A new Swiss study has found that some Muslim women have more say in their communities than many Christian or Jewish women.
Researchers from the National Science Foundation wanted to know which women had the option of taking on leadership roles within their religious communities.
Refugee return to Muslim villages where vicious ethnic 'cleansing' occurred in the Bosnian Serb area of Zvornik was once hailed as a post-war success story but, twenty years on, life is petering out.
Many of the returnees have left again for lack of work and use their rebuilt houses as holiday homes, leaving only the elderly to sit out their old age on their native land.(source)
A step forward has been taken to unify the Italian Islamic community. It's also a move towards picking up once again the dialogue with the State and work towards signing an agreement document. After a long planning period, the first Italian Islamic Confederation is born, unifying 250 mosques all over the nation and who have chosen to share common values. The Italian Islamic Culture Centre and great mosque of Rome have wanted and worked on this project since 2009 - as also its Secretary General, Abdellah Redouane.
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In Belgium, more than 2000 people joined a “white march” on Sunday in memory of the Imam who died during a recent arson attack on a Brussels mosque. (source)
An initiative to create a democratically elected body representing Switzerland’s 400,000 Muslims, a so-called “Swiss umma”, is steadily gaining ground.
The organisers say the parliament could be up and running by next year. But certain critics question whether the Muslim body will see the light of day or actually makes sense.
“Our goal is to create a legitimate democratic believers’ community that represents all of Switzerland’s Muslims,” Farhad Afshar, president of the Coordination of Islamic Organisations of Switzerland (KIOS), told swissinfo.ch.(source)
Experts from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have recommended the establishment of an umbrella organisation for all Swiss Muslims.
In their report, seen by the Swiss News Agency on Tuesday, three OSCE experts who visited Switzerland in November warned that intolerance and discrimination against Muslims had increased since 2001, and were being exploited by “the extreme right and populist parties”.
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Via Interfax:
Federal Security Service officials have submitted to the Prosecutor General's Office materials stating that several high-ranking officials from the Interior Ministry's Main Department for the Prevention of Extremism extorted a large amount of money from a Moscow Muslim community, Kommersant daily reports.
"The Federal Security Service officers obtained information that a major extortion incident had occurred in the Moscow Lefortovsky market before the New year holidays. According to that information, a group of police officers went to the market under the pretext of an inspection, suspended the market's operation and demanded 1 million rubles from traders for permission to resume work," Kommersant writes.(...)
According to Kommersant, the police said they were checking reports stating that there was an illegal extremist center disguised as a prayer room at the market, which was visited by Muslim traders and Tajik workers from nearby construction sites.
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Imams at British mosques have let down a generation of young Muslims by failing to reach young people who sometimes end up in prison, Ibrahim Mogra, chair of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said.
Following the publication of a report showing that the number of Muslims in British prisons has rocketed over the last 20 years, Mogra told ENInews in an interview on 11 January that most Muslim clergy and mosques have finally realized that in houses of worship they are preaching only to the converted.
"They are now taking their message out to the youth," he said, "and this is excellent. The cocktail of issues facing young people today -- broken homes, difficulties with arranged marriages, drugs, the absence of male role models -- requires a unified effort. I am convinced that more and more imams and mosques will rise up and join that effort."(source)
Worshippers at synagogue and mosque to work together for homeless charity on Mitzvah Day
WORSHIPPERS at a synagogue and a mosque will join forces to encourage shoppers to donate items at a superstore in Palmers Green for a homeless charity on Mitzvah Day.
Members of the North London Reform Synagogue (Sha'arei Tsedek), in Oakleigh Road North, Whetstone, will join people from Palmers Green Mosque, in Oakthorpe Road, for the event outside Morrisons, in Aldermans Hill, Palmers Green, on Sunday, November 20.
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Last weekend’s protest in Bern against Islamophobia created quite a controversy. Some critics said the event provided a mouthpiece for more radical Muslims in Switzerland. Some more moderate Muslim organisations say they plan to organise a seminar next year to bring together experts, politicians and leaders from the country’s Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths. But is a high-level discussion the best way for moderate Islam to make sure its voice is heard in Switzerland? WRS’s Dave Goodman talks to Saïda Keller-Messahli, founder of the Forum for a Progressive Islam and Lucia Dahlab, vice-president of the Union of Muslim Organisations of Geneva
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