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SHAFAQNA –If they know what is good for them, German Muslims should be stoutly, if silently, supporting the partial burqa ban aounced by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s govement. And French Muslims should be agreeing, even if only sotto voce, with Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s call for “discretion” in public spaces “at this difficult time”. Chevènement, a former Interior minister, has been appointed head of the Foundation of French Islam. The organisation, created to better integrate France’s Muslim population, is to oversee aspects of mosque operations, including domestic financing and imam training. It is likely to be an influential body. There is a simple reason to support Merkel’s partial burqa ...

SHAFAQNA –Germany’s interior minister will propose a number of security measures, including a ban on the full face veil for women, in reaction to growing conces about violent attacks in the country. According to German media, the measures, which the interior ministry will try to tu into law before national elections in 2017, include boosting police numbers and video surveillance at railway stations and airports, making it easier for doctors to break confidentiality agreements if their patients are plaing criminal acts, and tightening rules around obtaining dual nationality. The federal interior minister, the Christian Democrat (CDU) MP Thomas de Maizière, is expected to present details of a...

SHAFAQNA –It depends on Ankara whether Turks will enjoy visa-free travel to Europe, Germany’s vice chancellor has said, adding that it was the right decision to ban a live broadcast by the Turkish president to a rally in Cologne on the weekend. “It is up to Turkey if there is or there isn’t visa liberalization,” Reuters quoted German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel as saying while on an official visit to northe Germany. “Germany and Europe should under no circumstances be blackmailed,” Gabriel added. The vice chancellor also welcomed the move by Germany’s highest court to block a livestream address by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to a rally of Turkish nationals in Cologne on Sunday....

SHAFAQNA –Germany is likely to face more terrorist attacks, its interior minister said on Wednesday. Anti-immigrant party Alteative for Germany (AfD) has seized on the train attack to criticize Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migrant policy, under which some 1.1 million people entered Germany in 2015, many fleeing war in Syria, North Africa and Asia. “You caot say there is no coection between refugees and terrorism, but the danger was high before and remains high, regardless of questions about refugees,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. A 17-year-old who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding four people from Hong Kong, some of them severely, on the train a...

Theresa May has driven extreme policies that surveil and criminalize Muslims, migrants and refugees Now that the Conservative Party’s Theresa May has a clear path to becoming the next prime minister of Britain, much of the media coverage is focusing on her “unpredictability,” “resolve” and,unfortunately, her favorite style of shoes. But as the United Kingdom reels from a post-Brexit surge in racist hate crimes and xenophobia, a key aspect of May’s legacy is going underreported: her role in driving policies aimed at surveilling, criminalizing and extraditing Muslims, refugees and migrants. From the begiing of her tenure as home secretary in 2010, May has been a key backer of the controversia...

SHAFAQNA –“Europe is seriously ill,” according to Deutsche Bank, and while Italy’s problems have been well-documented recently, analysts told Sputnik that a closer look at German banks reveals that even Europe’s economic powerhouse could find itself financial difficulties. While Brexit seems tohave served asa catalyst forEurope’s political crisis, financial experts are waing that a crisis also appears tobe brewing onthe European financial front.The structural weaknesses that became apparent duringthe 2008 financial crisis have not been tackled sufficiently, and analysts are worried that Europe’s banks are facing more financial pressure thanthey can cope with. On Sunday David Folkerts-Landau...

SHAFAQNA –Iraq’s Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban has stepped down from his position following one of the deadliest ever bombings in the Arab country claimed by the Takfiri Daesh terrorists group. Ghabban made the aouncement at a press conference in the capital, Baghdad, on Tuesday, saying, “I placed my resignation before the prime minister, [Haider al-Abadi].” On Sunday, a vehicle packed with explosives was detonated in Baghdad’s Shia neighborhood of Karrada while families were shopping for Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy Muslimfasting month of Ramadan. Security and medical officials said the attack left at least 213 people dead and more than 200 others wounded. On the same d...

SHAFAQNA –A group of lawyers, lawmakers and civil rights activists are urging authorities in Germany to investigate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Kurdish activist group Civaka Azad said lawyers filed the complaint Monday with Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office that relates to crimes allegedly committed against Kurds in southeaste Turkey. It focuses on alleged crimes by Turkish security forces against Kurds in the town of Cizre. Among other things, they say Erdogan should be held responsible for the suspected deaths of Cizre civilians who hid in basements from Turkish artillery. The U.N. said last month it wants to investigate the r...

SHAFAQNA –Islamophobia has risen markedly in Germany, a study published on Wednesday showed, underscoring the tensions simmering in German society after more than one million migrants, mostly Muslims, arrived last year. Every second respondent in the study of 2,420 people said they sometimes felt like a foreigner in their own country due to the many Muslims here, up from 43 percent in 2014 and 30.2 percent in 2009. The number of people who believe Muslims should be forbidden from coming to Germany has also risen, the study showed, and now stands at just above 40 percent, up from about a fifth in 2009. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Leipzig in co-operation with t...

SHAFAQNA –It’s ungrateful and disrespectful to cause harm in a country has given you safe passage – especially at a time of peace and reflection. Enraged and disgusted are just some of the sentiments I felt reading how a refugeecamp was allegedly bued down by Muslims. They did it, apparently, because they didn’t get an early enough Ramadan breakfast wake-up call. I am left shocked and in disbelief at the hypocrisy of those who call xadthemselves Muslims. How can anyone set fire to a camp which is home to the vulnerable and displaced? And how ungrateful and xaddisrespectful to cause damage and harm in Germany, a country which has kindly given you refuge and safe passage. But to cause arson i...

SHAFAQNA –Up to 40 thousand non-Muslim refugees have been harassed at German migrant centers by Muslim migrants and refugees, according to a survey, presented by six human rights groups presented in Berlin on Monday. In an interview withRadio Sputnik Simon Jacob, ambassador ofthe Central Council ofOriental Christians inGermany, said that refugees who are not able toassimilate and accept European values, should be asked toleave the EU. “A lot ofChristians face such kind oftrouble atthese facilities, butnot everything becomes public because this is quite a new situation forus. This is not a general situation, butwe need totalk aboutthis because these are no longer individual cases,” Simon Jaco...

SHAFAQNA –A new poll shows a dramatic shift in Germany’s perception of Islam, with 61 percent of the population saying it “doesn’t belong in Germany.” The number is up significantly from January, when 47 percent said Islam had no place in society. Just 22percent think Islam should be a part of German culture. Half of Germans, 51 percent, are willing to take it a step further and say Muslims “don’t belong in Germany.”About the same amount, 46 percent, are worried of Islamization of society.The poll surveyed 2,054 people and was issued by tabloid Bild. SHARE Facebook Twitter Previous articleLebanon Shows Christians and Muslims Can Live Together in Peace in the Middle East ...

SHAFAQNA –In American politics, raising taxes is seen as a sure way to provoke a voter revolt. But in Germany, some politicians see taxing Muslims as a strategy to keep them from becoming radicalized. The standard-bearer for this unexpected idea is a politician from the Christian Social Union, the folksy right-wing party known for desperately wanting to keep Muslim immigrants from the Middle East from pouring in to its traditionally Catholic southe state of Bavaria. Strange as it might seem, there are Muslim leaders in Germany who think a religious tax might be a good idea, too. If they can get over the grumbling, mosque-goers may agree. The problem is how to limit the influence of Muslim c...

SHAFAQNA –An influential politician from Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party said all mosques in Germany should be subject to state supervision in light of what he sees as a threat from extremist. Volker Kauder, who heads the conservative parliamentary grouping in Germany’s lower house, used his twitter account air his views on controlling mosques and “radical imams”. That drew an immediate response from some critics of the idea, Euronews reported. Unrealistic and useless was the view of the Die Welt newspaper. But Kauder says that Germany was constituted as a secular state and that sermons delivered in some mosques do not conform with that concept. The Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Friday quo...

SHAFAQNA –Earlier this April French Minister Laurence Rossignol made a series of rather controversial comments when she likened women wearing the headscarf to slave embracing tyray -using racist and defaming adjectives when referring to Muslims, Islam and foreigners in general. While she claimed that her outburst was misconstrued, arguing that her intentions were not to belittle or insult but instead empower women to take charge of their own life, Minister Rossignol’s logic vis a vis Islam, her position vis a vis Muslim women in particular, has been symptomatic of France’s rising Islamophobic narrative. And though France continues to hide behind its Republican values to better rationalize i...

SHAFAQNA –Muslims will ‘very soon’ outnumber practising Christians in Europe, a Belgian minister claimed yesterday. Koen Geens, the justice minister, told the European Parliament the continent ‘does not realise this, but this is the reality’. At a hearing by MEPs into the Brussels attacks, the Belgian deputy prime ministerJan Jambon added that ‘the worst thing we can do is to make an enemy of Islam’. The remarks follow claims by Mr Jambon in the wake of the suicide bombings that ‘a significant section of the Muslim community danced when attacks took place’. Shift in population Speaking before the Parliament’s justice and home affairs committee yesterday, Mr Koens said the EU needed to reali...

“I think the AfD is playing with people’s fears,” Burhan Kesici, the head of the Islamic Council, told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “We had a wave of refugees last year, we have a lot of unemployment, we have other problems. I think now they are trying to score, using Islam to attract new voters,” he added. Let's block ads! بخوانید...

Belgian Vice-Prime Minister and Interior Minister Jan Jambon (N-VA) speaks during a plenary session of the Chamber at the federal parliament, in Brussels, Thursday 22 January 2015. AFP PHOTO / BELGA PHOTO / LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ (Photo credit should read LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/AFP/Getty Images) SHAFAQNA –A “significant” number of Belgian Muslim population celebrate terrorist attacks,the country’s Interior Minister has claimed. Speaking to theFlemish-language newspaperDe Standaard, Jan Jambon did not specifically refer to the attacks on Brussels Airport and a metro station last month which left 32 people dead but said there is a “cancer” of extremism ruing through Belgian society that the govement i...

SHAFAQNA-The Department of Tourism (DOT) in the Philippines is pushing for “halal consciousness” in the country’s tourist hubs as a way of inculcating respect for the Islamic religion and to attract more Muslim visitors.Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. said that with the Philippine Halal Tourism Project, launched last week at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, the DOT is looking to capture a larger slice of the $200-billion inteational halal tourism market. The project, Jimenez said in a statement, was launched in under 100 days with the DOT working with the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF), the Halal Inteational Chambers of Commerce and Industries of the Philippines (...

SHAFAQNA –Over 5,800 refugee minors went missing in Germany last year, local media reported Monday, citing an official reply from the German Interior Ministry. According to Berlin’s estimates obtained by the Funke media group, 555 missing minors are younger than 14 years old. “The missing unaccompanied minors come mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Morocco and Algeria,” the reply reads. The German Interior Ministry could not specify reasons for the migrants’ disappearance. Germany has become a key destination for the migrants fleeing war and poverty since the start of 2015. The country’s Interior Ministry estimates that Germany received around 1.1 million registered migrants last yea...