European Union

By Mayanthi Fernando | The Conversation Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims’ refusal to integrate. They’ve asked whether Muslims can be fully secular and expressed doubt as […]

Belgium

Top 7 Things to know about Belgium anti-terror Op that left 2 Dead

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) Belgian police launched a counter-terrorism operation on Thursday in the eastern city of Verviers (pop. 56,000) near the German border. Verviers is one of the towns in Belgium that has a large number of Muslims, with many of the young men in that community being unemployed. Belgium is a […]

Dissent

Learning from Paris: Are you Charlie Hebdo? (Juan on Radio w/ C. Lydon)

contributors

Christopher Lydon | Radio Open Source ” Learning from Paris The story of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo has gone everywhere in the past week: into meditations on free speech and blasphemy, into declarations of cultural and actual war, and high-wire geopolitics. It’s a fresh attack, meaning high emotion and demands for ‘moral clarity‘ — […]

France

Fox ‘News’ Schooled By French ‘Daily Show’ On Muslim ‘No-Go Zones’

contributors

AJ+ | — “The host of France’s “Le Petit Journal,” Yann Barthès, asked his audience to flood Fox News with claims about Parisian “no-go zones.” Since the Charlie Hebdo attack, several Fox guests have asserted that parts of England and France are Muslim-run, with non-Muslims and police not welcome. But Barthès did some fact-checking on […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

Will France intervene in Yemen after its al-Qaeda Claims Paris Attacks?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in south Yemen, claimed on Wednesday to have been behind the attacks in Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week. Said and Sharif Kouashi are known to have visited Yemen in 2011 for weapons training, assisted by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born terrorist later […]

Featured

In aftermath of Charlie Hebdo, German Chancellor Merkel says Islam Belongs to Germany

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) The thinly veiled hate group PEGIDA, which says it is against the “Islamization” of Germany (by which it means it wants German to be Muslimrein or purified of Muslims), staged a demonstration of 18,000 in the eastern city of Dresden on Monday, in the wake of the Paris terrorist […]

France

Determined to Protect Jewish Citizens, France to deploy thousands of Troops to “sensitive sites”

contributors

AFP | — “Members of the Jewish community in Paris remain rattled after an Islamist attack that left four people dead at a kosher supermarket. France has deployed thousands of troops across the country to guard Jewish schools and other sites.” AFP: “France to deploy thousands to protect Jewish, “sensitive sites” ”

France

Hezbollah’s Surprising Denunciation of Paris Attacks: is it Courting the West?

contributors

By Rola El-Husseini | (Special to Informed Comment) In a speech in Beirut on January 9, 2014, on the occasion of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah declared that killings and beheadings by “takfiris” (excommunicators) are more harmful to Islam than are cartoons or books mocking the Prophet. This was […]

European Union

After Paris attacks, could David Duke style Racist Parties Sweep to Power in Europe?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) — Anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia was already raging through Europe before the Kouashi al-Qaeda Cell targeted the staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli in Paris. Although President Francois Hollande insisted that the attacks had nothing to do with the religion of Islam (and rightly so), […]