On the eve of elections to the European Parliament, the Pew Research Center has published its latest report on public opinion in the EU. It is based on face-to-face and telephone surveys in seven countries: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.
A German religious forum took an unexpected turn yesterday when three topless protesters had to be dragged out of the building. The Berlin Islam Week event, held in one of the city’s town halls, was stopped in its tracks by members of extreme protest group Femen, who charged into the hall with slogans attacking “religious oppression” and Sharia law daubed on their bodies.
Photographs from the moment the women were dragged out by policemen show a bemused-looking woman filming the event on her phone as unimpressed guests look on. Other images show the three on stage during a discussion, where speakers were confronted with the messages written on their bodies and also on banners which they waved above their heads while shouting.
A German princess appeared in court yesterday accused of threatening to kill Muslims and calling police officers paedophiles at a posh Scots bash. Princess Theodora Sayn-Wittgenstein is also charged with shouting homophobic abuse and attacking fellow revellers and security staff at the exclusive event in St Andrews on Saturday.
The 27-year-old, whose mum is Swedish and whose dad is a German prince, was at the Oktoberfest party at Kinkell Farm with a host of drunken toffs from around the world. It is one of the highlights of the social calendar with students at the university where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge met and fell in love.
Sayn-Wittgenstein, from Bavaria, was arrested at the party and locked in a cell over the weekend before appearing from custody at Cupar Sheriff Court. Officers hustled her in through a back door with a coat over her head. It is understood they had to wait until a cell became free because court staff didn’t want her to share with other prisoners due to her background.
Die Freiheit leader Michael Stürzenberger addresses anti-mosque rally
The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on how two far-right political parties, Die Freiheit (Freedom) and Bürgerinitiative Ausländerstopp (Citizens’ Initiative to Stop Immigrants – BIA), led respectively by Michael Stürzenberger and Karl Richter, are competing for the anti-Muslim vote in the forthcoming local elections in Munich.
While both parties incite hatred of Muslims, the BIA is a more traditionally fascist organisation, being an offshoot of the neo-Nazi NPD, of which Richeter is vice-chairman, and as its name indicates it promotes a hardline anti-immigration line. Die Freiheit represents the newer manifestation of the far right, concentrating on denouncing Muslims specifically rather than migrants generally, while also adopting a pro-Israel stance that is rejected by neo-Nazis.
Stürzenberger is a regular contributor to the “counterjihadist” website Politically Incorrect. He has come to prominence through waging a fierce campaign against plans to build an Islamic centre in Munich.
Süddeutsche Zeitung anticipates that both parties will win seats on Munich city council.
Update: The results have been declared and Die Freiheit failed to gain any representation on Munich city council, though the BIA won a seat.
Across Germany, right-wing organizations are using anti-Islam rhetoric to further their ideas – and finding a receptive audience. Now legal experts are debating whether it’s time for a new kind of hate-crime legislation.
Der Spiegel reports that the rise of right-wing Islamophobic organisations like Die Freiheit, Pro Deutschland, Pax Europa, Nürnberg 2.0 and Politically Incorrect has been accompanied by arson and other attacks on mosques.
Via Loonwatch
When the call came into the Leipzig fire department late Thursday, it sounded routine: A small refuse fire in a dumpster.
But the location was a bit odd, on the site of what is planned as the first mosque to be built in the former East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And, when firefighters arrived, there was a small trash fire, but the situation next to that was anything but routine: Five severed pig heads, on stakes and driven into the future mosque’s ground, above a trough of what appeared to be pig blood.
A preliminary contract has been signed for Islam to be recognized as an official religion in Lower Saxony after Bremen and Hamburg provinces in Germany.
Lower Saxony Prime Minister Stephen Weil convened the representatives of Islamic institutions at the provincial guest-house to initiate the talks to accept Islam as an official religion.
A Berlin judge has banned a Muslim lawyer from wearing a headscarf in his courtroom stating she should show religious neutrality.
The lawyer, who has not been named, was told by a judge three times that she was not allowed to wear a headscarf in court, Berlin newspaper the Morgenpost reported on Tuesday. After the first two times, she replaced her scarf with a tight-fitting hairnet, and the third time she wore a scarf tied behind her head.
Reasoning behind the request was that lawyers should present themselves as “an organ of the legal system”. State sector workers are also supposed to show religious neutrality but criticis argue the lawyer is not a state worker so should not have to show religious neutrality.
If he asks her again, she has said she will place a complaint at the Berlin constitutional court, according to the paper.
In a study due to be released in full at the end of the year, economists at the University of Linz in Austria examined whether wearing a headscarf affected women when applying for jobs at German companies.
Initial results show that German firms appeared less inclined to invite an applicant for an interview if they were wearing a headscarf in their photo. This also applied, to a lesser extent, for applicants with a non-German surname.
In a new attack against German Muslims, a group of police officers targeted young Muslim worshippers after finishing their tarawih prayer last week, handcuffing and beating them severely. “We asked them for their names and papers, but they gave us no information,” Soufian D., one of the victims told Deutsch Türkisches Journal.
The incident dates back to last Wednesday when up to 15 Muslim youths of Turkish and Moroccan descent were subjected to excessive police force after leaving the tarawih prayer at a mosque in the city of Offenbach. The police officers who wanted to check the identification of the young Muslims acted in an aggressive manner and beat the youth after handcuffing them.