Tag Archives: Topic: Islam

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad

Andrew Harrod at The Legal Project: Yet again depictions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad are causing controversy. The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo has published a special edition released in January 2013 entitled La Vie de Mahomet, 1ère partie: Les débuts d’un prophète (“The Life of Muhammad, Part One: The Debut of a Prophet”; part two will follow in June 2013). Press reaction in both France and Germany, however, has not been uniformly welcoming, demonstrating once more a media aversion to open examination of Islam.

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad.

AP: French President Francois Hollande says he wants a new law that could extend restrictions against wearing of prominent religious symbols in state jobs into the private sector.

Ansamed.info: More than 80% of respondents favor toughening the country’s 2004 law, which bans religious dress and insignia in schools, nurseries, and anywhere that involves the care and education of children. Another 83% is in favor of extending the ban to the private sector, and 16% is against.

Religion Clause Blog: According to France 24, yesterday the Social Chamber of the Cour de Cassation (France’s highest court) ruled that a private nursery school discriminated on the basis of religious belief against a Muslim teacher when it fired her for refusing to remove her hijab while at work.

Ansamed.info: France will expel radical foreign preachers within days, Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced Tuesday at an international conference on fighting terrorism and radicalism.

Telegraph: France’s campaign in Mali has escalated into a ground war when troops fought to prevent al-Qaeda and its allies from striking deep inside territory previously under government control.

Reuters: French Muslims have begun joining a mostly Catholic-led movement against same-sex marriage, widening opposition to the reform that the Socialist-led government is set to write into the law by June.

Reuters: France will deport foreign-born imams and disband radical faith-based groups, including hardline traditionalist Catholics, if a new surveillance policy signals they suffer a “religious pathology” and could become violent.

AP: The French foreign minister says France plans to vote in favor of recognition of a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly this week.

Jewish Press: France, which is home to an estimated six million Muslims, has the largest Muslim population in the European Union. There are now, in fact, more practicing Muslims in France than there are practicing Roman Catholics.

Reuters: An increasing majority of people in France believe Islam plays too influential a role in their society and almost half see Muslims as a threat to their national identity, according to a poll published on Thursday.

Business Recorder: French authorities vowed Tuesday to show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism as new details emerged of the suspects detained in a crackdown on Islamic extremists who allegedly targeted the Jewish community.

Fox News: Dozens of Iranians angered over an anti-Islam film made in the U.S. and caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad published in a weekly in France have attacked the French Embassy in Tehran.

AP: In its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum has a new wing dedicated to Islamic art, a nearly (EURO)100 million ($130 million) project that comes at a tense time between the West and the Muslim world.

Franc24.com: France announced Wednesday it will close 20 embassies across the Muslim world on Friday after French weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed naked, amid growing unrest over an anti-Islamic film that has left dozens dead.

Middle East Forum: “Any time young people approach me in order to get married, I ask them various questions about their future. Eighty percent of them say they do not envision any future in France.” This is what one rabbi in Paris told me last week. I heard similar statements from other French rabbis and lay Jewish leaders: “We have a feeling the words are on the wall now,” one leader in the Lyons area confided to me. “It is not just our situation in this country deteriorating; it is also that the process is much quicker than expected.”

Telegraph: “France’s future depends on its ability to reintegrate the suburbs into the national project,” warned respected political scientist Gilles Kepel, a specialist in the Muslim world, in a recent report after a year-long study in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two Paris suburbs where the 2005 riots began. The report found that Islamic institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the French state, which has failed to deliver on its promise of “equality”, and that residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French.

AFP: French Muslim woman has been charged with assault and inciting a riot after she refused a police ID check because she was wearing a banned full-face veil, a police source said Tuesday.

AP: Authorities say two pigs’ heads were found hanging outside a mosque in southern France.

Gatestone Institute: The Socialist government in France has inaugurated a new mega-mosque in Paris as a first step towards “progressively building a French Islam.”

Telegraph: Three Saudi women have been refused entry into France because they refused to remove their burkas.

Elizabeth K. (Betsy) Dorminey, Veiled Meaning: Tolerance and Prohibition of the Hijab in the U.S. and France, Engage Volume 13, Issue 1 (March 2012)

AP: A leading French Muslim group says three mosques have been vandalized over the past week . . .

Europe News (Google Translation): An analysis of voting behavior that Hollande on 6 May for the victory as the first Socialist president of France since 1995, helped show that this fall was due to a large extent the Muslims who voted him in overwhelming numbers. The French vote demonstrated for the first time that Muslims have decided the outcome of a presidential election in a major Western European country, there is a view of the things to come.

Religion Clause Blog: In France, after a first-round Presidential vote in which Muslims have been vilified, Muslim leaders– particularly in southeast France– are pressing Muslims to vote in Sunday’s run-off election . . .

AP: The graves of several Muslim soldiers in a cemetery in southeastern France were desecrated over the weekend, officials said Monday.

Kens5.com: France’s interior ministry says an arsonist has partially destroyed a Muslim prayer room in the Mediterranean island of Corsica’s capital city.

AP report.

FoxCharlotte.com: France says it has expelled an Algerian Islamist extremist and a radical Muslim preache from Mali, and that it is in the process of deporting a Saudi Muslim prayer leader

AP: France has barred a group of Muslim clerics, including one of the most prominent voices in Sunni Islam . . .

Fox News: Police departments across the nation and around the world have beefed up security at synagogues following shootings at Jewish sites in France.

The Times of Israel: MK Ya’akov Katz called Monday for Jews to leave France in the wake of a deadly attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse.

B92.net: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said there are too many foreigners in France and the system for integrating them is working “increasingly badly”.

BBC: Muslim and Jewish groups have reacted with dismay after French PM Francois Fillon suggested the religious slaughter of animals was out of date.

Religion Clause: France’s 1905 law on the separation of church and state bars creating municipal cemeteries limited to only one religion. This means that cities have been limited to setting aside Muslim-only sections in existing cemeteries.

Religion Clause: In France, the Green Party candidate for President, Eva Joly, has created a controversy by proposing that Jews and Muslims should be given the right to take off work or school on their major holidays.

Stonegate Institute: New citizenship rules that entered into effect on January 1, 2012 will require all applicants to pass exams on French culture and history and also to prove that their French language skills are equivalent to those of a 15-year-old native speaker. Moreover, candidates seeking French citizenship will be required to pledge allegiance to “French values.”

France24.com: France’s infamous ‘polygamous Muslim butcher’ was back in the headlines Monday, this time because two of his supposed wives were caught wearing the niqab, or full Muslim veil, on the school run. The development is the latest twist in a surreal tale that we have yet to hear the last of.

News from The Associated Press: The satirical French newspaper whose offices were firebombed this week fought back Friday against efforts to interrupt its operations, starting a blog and publishing more copies of a controversial edition.

A petrol bomb attack burned down the offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hébdo yesterday after it put the Prophet Mohammed on its front page and named him “guest editor”.

RFI: A French court has ruled that a private nursery had the right to fire an employee for wearing Islamic head-cover, leading its lawyer to hail an advance for secular forces in the country.

Europe News: A French court Thursday cancelled a construction permit for a mega-mosque in the southern city of Marseille that had been touted as a potential symbol of Islam’s growing place in France

AHN: They said they would appeal the fines to France’s highest court and to the European Court of Human Rights. Their fines were paid by the civil rights group Don’t Touch My Constitution, which predicted the European Court of Human Rights would sanction France for its ban on Muslim veils.

News from The Associated Press: Kenza Drider’s posters for the French presidential race are ready to go, months before the official campaign begins. There she is, the “freedom candidate,” pictured standing in front of a line of police – a forbidden veil hiding her face.

NYTimes.com: A ban on street prayer came into force on Friday, driving thousands of Muslim worshipers in northern Paris into an improvised prayer site in an old fire brigade barracks, angering a small but vocal minority.

The Associated Press: For years, Muslims by the hundreds, dodging foot and vehicle traffic, have unfurled rugs on northern Paris sidewalks and put their foreheads to the ground outside two mosques for Friday prayers — for the simple reason that there’s not enough space inside.

Hudson New York: Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches, and there now are more practising Muslims in the country than practising Catholics. Nearly 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France, home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe.

Islamist Watch: Though France is the pace setter, efforts to impose burqa bans, both broad and narrow, press on across the West. The following is a quick and by no means exhaustive update on recent attempts . . .

Washington Post: France would need to demonstrate terrorist threat overides women’s right to veil the face for religious reasoons . . .

Telegraph: Police fined her 150-euros (£132) “without incident” in a shopping centre in Mureaux, northwest of Paris.

The Telegraph: Police in France have admitted they will be enforcing the country’s new burka ban “extremely cautiously” because of fears of provoking violence.

Bloomberg: French law banning facial veils in public places goes into effect April 11, with women clad in burqas with their faces covered risking a 150-euro ($214) fine and mandatory lessons on being French. “No one is allowed to wear a garment that hides the face in public places,” the law, passed in October, proclaims.

Expatica.com: France warned that it would not tolerate a “wave of Tunisian immigration” after Italy on Thursday granted humanitarian permits to thousands of Tunisians allowing them to travel around Europe.

Boston Globe (AP): President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing conservative party held a politically charged conference Tuesday on ways to strengthen secularism in French society, amid worries it would stigmatize France’s millions of Muslims.

AP: “For Muslim women who cover their faces with veils, it is the moment for making plans. Starting April 11, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.”

Rose McDermott writes at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): Polygamy—or more specifically polygyny, the marriage of one man to more than one woman—has been widespread in human history. And it is becoming increasingly common, particularly in Muslim enclaves—including in Paris, London and New York.

The National: The French government is resisting mounting pressure to abandon a planned debate on Islam that has split the ruling party, dismayed Muslims and united leaders of all the country’s main religions in firm opposition.

AP: “France’s chief religions are protesting plans by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party to hold a debate next week on Islam’s role in the country, joining a growing chorus of voices who fear it could stigmatize Muslims and worsen social tensions.”

Catholic Culture: Muslims in France have asked for the use of empty Catholic churches, saying that this would “prevent Muslims from having to pray in the streets.” Father Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit expert on Islam, explains why the proposal is absurd. | Related AsiaNews.it

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.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Reuters and France 24 report that France’s governing UMP party plans to lead a debate beginning in April on the role Islam in light of France’s tradition of secularism– an issue that promises to be a major focus in France’s 2012 election campaign . . . ”

AFP on Yahoo: “French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.”

ABNA: “With French Muslims praying in the streets and in basements around the country, and with the far-right in France is targeting mosques as a treat to French identity, the Strasbourg city council unanimously approved Monday the creation of two new mosques in the city, including one with a minaret, according to the vice-mayor in charge of religious affairs, Oliver Bitz.”

Henry Samuel writing in The Telegraph: “Mr Sarkozy made the statement while giving his annual address to religious leaders as Coptic Christians were due to celebrate Christmas yesterday, according to the eastern Orthodox church calendar.
‘We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly perverse programme of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing,’ said the French president.”

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.”

Jerusalem Post: “French police said Monday they have tightened security at Coptic Christian churches and opened a probe into online messages threatening terror attacks against such religious sites in France.”

CBC: “A French court has ruled against a woman who sued a private child-care centre that fired her for wearing an Islamic headscarf and cloak to work.”

Associated Press: “A French court has annulled a fine given to a woman driver wearing an Islamic face veil, months before a ban on wearing the garments goes into effect.”

Stanford: “In France, a Christian citizen is two-and-a-half times more likely to get called for a job interview than an equally qualified Muslim candidate, according to new research by political science professor David Laitin.”

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.”

Benjamin Ismail writing in The Middle East Quarterly: “Does the vehemence of some media criticism imply that the banning of the niqab and the burqa is too sensitive and too complex an issue to be determined by law? Quite the reverse in fact. The question of whether France should legally ban the wearing of the full-face cover on its territory was answered in the affirmative, resoundingly and unequivocally, during parliamentary debates held over the past two years. The only remaining problems for its enactment are more a matter of form over substance, namely, what will be the best rationale for this legislation? . . . An EU decision to invalidate the French ban would have to be based on the unlawfulness of the government’s bill or some of its provisions. Yet this possibility has been fully anticipated by the government which, by changing the bill’s rationale from the principles of secularism or the dignity of women to public order, has greatly reduced the likelihood of invalidation.”

Ilya Somin writes at the Volokh Conspiracy: “France’s Constitutional Council recently upheld the constitutionality of a law banning the wearing of veils in public places. The text of the decision is available in French here. Despite the importance of the issue and the large potential infringement on religious freedom, the opinion is very short and conclusory. For those of our readers who understand French, here is the key passage . . . ”

Christian Science Monitor: “Many Muslims in France feel increasingly targeted amid growing terror concerns and what some see as anti-Muslim measures, such as the banning burqas in public.”