Paris:Tariq Ramadan is a scholar who teaches at Oxford University and a former member of a working group on extremism set up by Tony Blair. Time magazine once described him as the “leading thinker” among Europe’s second and third-generation Muslim immigrants. Yet two French ministers have suddenly announced that they will not attend a conference…
Catalonia: (Spain): The Supreme Court has rejected the motion presented by the city of Lleida to ban the burqa in public buildings. The council delegation had declared in March this year, their intention to go to the Supreme Court, as in their point of view, the banning of the burqa aims to preserve the equality…
Paris: The controversy surrounding the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, has been rekindled in France after the French Court of Cassation annulled the 2008 dismissal of a Muslim nurse from a private daycare center because she refused to stop wearing the hijab. The court’s decision created a fire storm in France, prompting President Francois Hollande to…
London: A Crown Prosecution Service investigation of a number of Sharia courts operating in mosques across the UK found that these courts may be risking the safety of women by ruling in favor of possibly abusive husbands. The Sharia courts deal mostly with family law, issuing decisions on divorces, custody battles (though Sharia courts are…
Amsterdam: A new Muslim broadcaster in the Netherlands has been granted the provision of radio and TV programmes. The Commissariat for the Media has granted broadcaster SZM, a license valid through 31 December 2015. At the initiative of the supervisory body, various Muslim organisations are to collaborate in the SZM, as a result of which…
Belgium: A Muslim organisation has condemned the instrumentalisation of Islam to recruit voluntary fighters from Belgium for the civil-war in Syria. “Forum Musulmans et Société” (FMS), has expressed its disagreement with attempts to give a religious colour to the war in Syria, which the organisation considers to be a war between Syrians and non- religious…
London: The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), one of United Kingdom’s leading Muslim organisations has warned that plans to revise the school history curriculum, risks ignoring the Muslim contribution to western civilization, an omission that will only foster alienation. The MCB says the plans ignore the contribution of Indian Muslim, Hindu and Sikh soldiers to…
Washington D.C: The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization (CAIR) said the decision by The Associated Press (AP) to revise its Stylebook reference to the term “Islamist” is a “step in the right direction.” Late last year, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) approached AP about modifying the reference, which had been…
New York: American Muslim civil liberties groups released a new report last fortnight, “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims,” documenting the devastating impacts of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) extensive surveillance program that targeted American Muslims throughout the Northeast and spread outrage throughout the nation. Since 2002, the NYPD embarked…
Washington D.C: The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) welcomed a decision by a South Carolina jail to allow female inmates to wear the “hijab.” The CAIR made the request for a policy change following a complaint from a Muslim woman who was taken into custody recently, and…
