(Local) The number of requests for asylum in Switzerland was down nearly a fifth in the first nine months of 2018 and at its lowest level since 2010. A total of 11,484 people requested asylum in the country from January to June, […]
(Economist) The word “Salafism” is often used loosely, especially in continental Europe. When the relationship between Islam and jihadist violence is discussed in, say, France or Germany, the assumption is often made that the problem begins and ends with the Salafis — […]
(Local) A Swiss court has handed eight men suspended sentences of up to 18 months for their role in a 2016 attack in which two worshippers at a controversial mosque in Winterthur were beaten, locked up and threatened with death over suspicions […]
(AFP) French police cleared 1,800 migrants from a makeshift camp near Dunkirk on Tuesday, hoping to deter people-traffickers seeking to smuggle them across the Channel to Britain. Hundreds of police flooded the Grande-Synthe camp at dawn to expel the migrants, most of […]
(BBC) Jailed Islamist Fouad Belkacem, whose group Sharia4Belgium sent dozens of jihadists to Syria, has been stripped of his Belgian citizenship and faces deportation to Morocco. The appeal court in Antwerp ruled that he had fallen seriously short of his duties as […]
(AFP) Spain sent 55 migrants back to Morocco on Monday a day after they forced their way into the Spanish territory of Melilla during an assault on the border in which two migrants died and 19 were injured. A total of 208 […]
(AFP) Leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, charged with raping two women in France, claimed Monday that he had consensual sex with both of them after previously denying any physical contact. Ramadan, a well-known TV commentator, has strongly denied accusations that he raped […]
(Deutsche Welle) Thousands of people turned out on Sunday in the eastern German city of Dresden in defiance of a fourth-anniversary rally by the anti-immigrant PEGIDA movement. The far-right group’s march through the city took place at the same time and attracted […]
(BBC) Radical preacher Anjem Choudary has had his assets frozen, days before he is due to leave prison. The 51-year-old, who was jailed for five-and-a-half years for inviting support for the Islamic State group, is expected to be released on Friday. The […]
(ANSA) A 37-year-old Tunisian expelled in February who returned on a migrant boat and was intercepted on October 8 was deported for terror reasons Friday, the interior ministry said. He was deported because he is considered a “danger to state security,” the […]
(JTA) A public broadcaster in the Netherlands aired and then took offline an animation series featuring jokes about the Holocaust and suggestions that Jews persecute Palestinians. The jokes appeared in a 10-minute animation clip parodying “South Park,” the popular American series. “Mocro Park” […]
(ANSA) Italian authorities said Thursday that they had started monitoring schools for the risk of jihadi recruitment. According to anti-terror investigators, the young are among the “vulnerable individuals most exposed to the risks of radicalisation.” Intelligence services were [said] to be in […]
(Montreal Gazette) Four years after staging protests against the Parti Québécois’s proposed charter of values, teachers at Westmount High School are planning to rally against the Coalition Avenir Québec plan to bar public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. […]
(Local) A crowdfunding campaign has raised €60,000 to help pay for school lunches for pupils in the northern Italian city of Lodi, where the mayor recently moved to make it difficult for the children of foreign parents to qualify for subsidised meals. […]
(Arab American News) With less than a month until the 2018 midterm elections, the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) released a “California Voter Guide,” which offers resources to assist California Muslims and allies as they prepare to vote […]
(Yle) Finland has started tallying births by circumcised mothers as the medical community is increasingly dealing with delivery complications caused by female genital mutilation, FGM. Päivi Polo, who heads the women’s clinic at Turku University Hospital, told Yle she sees 1-2 circumcised […]
(AFP) Italy’s interior ministry ordered Saturday that all migrants be transferred out of a tiny southern town that had welcomed them but which triggered a national debate on integration after its mayor was arrested. Domenico Lucano, the left-leaning mayor of Riace, made […]
(Deutsche Welle) Germany’s Interior Ministry announced on Friday that it will extend migration controls at borders with Austria and Denmark, which were reintroduced in several parts of the normally passport-free Schengen area after the European migrant crisis of 2015. The extension is […]
(Swiss Info) Canton Ticino must make more exceptions to its ban on wearing face-covering headgear in public places, the Federal Court has ruled. This ruling came in response to two appeals against the controversial Ticino ban, which was voted in 2013. In […]
(Dutch News) Local councils, the police and the security services are monitoring the activities of at least 160 radical Muslims in the Netherlands, the Volkskrant reported on Thursday. Top of the list is Amsterdam, with 59 suspects under surveillance, followed by The […]
(Local) A 39-year-old man from Aalborg must pay fines totalling 4,000 kroner for posting hate speech on his Facebook page in October 2017. The man was found to have written “macabre and threatening words against Muslims,” local media Nordjyske reports. The man […]
(LBC) Maajid Nawaz has criticised Marks and Spencer for selling school uniform hijabs for children as young as three. The LBC presenter labelled the store’s decision to sell the headscarf, which is listed in the “essential” school section, as “facilitating medievalism.” Maajid […]
(AFP) Norwegian police have formally accused several foreign nationals over a 1993 attack on the Norwegian publisher of “The Satanic Verses,” thus preventing the statute of limitations from closing the case. The National Criminal Investigation Service said Tuesday “foreign nationals who are […]
(ANSA) A burqa ban is set to come into force later this week at Trino near Vercelli. Burqa wearers will be fined 500 euros, said migrants municipal pointman Roberto Rosso. “The ordinance is aimed at the two or three women in Trino […]
(AFP) French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe urged far-right Italian leader Matteo Salvini on Monday to drop his “posturing” on immigration and help find a European response to the issue. Salvini, Italy’s powerful interior minister and deputy premier, has singled out French President […]
(AFP) Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini threatened Sunday to shut the country’s airports after media reported that Germany planned to send charter flights of rejected asylum-seekers to Italy. “If someone in Berlin or Brussels thinks of dropping dozens of migrants via […]
(Deutsche Welle) The small group founded Sunday in Wiesbaden by 19 Jewish members of the AfD would call itself Jews in the AfD (JAfD), said Wolfgang Fuhl, chairman of a southern German branch of the far-right anti-migrant party. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has […]
(Local) Denmark’s minister for immigration and integration Inger Støjberg was in Vienna on Thursday as the two countries presented their plan for reforms to the EU’s asylum system. Austria and Denmark plan to launch a pilot project establishing a deportation centre based […]
(BBC) A 25-year-old man who slapped a French woman earlier this year has been sentenced to six months in prison. Marie Laguerre said the man lashed out at her after she told him to stop harassing her on a Paris street. Her […]
(JTA) A leader of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats party submitted a draft motion calling for a ban on nonmedical circumcision of boys, which the text defined as “backward” child abuse. Sweden Democrats Secretary Richard Jomshof on Wednesday submitted the draft for […]
(AFP) A gangster who made a Hollywood-style helicopter prison break was nabbed in northern France, charged and returned to jail Wednesday, a judicial source said, after three months on the run, at times wearing a burqa as a disguise. Notorious French robber […]
(Swiss Info) Businessman and activist Rachid Nekkaz has said he will pay the fines that burka-wearing Muslims in St Gallen incur for breaking the canton’s recent ban on facial coverings in public. Nekkaz arrived in St Gallen’s capital city of the same name on Wednesday, […]
(IPT) One of our staffers made a mistake on social media Monday involving the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). When CAIR pointed it out, he acknowledged the error and deleted the inaccurate post. But that wasn’t good enough. CAIR likened his position […]
(AFP) About 200 police raided the headquarters in northern France of a Shiite Islamic association and the homes of its leaders who are suspected of supporting “terrorist organisations,” security sources said. The operation against the Zahra Centre France in Grande Synthe, a […]
(Local) The government has allocated 140 million kroner over the next four years to programmes aimed at increasing employment levels amongst women who have migrated to Denmark. The aim of the investment is to bring more women from non-Western countries onto the […]
(JTA) Prosecutors in France have launched an investigation for incitement against a senior Muslim cleric from Toulouse who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction. On Tuesday, the Toulouse prosecutor’s office opened the probe against Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the […]
(AFP) Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Thursday called for all Tunisians who are in his country illegally to be repatriated and for illicit migration to be “blocked,” during a visit to Tunis. The hardline Italian minister spoke following a meeting with […]
(JTA) The Wiesenthal Center has called on governments in the Americas scheduled to host a 10-member delegation from an Islamic political organization to cancel the programs and deny entry to its members, citing their alleged terrorist ties. Abdur Razzaq, deputy secretary-general of […]
(Local) A petition demanding parliament consider implementing a ban on circumcising boys under 18 is set to be considered by parliament. The petition reached in June the 50,000 signatures required to force parliament to take up the issue. Parliament’s justice administration (Lovsekretariat) […]
(Yle) The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) warns that more than 200 convicts jailed for terrorism crimes will be freed from Western European prisons within the next few years. “While in prison, these people may not necessarily have changed the way they […]
(Al-Arabiya) Rape-accused Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan’s request for release has been rejected by a French court for a third time after new evidence against his defense came to light, according to information revealed by the Muslim Post and confirmed by AFP. The […]
(IPT) When police officers in America shoot unarmed black people, Jewish hands lurk in the background. So says Linda Sarsour, perhaps the most visible Muslim political advocate in the United States — a co-chair of the national Women’s March and a campaign […]
(AFP) A French rapper known for his provocative pro-Muslim lyrics said Friday that he would cancel two upcoming concerts at the Bataclan, where 90 people were shot dead when jihadist gunmen stormed the venue during the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris. […]
(JTA) A Dutch Muslim politician who has prayed for Allah to “exterminate the Zionists” said that a day of fasting on Yom Kippur will not suffice to atone for Israel’s sins. Arnoud van Doorn, a lawmaker of the Hague’s city council for […]
(AFP) Germany wants a stronger EU border agency to handle migration to Europe, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Thursday while judging “unsatisfactory” the squalid living conditions for thousands of migrants in Greece. Maas said he was favourable “to proposals on strengthening Frontex” […]
(Local) The new contract for public service broadcasting between the Danish Ministry of Culture and broadcaster DR emphasises the importance of Christianity, while the word “integration” has been removed. The contract, which was published on the ministry’s website yesterday as DR announced […]
(AP) Police in Austria are on the lookout for a tall man who robbed a bank disguised with a latex mask, glasses, bright red lipstick and an Islamic-style headscarf. Vienna police said Wednesday the suspect robbed a bank in Linz at the […]
(Deutsche Welle) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will officially open a new central mosque in the western German city of Cologne, the Turkish-Islamic organization DITIB confirmed on Tuesday evening. Erdogan will open the mosque at a ceremony at the end of his […]
(AFP) The EU must convince Italy, Spain and Greece to back a plan to bolster the bloc’s external borders, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Wednesday as bloc leaders met in Salzburg to discuss the controversial issue of migration. EU Commission chief Jean-Claude […]
(KCAL) A Muslim woman suspected of committing crimes in Monrovia had a message for the police officers who confronted and questioned her, and her response isn’t what most people would expect. For Esma Ali, she said she had to thank the Monrovia […]
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