Category Archives: Islam

Religious intolerance is ‘bigger cause of prejudice than race’, says report

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Attitudes to faith said to drive negative perceptions more than ethnicity or nationality

Religion is the “final frontier” of personal prejudice, with attitudes to faith driving negative perceptions more than ethnicity or nationality, a report to be published tomorrow will say.

How We Get Along, a two-year study of diversity by the Woolf Institute, is due to conclude that most people are tolerant of those from different ethnic or national backgrounds, but many have negative attitudes based on religion.

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Violent extremism linked to failure of migrants to integrate, EU says

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Reference to Islam removed from EU governments’ declaration after disagreements

The rise of violent extremism in Europe has been linked to the failure of migrants to integrate, in a hard-debated joint declaration by EU governments on the recent terror attacks.

The statement by EU home affairs ministers was described by Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, as a “great sign of solidarity” when delivered on Friday but it had been heavily watered down from a controversial initial draft.

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Europe’s Muslims are European. Stop outsourcing their plight to foreign leaders | Shada Islam

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For EU leaders to seek solutions abroad to end prejudice against millions of their own citizens is insulting and meaningless

Terror attacks in France and Austria have put Europe’s 25 million Muslims back in the spotlight. The unwanted attention is familiar. Discussing Muslims as a security risk invariably reaches fever pitch after an Islamist-inspired terrorist act. This time the attackers came from Chechnya, Tunisia and North Macedonia. But never mind: anxiety over the Muslim “enemy within” goes deep.

Anxious debates on the place of Islam in Europe and claims that European Muslims are footsoldiers in an existential confrontation between Europe and Islam and represent an impossible-to-integrate “other” have dogged Muslims across the continent for decades.

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ICC Uighur genocide complaint backed by parliamentarians around world

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‘Chance should not be squandered’ to bring Chinese government to justice, letter states

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has been urged by an international alliance of parliamentarians to accept a complaint alleging genocide by China against its Uighur Muslim minority.

The complaint, backed by more than 60 parliamentarians from 16 countries, says the Chinese government may be committing crimes amounting to genocide and other crimes against humanity against the Uighur and other Turkic peoples.

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United Arab Emirates to relax Islamic laws on personal freedoms

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Country to end lenient punishments for ‘honour’ killings and decriminalise alcohol amid reforms

The United Arab Emirates has ended lenient punishments for so-called “honour” killings, lifted a ban on unmarried couples living together and decriminalised alcohol, in reforms to personal laws.

Foreigners living in the Gulf state will also be able to follow their home country’s laws on divorce and inheritance, rather than using UAE legislation based on Islamic religious law, government-linked media reported.

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UAE decriminalises alcohol and lifts ban on unmarried couples living together

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Country also ends lenient punishments for ‘honour’ killings as part of reforms

The United Arab Emirates has ended lenient punishments for so-called “honour” killings, lifted a ban on unmarried couples living together and decriminalised alcohol, in reforms to personal laws.

Foreigners living in the Gulf state will also be able to follow their home country’s laws on divorce and inheritance, rather than using UAE legislation based on Islamic religious law, government-linked media reported.

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Macron’s task is to show French Muslims they have a place in the republic | Catherine Fieschi

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The president must demonstrate that the secular state – with a subtle dose of multiculturalism – works for them

As a dual citizen of France and Canada, I never cease to be amazed by the depth of misunderstanding there is about French attitudes to religion. France’s shortcomings in its management of diversity are obvious – as are everyone else’s – but it is important to recognise some basic facts before pronouncing on them.

The first is that the principle of laïcité in France – the country’s particular brand of secularism – is more than posturing: it is a lived, sociological fact.

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France considers envoy to explain Macron’s ideas to Muslim states

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Move comes amid backlash over president’s views on secularism and freedom of expression

France is looking at appointing a special envoy to explain Emmanuel Macron’s thinking on secularism and freedom of expression in a bid to quell the anti-French backlash growing in some Muslim countries, officials have said.

The growth in anti-French sentiment also has the potential to deepen the already entrenched conflict between Macron and Turkey over Libya and oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

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The women who risk their lives to deliver Pakistan’s polio vaccines

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As activists target female vaccinators, Pakistan remains one of only two countries worldwide not to have eradicated polio

Nasreen Bibi never saw the face of her killer. The 44-year-old had just finished work for the day, vaccinating children against polio in Chaman, Pakistan. As she and her co-worker, Rashida Bibi (no relation), stood waiting for a rickshaw home, a motorcycle skidded up in front of them carrying two masked men.

The men did not utter a word, but through the churned up dust that filled the air, Rashida remembers seeing the raised pistol, hearing the shots and feeling the pain as the bullets hit her hands, her thighs, her back and her stomach. Rashida fell to the ground and felt Nasreen crumple beside her, blood pouring from a dark hole in her forehead.

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Emmanuel Macron: violence not an acceptable response to cartoons of Muhammad – video

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Emmanuel Macron has defended the right of publishers to depict caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in France. 'I will never accept that someone can justify the use of physical violence because of these cartoons,' Macron said.

On 16 October, a history teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded outside his school near Paris after showing pupils two caricatures of Muhammad as part of a discussion about free speech.

The French president sought to calm anti-French protests in Islamic countries after the reprinting of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in an interview with Al Jazeera. Macron said he 'understands the feelings of Muslims about the caricatures'. But he said it was not his role as president to restrict freedom of expression when it caused offence

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Mahathir Mohamad says his remarks after French attack were taken out of context

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Two-time Malaysian PM criticises Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts after the attack on Nice church

The former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has stood by his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying they were taken out of context. He also criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.

Mahathir, 95, sparked widespread anger when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.

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Anti-France protests draw tens of thousands across Muslim world

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Demonstrations held in Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and Afghanistan

Tens of thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere joined protests on Friday over the French president Emmanuel Macron’s vow to protect the right to caricature the prophet Muhammad.

Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, turned violent as 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing teargas and using batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hanged an effigy of Macron from an overpass after pounding it with their shoes.

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Attacks in France put Islamist extremism back in spotlight

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Many of the factors in the surge in violence of a few years ago have gone but some still remain

The “vision of horror” in Nice, as police described the scene of a fatal knife attack in a church on Thursday, is a serious challenge for Emmanuel Macron. The French president has promised a crackdown on Islamist extremism, including shutting down mosques and other organisations accused of fomenting radicalism and violence, and said France was engaged in an existential battle against radical Islamic ideologies and separatism. His hardline interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has spoken of extremists as the enemy within.

There was also a stabbing outside the French consulate in Saudi Arabia on Thursday and an incident in the French city of Avignon involving a man armed with a knife who tried to attack police. It follows the murder two weeks ago of a schoolteacher in Conflans on the outskirts of Paris after he had shown students a caricature of the prophet Muhammad, and the wounding of two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.

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Turkey threatens legal action over Charlie Hebdo’s caricature of president

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French satirical newspaper depicted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his underwear

Turkey has threatened “legal and diplomatic” action against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after it published a caricature of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on its latest front page.

The drawing described as “disgusting” by the Turkish leader and Ankara’s announcement that prosecutors have launched an official investigation into the publication have worsened already heightened tensions between the two countries.

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Protests grow across Muslim world against French president Emmanuel Macron – video report

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Demonstrations are growing across the Muslim world against the French president Emmanuel Macron and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad.

In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, about 40,000 people were involved in a demonstration organised by the country’s largest Islamist party, while protests took place in Pakistan, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan.

French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of Muhammad in September, before the trial of 14 people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack against the publication’s offices in 2015 for publishing the same caricatures.

Macron has defended the publication, pledged to fight ‘Islamist separatists’ and said his country ‘would not give up cartoons’

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Anger towards Emmanuel Macron grows in Muslim world

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Protests take place in several countries against French president in aftermath of crackdown

On the front page of a hardline Iranian newspaper, he was the “Demon of Paris”. In the streets of Dhaka he was decried as a leader who “worships Satan”. Outside Baghdad’s French embassy, a likeness of Emmanuel Macron was burned along with France’s flag.

Rage is growing across the Muslim world at the French president and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, leading to calls for boycotts of the French products and security warnings for France’s citizens in majority-Muslim states.

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Muslim backlash against Macron gathers pace after police raids

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Iran calls Paris’s response to teacher’s killing ‘unwise’ amid protests across Muslim world

The backlash against Emmanuel Macron following his insistence that publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad is fundamental to freedom of speech has spread, with angry international protests, cyber-attacks against French websites and warnings that the president’s response is “unwise”.

Muslims in France – and elsewhere – are also furious at what they claim is a heavy-handed government clampdown on their communities in the wake of the killing 11 days ago of the high school teacher Samuel Paty.

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Macron’s clash with Islam sends jolt through France’s long debate about secularism

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President has become a hate figure in Islamic world over response to death of Samuel Paty

On 6 October, when Samuel Paty, a popular history and geography teacher at a school in a quiet Paris suburb, presented a copy of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that provoked the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine five years ago, he self-evidently had no idea of the tragic consequence for his own life, French society or France’s relations with the Islamic world. What was intended as a classroom exploration of the freedom of thought has turned into a mini-clash of civilisations.

Ten days later, Paty was killed, allegedly by a Russian-born teenager of Chechen heritage, sending an electric shock into France’s long debate about secularism, or laïcité. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, responded by saying France would not “renounce the caricatures”.

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France urges end to boycott of French goods as Macron defends Muhammad cartoons

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Calls for boycott of French goods after president’s remarks at tribute to murdered teacher Samuel Paty

France has appealed for foreign governments to stamp out calls by what it calls a “radical minority” for a boycott of French products after Emmanuel Macron’s public backing of the Muhammad caricatures.

The appeal came as anger escalated across the Islamic world over the president’s remarks at a national tribute to the murdered high-school teacher Samuel Paty last week, with Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling on Monday for a complete boycott of French products in Turkey.

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Turkey’s Erdoğan questions Macron’s mental state – video

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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart needed mental health treatment, the latest sign of a growing backlash in the Islamic world sparked by Macron’s claim that Islam is in crisis.

Ankara has been particularly incensed by a campaign championed by Macron to protect France’s secular values against radical Islam, a debate given fresh impetus by the murder of a teacher who showed his class a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad

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