France: Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, The official "face" of the new French government.

France: Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, The official "face" of the new French government.

Via The Independent:

Thirty years ago, a four-year-old Moroccan girl emigrated to France to join her father. Yesterday, she became the official "face" of the new French government.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, 34, is the youngest member of the cabinet which assembled yesterday under the chairmanship of President François Hollande. She is the Minister for Women's Affairs and will be the official spokeswoman for the government and, therefore, the mouthpiece for "Hollandism".

(...)

A married mother of twins, Ms Vallaud-Belkacem is a "non-practising Muslim". After winning scholarships to elite colleges, she calls herself a "pure product of the [egalitarianism] of the [French] Republic". She insisted yesterday, however, that she wanted to be judged on her abilities, not on her "triple symbolism" as a young female of North African origin.

(source)

READ MORE - France: Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, The official "face" of the new French government.

UK: Leicester, Ealing's first Muslim mayors

UK: Leicester, Ealing's first Muslim mayors

 Via OnIslam (h/t Islam in Britain):

An Indian-origin Muslim councilor Abdul Razak Osman has been sworn in as the first ever Muslim mayor in the multi-cultural town of Leicester, the post seen as a challenge as Britain prepares for the Olympic Games.

(...)

“I'm proud to be the first Muslim councilor to hold the position – we've had Christian, Hindu, Sikh and now I'm able to bring the Islamic faith to the office which is a great honor," Osman added.

(source)

Via Ealing Gazette:

ONE of the first Pakistanis to set up shop in Southall became Ealing’s first Muslim mayor this week.

Councillor Mohammad Aslam was hailed by colleagues across the political spectrum in a rare show of unity at Ealing Town Hall on Tuesday night.

The Southall businessman and Norwood Green councillor said he always dreamed of becoming mayor and was ‘excited’ to finally take up his robes and chains. 

 (source)

READ MORE - UK: Leicester, Ealing's first Muslim mayors

France: Hollande's Algerian advisers

France: Hollande's Algerian advisers

Via The North Africa Journal:

In Rabat, the Moroccan government showed no significant worries as François Hollande was declared the winner of the Presidential race. However, we picked up some signs of concerns as usually Morocco finds a more open-door policy among France’s right wing leaders and lot less accommodating Socialists.

(...)

Also a point of concern for the Moroccans is the people who surround François Hollande, in particular his high-powered political adviser Faouzi Lamdaoui, a native of the eastern Algerian city of Constantine. Read this associated analysis on the “Rise of North Africans in French Politics.” 

Another person to watch in the Hollande circles is Kader Arif, a Member of the European Parliament for the south-west of France. He is a member of the Holland’s Socialist Party and sits on the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade. A third source of influence is the young Razzy Hammadi who presided over the Movement of Socialist Youth, before becoming a national secretary of the Socialist Party in November 2008.

Former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius is also an “Algerianist” who is likely to direct the new administration in favor of Algeria.

The Moroccans are not left without their strong cards too. In addition to leveraging their friendship with Martine Aubry, the Moroccans will count on a bi-national, French Socialist militant Najat Vallaud-Belkacem to play a counter weight to the Algerianists. 

(source)

READ MORE - France: Hollande's Algerian advisers

Belgium: 1.3 million immigrant voters

Belgium: 1.3 million immigrant voters

Via Knack:

According to sociologist Jan Hertogen, about 1.3 million immigrants will participate in the next municipal elections.  They are required by law to vote because they were naturalized (1.1. million) or because they signed up for the elections (0.2 million).  In total they make up 16.7% of the voters: 9.8% in Flanders, 18.1% in Wallonia and 62.3% in the Brussels Region.  In Antwerp they make up 36.3% of the voters, in Ghent 25.8% and in Mechelen 22.8%.

89.2% of Turks are obligated to vote, as well as 88.4% of Moroccans, 75.4% of Italians, 56.2% of French immigrants and 47.8% of Dutch immigrants.

Of the 575,000 foreigners who will not participate in the elections: 100,000 are from outside the EU and about 475,000 are from the EU.

READ MORE - Belgium: 1.3 million immigrant voters

France: 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande

France: 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande

Via La Vie:

According to a poll by OpinionWay and Fiducial for Le Figaro, 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande.  7% voted for Sarkozy.  The poll was conducted May 6th among 1000 voters.

According to the polling agency, there are about 2 million Muslim voters.  59% of Muslims voted for Hollande in the first round.  23% voted for  Jean-Luc Melenchon (Left Front) and 7% voted for François Bayrou (Democratic Movement).  Sarkozy got 4% of the Muslim vote in the first round.

READ MORE - France: 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande

France: Islam in election debate

France: Islam in election debate


Hollande: No special treatment for Muslims

Mr Hollande, meanwhile, took a similar position to Mr Sarkozy when it came to special treatment for France's large Muslim community.

He said he would not allow separate menus in public cafeterias or separate hours in swimming pools for men and women to satisfy Muslims' demands, and also said he would firmly support France's ban on the face-covering Islamic veils.

(source)

Sarkozy: There must be an Islam "of" France and not an Islam "in" France

Sarkozy's first mention of Islam comes during a row over the left's plans to give the right to vote to non-European foreigners in municipal elections

Why do you think that non-Europeans are Muslims? Why do you say that? Why do you say people who aren't European are Muslim? asks Hollande.

Sarkozy says the right to vote for foreigners, doesn't mean Canadians, or Norwegians, but North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans, Algerians...

You're making a link with a religious identity, says Hollande.

Sarkozy warns against tribalism, citing Islam, accuses Hollande of ignoring the "reality" of the high-rise estates. He says there must be an Islam "of" France and not an Islam "in" France. Sarkozy vaunts his own ban on the niqab in France.

(source)

READ MORE - France: Islam in election debate

London: Muslim voters in fraud row 'forgot how they signed registration forms'

London: Muslim voters in fraud row 'forgot how they signed registration forms'

Via the Evening Standard:

A senior official at Tower Hamlets has rejected allegations of postal vote fraud — claiming Muslim voters simply forgot how they signed registration forms.

Isabella Freeman, borough legal chief, spoke in a bid to explain a spike in rejected ballots following a by-election. The Met has launched an investigation into claims of voter fraud.

Today the £120,000-a-year monitoring officer was accused of failing to “face up to reality” and accept voter fraud is on her doorstep — ahead of tomorrow’s London-wide elections for the next Mayor and the 25-seat London Assembly. Asked about an increase in rejected postal votes from 10 per cent to 14 per cent, Ms Freeman said this was because “voters have forgotten how they signed the registered application in the first place ... this is not unusual in relation to Muslim voters.”

The council would not comment on whether she was referring to language problems, or the use of different surnames within the local community.

(source)

READ MORE - London: Muslim voters in fraud row 'forgot how they signed registration forms'

Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign

Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign

('Freedom, not Islam')

Via the Local:

A far-right party on the campaign trial in Germany's most populous state is threatening to put caricatures of Mohammed outside mosques in a string of cities, prompting fears of violence.

The "Pro NRW" party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia has already shown anti-Islamic caricatures in Essen and Gelsenkirchen, though the police prevented demonstrations taking place directly outside mosques.

(...)

Interior Minister in state Ralf Jäger condemned the campaign and expressed support for planned counter-demonstrations. "Pro NRW is committing spiritual arson," he told the paper.

"The party is consciously taking into account that Muslims will feel provoked and upset. The authorities will exhaust all legal avenues to prevent a xenophobic hate campaign."

(source)

READ MORE - Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign

Bosnia: Srebrenica Muslim refugees not given right to vote

Bosnia: Srebrenica Muslim refugees not given right to vote

The 'Mothers of Srebrenica' organization say that the city's Muslims will leave if the refugees won't be allowed to vote.


Via the Atlantic:

Six months from now, a municipal election will be held in this isolated mining town, the scene of the largest massacre in Europe since World War Two.

The town's current mayor, a 33 year-old Bosnian Muslim, says the election will hand Bosnian Serbs control of the town and complete the "ethnic cleansing," or removal, of all Muslims from eastern Bosnia. Serbs say it is democracy, plain and simple.

Seventeen years ago, Serb forces executed 8,100 Muslim men and boys here in the largest single mass killing of the war in Bosnia. The U.S. and its European allies - who had declared the town a U.N. protected "safe area" - stood by as the Serbs rampaged for days in the summer of 1995.

In local elections since then, a special exemption has been granted that allows Muslims who lived here before the war to vote in Srebrenica - even if they no longer reside here. This year, the country's High Representative - a foreign overseer with sweeping powers - plans to issue no such exemption. In a visit to the town this week, he called for Serb and Muslim politicians to compromise.

 (source)

READ MORE - Bosnia: Srebrenica Muslim refugees not given right to vote

France: 'I’m Arab, a Muslim, and I vote Marine Le Pen'

France: 'I’m Arab, a Muslim, and I vote Marine Le Pen'


Via France24:

If French Muslims are largely left-leaning in their voting preferences, there are exceptions. France24.com spoke to three French Muslims of Arab descent, all of whom vote for the far-right National Front party. Here are their testimonies.

Karima, policewoman: “Many of my colleagues of Arab descent vote far right, but don’t dare say so.”

A 33-year-old naturalised French citizen of Moroccan origin, Karima is a mother of three, married to a Frenchman. She arrived in France 15 years ago, and has a diploma in Computer Science from a French university. Now she works as a policewoman in Paris and declined to provide her last name.

Karima says she started becoming interested in the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the extreme-right National Front party, in 2002. That was almost a decade before Le Pen handed over the party leadership to his youngest daughter, Marine, in 2011. These days, Karima says she regularly attends party meetings and votes for National Front candidates whenever she can.

“My vote is an expression of my rejection of certain Muslim Arabs [in France], whom I personally consider ‘thugs’. They’ve destroyed French society. At least in the old days, they lived in the same suburbs,” said Karima, referring to the largely immigrant, impoverished “banlieues” of major French metropolises. “But for the last several years, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has done everything in his power to house them in nice neighbourhoods – like the 15th district, where I live.”

(source)

READ MORE - France: 'I’m Arab, a Muslim, and I vote Marine Le Pen'

France: Mosques accused of backing Hollande

France: Mosques accused of backing Hollande

Via the Local:

The rightwing UMP party has accused Socialists of courting the Muslim vote and alleges that mosques are calling for the faithful to vote for leftwing candidate Francois Hollande.

"I want to condemn the conniving and irresponsible attitude of the Socialist Party and its candidate after religious leaders belonging to a network of 700 mosques called on followers to vote for Francois Hollande," writes UMP lawmaker Eric Ciotti in a press release on Wednesday.

(...)

Muslim religious authorities in France however deny they have called on voters to support Hollande. In an interview with the newswire AFP, Abdallah Zekri, a leader of the French Council of Muslim Faith, says imams have called on followers to vote but have not given them instructions as to who they should vote for.

(source)

READ MORE - France: Mosques accused of backing Hollande

UK: PM launches campaign to target ‘aspirational’ ethnic minority voters

UK: PM launches campaign to target ‘aspirational’ ethnic minority voters

Via the Daily Mail:

The Prime Minister will today launch a major campaign to target ‘aspirational’ ethnic minority voters in the suburbs after warnings that he can’t win at the next election without them.

Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi has revealed the party aims to woo female and older Asian voters who share the party’s views but who have traditionally voted Labour.

She has told Conservative Cabinet ministers and MPs that they need to do more to win over non-white voters in key marginal constituencies.

They will be ordered to discuss core Tory values – hard work, good schools, the perils of welfare dependency – rather than ‘pandering’ to received Left-wing wisdom that Asian voters are only concerned with state handouts and foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan.

(source)

READ MORE - UK: PM launches campaign to target ‘aspirational’ ethnic minority voters

Italy: President, Interior Minister visit Rome's Mosque

Italy: President, Interior Minister visit Rome's Mosque

(photo)

Via ANSAmed:

President Napolitano arrives with Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri and the Minister for Integration, Andrea Riccardi. And it is Riccardi's speech that puts the seal on a new pact of ''integration'' and living together. (...) Riccardi remarks how ''the mosque's dome fits in well with all the other church domes in Rome,'' making the capital city ''a model for integration between religions and cultures''.

''Integration arises from differences. Many predicted after the September 11 attacks that there would be a clash between the West and Islam. Ten years later, the Arab Spring has drawn a different scenario: reasons for living together and getting on have multiplied''. President Napolitano appreciated this reference to the Arab Spring.

(...)

Mohammad al Gramdi, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador and Chair of the Islamic Cultural Centre noted ''the tolerance and friendliness of Italian society''. ''The Islamic community is among the most genuine components of Italian society''. ''We hope to receive the support of the tax advantages that are offered to other faiths and cultures''.

The Imam of the mosque, Al'a al-Din Muhammad Isma'Il al Ghobashi, spoke of ''postive integration, which does not mean erasing one's roots''.

(source)

READ MORE - Italy: President, Interior Minister visit Rome's Mosque

Germany: Ministry caught in Muslim study leak lie

Germany: Ministry caught in Muslim study leak lie


Via the Local:

Germany’s Interior Minister was forced to admit on Friday that his ministry had leaked a controversial study on young Muslims in the country to populist Hans-Peter Friedrich and the tabloid newspaper both presented the study as showing that young Muslims were not integrating into German society – infuriating the authors who said their presentation was a gross distortion of what they actually said.

(source)

READ MORE - Germany: Ministry caught in Muslim study leak lie

France: Muslims 'likely to vote for far left'

France: Muslims 'likely to vote for far left'

Via Al-Jazeera:

Al Jazeera's Yasmine Ryan spoke with M'hammed Henniche, head of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis (UAM 93) [Fr], about how all the negative attention had affected Muslim voters in the run up to the first round of voting - to be held on Sunday, April 22.

(...)

YR: During her campaign, Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate, has used the term "Islamoleftism". Do you think the feeling that, as you say, so many Muslims seem likely to vote for the left lends some truth to her generalisation?

MH: The left, especially the Communists and the Greens, and to an extent, the Socialists, have understood that there are votes to be won amongst Muslims. During [former UMP President] Jacques Chirac's era, there was a sizable percentage, as high as 20 per cent [of French Muslims], who voted for the right.

With Sarkozy, especially as he has moved further to the right, many of these voters have abandoned the UMP. The left has won a lot of support [from Muslim voters] for its stance on Palestine. Melenchon and Joly have courted this vote and could be described as Islamophiles.

It's true what Marine Le Pen is saying, that there is an alliance between Muslims and the left. But this alliance has been created by the right, who have pushed Muslims to the left.

(source)

READ MORE - France: Muslims 'likely to vote for far left'

France: ‘Fed up’ Muslims mobilize to unseat Sarkozy

France: ‘Fed up’ Muslims mobilize to unseat Sarkozy

Via the Washington Times:

France’s Muslim community is mobilizing voters to reject President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s election to punish the conservative leader for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam rhetoric.

“[French] Muslims can’t stand it anymore. They are fed up with these debates about national identity, halal meat, the veil or fundamentalism all over the place,” said Francoise Lorcerie, a sociologist with the Institute of Studies on the Arab and Muslim World near Marseille.

“The terms [Islam, immigration and fundamentalism] are being used interchangeably, without care, with people being targeted, denigrated and used for [votes].”

(source)

READ MORE - France: ‘Fed up’ Muslims mobilize to unseat Sarkozy

Scotland: Muslim leaders urge community not to vote for same sex marriage supporters

Scotland: Muslim leaders urge community not to vote for same sex marriage supporters

Vis STV:

Muslim religious leaders are urging people in their community not to vote for any candidate who supports same-sex marriage in the upcoming council election.

The Council of Glasgow Imams issued a "resolution opposing same-sex marriage" at the city's Central Mosque on Wednesday, which said the proposed legislation was an "attack" on their faith and fundamental beliefs.

(source)

READ MORE - Scotland: Muslim leaders urge community not to vote for same sex marriage supporters

UK: Lord Ahmed suspended after 'offering £10m bounty on Barack Obama and George Bush'

UK: Lord Ahmed suspended after 'offering £10m bounty on Barack Obama and George Bush'

Via the Telegraph:

A controversial British peer has been suspended from the Labour Party amid reports that he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama and his predecessor President George W Bush.

(...)

Lord Ahmed firmly denied offering a bounty, but said he had told the meeting that Mr Bush and former-Labour prime minister Tony Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes.

Speaking from Pakistan to the Press Association he challenged the Labour Party to provide evidence for the suspension.

He said: "They have suspended me? That's a surprise to me. I did not know.

"I never said those words. I did not offer a bounty. I said that there have been war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan and those people who have got strong allegations against them - George W Bush and Tony Blair - have been involved in illegal wars and should be brought to justice.

"I do not think there's anything wrong with that. If the Labour Party want to suspend me I will deal with the Labour Party. They will have to give me some evidence."

(source)

READ MORE - UK: Lord Ahmed suspended after 'offering £10m bounty on Barack Obama and George Bush'

Belgrade: Mufti comments on colleague's presidential bid

Belgrade: Mufti comments on colleague's presidential bid

Via B92:

Mufti of Belgrade Muhamed Jusufspahić says Mufti Muamer Zukorlić's decision to take part in the presidential election showed that ours is "a free country".

(...)

"Is it normal for someone who urges civil disobedience to be a presidential candidate? Will we have candidatures from bishops and rabbis next?," Jusufspahić stated, but noted that these were "issues of lesser importance that must be answered by the state, rather than by a mufti".

"To me, the essential issue is - who am I supposed to complain to over the abuse of faith and cloth? On the other hand, former Evangelical pastor Joachim Gauck recently became president in Germany, and Germany is not a poorly ordered country," said Jusufspahić.

(source)

READ MORE - Belgrade: Mufti comments on colleague's presidential bid

Serbia: Mufti to run in presidential race

Serbia: Mufti to run in presidential race

Via B92:

Islamic Community in Serbia Chief Mufti Muamer Zukorlić announced on Saturday that he will run in the upcoming presidential elections.

“My candidacy is based on conviction that the state and the society are on the verge of a precipice and I will offer an authentic salvation program which will be acceptable for all Serbian citizens,” he told a press conference in Novi Pazar.

(source)

READ MORE - Serbia: Mufti to run in presidential race