jews.”

Crosswalk Religion Today Summaries: The religious liberty group Alliance Defense Fund is now asking the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the mother’s sentence, although the father has already served his. Roger Kiska, ADF legal counsel, said, “Irene Wiens was well within her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights to opt to teach her children a view of sexuality that is in accord with her own religious beliefs, instead of sending them to four days of classes and an interactive play that she found to be objectionable.”

Christian Today: Roger Kiska, ADF legal counsel, said: “Parents, not the government, are the ones ultimately responsible for making educational choices for their children, and jailing them for standing on this universal right is simply unconscionable. “Irene Wiens was well within her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights to opt to teach her children a view of sexuality that is in accord with her own religious beliefs, instead of sending them to four days of classes and an interactive play that she found to be objectionable.”

Noticias Diarias (Google translation from Spanish): Roger Kiska, who has been defending the case brought before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg by the Alliance Defense Fund Foundation, which specializes in protecting freedom of conscience, argues that “the parents, not governments ultimately responsible for the education of their children. ” “Jailing parents for exercising a right universally accepted is simply unthinkable. The Wiens family is host to the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right of parents to pass on to their children’s view of sexuality that is in accord with their beliefs.

One News Now: Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) legal counsel Roger Kiska tells OneNewsNow that the German school system has made it mandatory for nine- and ten-year-olds to participate in the programs, including an interactive play. “The purpose of the play, they say, is to prevent abuse,” says Kiska, “but what they’re teaching is that if it feels good, do it.” [more quotes by Roger]

New American: “Parents, not the government, are the ones ultimately responsible for making educational choices for their children, and jailing them for standing on this universal right is simply unconscionable,” declared ADF attorney Roger Kiska. “Irene Wiens was well within her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights to opt to teach her children a view of sexuality that is in accord with her own religious beliefs, instead of sending them to four days of classes and an interactive play that she found to be objectionable.” Kiska noted that the ADF is defending four similar case . . . [more]

Christian Science Monitor: “As in France and Germany, Mr. Cameron’s declaration seems aimed at one group – Muslims. More precisely, it taps a growing public concern in Europe about those from Islamic backgrounds who are increasingly numerous and becoming a permanent part of Europe’s social fabric. In Britain and across the Continent, that unease is fueling right-wing parties but also influencing mainstream electorates worried that Europe is losing its traditional identity.”

Mercator.net: ADF filed an emergency appeal yesterday with the European Court of Human Rights, calling for Mrs Wien’s immediate release. Legal counsel Roger Kiska, based in the Slovak Republic, says the Wiens are well within their rights under the European Convention of Human Rights and other laws. ADF is representing four similar cases before the ECHR. “These types of cases are crucial battles in the effort to keep bad decisions concerning parental rights overseas from being adopted by American courts,” says Mr Kiska.

AP: “Germany is so desperate to encourage people to have more children that the government is proposing a bill allowing citizens under six to laugh, shout and play at any volume.”

European News: “The leader of a newly created anti-Islamic party in Germany said he wants to stop the immigration of Muslims and described Islam as a “totalitarian system” bent on supplanting western liberal values.”

The Local: “While homosexual couples are allowed to adopt their partner’s own biological children thanks to a Constitutional Court ruling in the summer of 2009, the same rule does not apply to non-biological adopted children. But the Hamburg upper regional court (OLG) called this ‘unequal treatment of marriage and civil unions in current adoption law’ that is neither constitutional nor in the child’s best interest, broadcaster NDR reported.”

Associated Press: “The leading medical association and key pharmaceutical companies in Germany, where anti-death penalty sentiment is strong, said Monday they would not support exporting a drug to the U.S. that is needed for lethal injections there.”

Peter Berger writing in The American Interest: “Conservative cassandras (please note: I am not one of them) are turning out to be empirically correct, even if one disagrees with their philosophy: once you legitimate same-sex marriage, you open the door to any number of other alternatives to marriage as a union of one man and one woman: polygamous (an interesting question for Muslims in Germany and dissident Mormons in Arizona), polyandrous, polygenerational – perhaps polyspecies?”

Deutsche Welle: “Susanne Baer is Germany’s most famous female lawyer, known for addressing equal opportunity and discrimination issues. In 2011 Germany will, for the first time, have a self-confessed feminist sitting as a judge in the country’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court. Jutta Wagner, the president of the German Women Lawyers Association, welcomes the decision to nominate Baer for two reasons.”

Deutsche Welle: “‘We ask that Christians and others religious minorities be able to live in security and dignity in their homeland, where they and their ancestors have lived for hundreds, and in some cases thousands of years,’ Karl Juesten, prelate and head of the Commissariat of German Bishops, told the Hannoversche Allgemeine daily.”

Deutsche Welle: “Frankfurt’s Goethe University has introduced a three-year bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies, the first such course in Germany. The program places Islamic theology on the same footing as Christian and Jewish theology at German universities. The aim is to provide students with an academic and scientific approach to the topic.”

Boston.com (AP): “Police in France, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries have increased surveillance of Orthodox Coptic Christian churches. In Italy, Copts have asked for special protection. And in Chatenay-Malabry, just outside Paris, metal barricades surround the church of St. Mary and St. Mark — a vivid sign of the fear that has been injected into the Copts’ season of peace.”

Deutsche Welle: “Religious leaders in Germany have spoken out against recent moves by parliamentarians to force a relaxation of laws on the genetic screening of embryos as part of in vitro fertilization.”

Wall Street Journal: “The German government’s latest move to crack down on groups that promote extremist Muslim teaching came earlier this month, as dozens of police raided homes, offices and religious schools in the western German cities of Bremen, Braunschweig and Mönchengladbach. The security forces were seeking evidence that could lead to the banning of two organizations that officials say are calling for imposing Islamic law in place of German law.”

Telegraph: “Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said the question of children’s wellbeing should come before the wishes of adults wanting to become parents.”

Reuters: “Pope Benedict’s invitation to address German parliament during his visit to his homeland next September 22-25 has not sat well with some members of the opposition. Volker Beck, the Green party floor leader, has protested that inviting a religious leader to address parliament, the Bundestag, is unprecedented and the wrong place to speak about religion.”

The Desert Rock Voice: “The Alliance Defense Fund (www.alliancedefensefund.org) provided funding to the Home School Legal Defense Association (www.hslda.org) in their effort to assist the Romeikes . . . Two million or about 4% of school-age children in the United States are homeschooled. It’s a much different story overseas.”

OneNewsNow: “The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is being allowed to represent a German pro-life group in a court challenge to the German government over its denying an assisted suicide request . . . ‘It’s a case of judicial activism. It’s a case that really shouldn’t be before the court, and it certainly may set a very dangerous precedent for all of Europe,’ [Roger Kiska] warns.”

Christian Science Monitor: “German officials said the preemptive raids, conducted under German anti-Nazi laws of association, were aimed at uncovering unconstitutional or separatist acts and not part of an international terror hunt.”

aidsmap: “Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.”

AP: “German authorities raided homes and religious schools connected to two radical Islamist groups with suspected terrorist links on Tuesday morning, the Interior Ministry said.”

Hudson New York: “The German state of Lower Saxony will start including Islam in its schools’ core curriculum as part of an initiative to counter growing anti-Islam sentiment in Europe. Dr. Bernad Althusmann, Minister of Education in Lower Saxony announced that schools there will start including Islamic education in their main curriculum . . . ”

Federal Administrative Court of Germany [Google Translation]: “The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, by orders from today in two cases in which this is about the refugee status because of religious persecution, called [on] the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg . . . for a preliminary ruling [concerning] the interpretation of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of the European Union (Qualification Directive). This [includes] the alignment of legal conditions for the granting of refugee status within the European Union. The German legislature . . . implemented the directive in August 2007.”

Welt Online [Google Translation]: “This trend he attributed to the introduction of civil partnership law eight years ago. This allows homosexuals to give their partnership a legal framework and protect each other.”

domradio.de [Google Translation]: “The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden announced, in July, August and September 2010 reported 26,500 abortions in Germany. That was 100 fewer than in the third quarter of 2009.”

Cleveland.com [RNS]: “A new educational program in the western German town of Osnabrueck is about a month into an experiment to help imams learn about European society so that they, in turn, can give better advice to their followers . . . Supporters of the German programs eventually want to go beyond filling knowledge gaps on Western society to providing university degrees for would-be imams or Islamic teachers in grade schools.”

LifeNews: “The European Court of Human Rights will be deciding a case involving a German woman who was denied the right to obtain lethal drugs for the purpose of taking her life in an assisted suicide. The court began the case of Ulrich Koch vs. Germany on Tuesday and it concerns the German authorities’ refusal to grant Koch’s late wife the lethal dose of drugs she needed to kill herself.”

Samuel Gregg writing at the Action Institute Power Blog: “Since the 1950s, many European Christians have gradually reduced their Christian faith to a vacuous humanitarianism worthy of the best EU-funded NGO. One difficulty with ‘liberal Christianity’ (or whatever’s left of it) is that it isn’t especially interested in affirming any Christian values that go beyond sentimental platitudes about tolerance and equality which are routinely emptied of any specific Christian content. It’s goodbye Thomas Aquinas, hello John Rawls. This makes it even more ironic that increasing numbers of secular European thinkers believe Europe can only reinvigorate its distinct identity and values through reengaging its Judeo-Christian heritage.”

David Goodhart reviews Germany Abolishes Itself: How we are putting our country at risk by Thilo Sarrazin in Prospect Magazine: “The message of the book, in headline form, is that Germany is becoming smaller (thanks to the familiar story of a falling birthrate among native Germans) and stupider (thanks to the fact that educated Germans are having fewer children and the fastest growing part of the population are poorly-integrated Muslim immigrants).”

Associated Press: “A Christian lawmaker called on Iraq’s government Tuesday to better protect its dwindling Christian community, lambasting the nations that have offered asylum to the minority as meddling in Iraq’s problems.”

Reuters: “Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans debating Muslim integration to stand up more for Christian values, saying Monday the country suffered not from ‘too much Islam’ but ‘too little Christianity.’”

Tobias Lock, Religious Symbols in Germany (November 15, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1709291

“The paper is concerned with religious symbols in Germany. It mainly focuses on decisions by the Federal Constitutional Court on religious symbols in schools. Court had to deal with two landmark cases concerning the topic of religious symbols. The facts and the outcome of the first decision very much resemble those in the recent Lautsi case: the parents of a child objected to a Bavarian law requiring that a crucifix be affixed in every class room. The Court regarded this as a violation of the student’s freedom of religion. The second case added another dimension: the school authority refused to employ a Muslim teacher who insisted on wearing a headscarf in class. In that case not only the students’ freedom of religion was at issue but also that of the teacher. The Court managed to avoid a ruling on this conflict of fundamental rights by arguing that the school authority had acted without a legislative basis, which made the refusal to employ the teacher illegal. The paper will look at the arguments made in the academic discussion and by inferior courts (most importantly by the Federal Administrative Court). Furthermore, it will examine the reaction by the legislatures of the Länder, which ranged from categorically banning all religious symbols to allowing only those which are in accordance with ‘Christian and occidental cultural and educational values’, a provision which was upheld by the Bavarian Constitutional Court. The paper also discusses unsuccessful challenges under anti-discrimination law as well as the possibilities of banning religious symbols worn by students.”

The Christian Century: “Gay and lesbian Lutheran ministers in the conservative German state of Bavaria may live with their partners in parish parsonages, but only if they enter into a state-sanctioned civil union.”

OneNewsNow: “A bestselling author and terrorism expert thinks Germany’s proposal to outlaw forced Islamic marriages is another sign that Europe is beginning to clamp down on the religion’s controversial practices.”

Deutsche Welle: “In her party conference, Angela Merkel reiterated her view that pre-implantation genetic-testing of test-tube fetuses should be banned. But experts say a ban would cause unnecessary stress for couples.”

Taiwan News (AP): “Germany’s orthodox Jewish community is accusing the government of discrimination for not funding the orthodox Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin while providing money to the country’s only other seminary, which is more liberal.”

Spiegel: “In a SPIEGEL interview, German Family Minister Kristina Schröder, 33, of the conservative Christian Democrats, discusses the shortcomings of feminism, how she plans to help disadvantaged schoolboys and why women don’t want wimps as partners . . . ”

Follow up from Spiegel: German Family Minister Slammed for Comments on Feminism

Reuters: “Germany’s undiplomatic outbursts against U.S. policy, calling it ‘clueless’ before a G20 summit, show growing estrangement on economics as America’s focus shifts away from transatlantic ties to domestic challenges and Asia.”

Reuters: “China kept up a drumbeat of criticism of U.S. easy money policies on Tuesday, warning two days before a G20 world economic summit that Washington could destabilize the global economy and inflate asset bubbles.”

Spiegel: “Schäuble: ‘The German export successes are not the result of some sort of currency manipulation, but of the increased competitiveness of companies. The American growth model, on the other hand, is in a deep crisis. The United States lived on borrowed money for too long, inflating its financial sector unnecessarily and neglecting its small and mid-sized industrial companies. There are many reasons for America’s problems, but they don’t include German export surpluses.’”

Financial Times / Global Economy: “China, Brazil and Germany on Thursday criticised the Fed’s action a day earlier, and a string of east Asian central banks said they were preparing measures to defend their economies against large capital inflows.”

Daniel Pipes writing at National Review Online: “A new German political party, Die Freiheit (The Freedom), had its inaugural meeting on October 28 in Berlin. As a reminder of how freedoms have eroded in Europe in this age of Islamist terror, a political party that resists Islamization and supports Israel cannot come into existence in broad daylight. So, like the other 50-plus attendees, I learned of the event’s time and location only shortly before it took place.”

Mike Adams writing at Townhall: “[German Chancellor Angela Merkel] had the guts to say that Germany’s recent drift towards multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster. And she went one step further calling on their immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values . . . Merkel rightly understands that subsidizing immigrants does not make a country strong. In fact, it makes a country weak if the subsidies are not made in exchange for compliance with certain demands – such as speaking German and abandoning the Muslim practice of forced marriage.”

Associated Press: “Germany’s government on Wednesday proposed criminalizing forced marriage, a tradition that some Muslim immigrant families impose on their children, even ones who were raised in Germany’s more liberal society.”

David P. Goldman writing at First Things / On The Square: “Today, [Merkel's] party offered a position paper stating that while Germany had benefited from immigrants, it had problems ‘with a minority which will not integrate itself, doesn’t learn our language and shields its children from participation and advancement in our society.’ Germany should offer ‘no tolerance’ to those who refuse to integrate into German society, including consequences for residency’ . . . The facts the global press failed to mention, however, include the fact that an important motivation for the Chancellor’s remarks lies in Germany’s profound disillusionment at the radical Islamist tendencies in Turkey’s government, led by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, and Germany’s alarm at Turkey’s drift towards Islamism.”

“German President Christian Wulff took part in a religious ceremony at a church-turned museum in southern Turkey on Thursday, following which he reiterated his earlier calls for more religious freedoms for Christians in Turkey.”

Market Watch: “The Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Deutsche Bank in the United States, today announced four grants totaling $200,000 to provide an immediate response to recent tragic events impacting the local Gay community and to address increased incidents of Muslim discrimination in housing and employment.”

Reuters: “Germany is probably home to more than 1,000 potentially violent Islamists and the number of identified militants has risen constantly in the past few years, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said on Wednesday.”

The European Court of Human Rights will allow a German pro-life group represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys to intervene to defend life in a lawsuit filed against the German government. A man sued Germany after a state agency would not give his disabled wife drugs to commit suicide.

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “Is Europe’s adventure in international living about to end? . . . Across Europe, there is a resurgence of ethnonationalism that is feeding the ranks of populist and anti-immigrant parties that are gaining respectability and reaching for power . . . But the awakening of Europe’s establishment to the shallow roots of multiculturalism will likely prove frustrating and futile . . . For not one European nation, save Iceland and Albania, has had a birth rate for decades that is not below zero population growth.”

Associated Press: “Turkey’s president on Tuesday urged politicians in Germany not to exploit the issue of immigration for political gain and said they should instead help Turks better integrate.”

BBC News: “She said the so-called ‘multikulti’ concept – where people would ‘live side-by-side’ happily – did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate – including learning German.”

Stephanie R. Hoffer, Caesar as God’s Banker: Using Germany’s Church Tax as an Example of Non-Geographically Bounded Taxing Jurisdiction (September 16, 2010). Washington University Global Studies Law Review, Forthcoming; Ohio State Public Law Working Paper No. 132. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1677964

“This Article compares the modern-day German church tax to church taxes levied by the American colonies and early states and concludes that, unlike its American counterparts, the German church tax is not wholly a “church” tax. Rather, it is primarily a form of decentralized local taxation, the jurisdiction of which is determined by voluntary group affinity rather than geography. As such, it is a crucial part of the German taxing landscape that should not be abandoned but should instead be retained and extended to qualifying secular organizations. In that context – secular rather than sectarian – the tax may also serve as the starting point for developing a model of non-geographically bounded jurisdictions to be used for funding local government or non-profit provision of public goods within the United States.”

Reuters: “Germany announced on Thursday it would fund Islamic studies at three state universities to train prayer leaders and religion teachers more in tune with Western society than the foreign imams preaching at most mosques here.”

NY Times: “The report, on the rise of right-wing extremism, was prepared by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a research organization affiliated with the opposition Social Democratic Party. Its publication coincides with a emotionally charged debate about immigration and the integration of the seven million foreigners living in Germany. With leading politicians singling out Turks and Arabs — even suggesting, as the Bavarian premier, Horst Seehofer, did last week that they would be better off returning to their countries of origin — public attitudes about foreigners are swinging increasingly toward intolerance and racism, according to the report . . . ”

Spiegel Online: “The debate over Muslims in Germany has flared up again after Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer said Germany doesn’t need any more Turkish or Arabic immigrants because they don’t integrate as well as others. Commentators say he has damaged government efforts to calm the debate.”

Spiegel Online: “Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said that Islamic law has no place in Germany. But she was wrong: German courts have long used elements of Shariah in some verdicts. It is an "expression of globalization," says one legal expert.”

Spiegel Online: “The recent statement by German President Christian Wulff that ‘Islam belongs in Germany’ has provoked something of a conservative backlash. The German press is divided on whether the presence of Muslims in Germany is self-evident or cause for concern.”

Associated Press: “Between 15 and 40 Germans and a smaller contingent of other Europeans are believed to be getting militant training in Pakistan’s lawless border region, intending to join the Taliban’s fight against NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan or return to Europe and strike at the soft underbelly of those countries.”

Wall Street Journal: “A senior German official played down warnings of a potential terrorist attack in Europe, as Pakistani intelligence officials told reporters a U.S. missile strike in northwest Pakistan reportedly killed several suspected German militants.”

Family Security Matters: “On August 20 in these pages, Rael Jean Isaac compared the issue of the proposed Ground Zero mosque with a grubby mosque in Hamburg, Germany. This mosque lies in a side street, next to the Olympic Fitness center, and had been a haunt of at least three of the hijackers who were in planes that were involved in the 9/11 attacks.”

Deutsche Welle: “German President Christian Wulff’s speech to commemorate the 20th anniversary of German reunification, in which he called for the integration of Muslims in Germany, has met with praise and light criticism among religious groups and politicians in the country . . . German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while endorsing Wulff’s words, also expressed reservations on Monday with regard to the position of Islam in German culture.”

Deutsche Welle: “As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of reunification, the former East-West divide in the country’s gay and lesbian rights movement has all but disappeared.”

Associated Press: “Eight Germans and two British brothers are at the heart of an al-Qaida-linked terror plot against European cities . . . ”

“The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has dealt the Roman Catholic Church in Germany a blow over its employment practices by saying that the church cannot dismiss an employee because of an inappropriate personal relationship.”

World Bulletin: “Turkish State Minister Faruk Celik met with German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere in Ankara on Friday . . . Celik said that they welcomed the initiatives to establish Islamic theology departments in universities in Germany.”

Paul Williams, writing at Family Security Matters: “Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. ‘Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,’ Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. ‘For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.’”

FindLaw (AP): “Oil-producing countries on Thursday rejected a German proposal for a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Northeast Atlantic that reflected environmental concerns after the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.”

Associated Press: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has agreed to raise health insurance premiums and trim profits for medical professionals as part of efforts to control a deficit in the health care system.”