Denmark: DPP says Muslims are racist for sending children to private schools Via Fyens Stiftstidende (Danish): Alex Ahrendtsen, education spokesperson for the Danish People’s Party (DPP), said Muslim parents who send their children to private schools are ‘little racists’ Ahrendtsen was speaking to TV 2 NEWS, which reported that immigrant children go to private schools more than ethnic Danish children (14% of Danes vs.

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Switzerland: Tunisian sentenced to 8 years for trying to ransom children Via the Local : A 34-year-old father of two has been sentenced to eight years in prison after he kidnapped his six and seven-year-old sons, took them to Tunisia, and told their mother to pay him 170,000 francs ($182,000) if she wanted to get her children back. Janine Schoch, 30, said she had told Swiss authorities on several occasions that she was afraid her husband Issam would follow up on threats to kidnap her children, newspaper Blick reports

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Malmö: Funeral march against growing violence ( clip of the funeral march ) Via the Local : The arresting image of the grieving father of 15-year-old Ardiwan Diaa Samir, attempting to climb down into his dead son’s grave at the funeral on Wednesday, was a sombre reminder of the consequences of the escalating violence in southern Sweden.

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By Camilla Morrison In the early days of Islam, a few companions of the Prophet were fleeing persecution in Mecca and sought refuge in Abyssinia.

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Part I by Hira Amin Political From the political front unrest was found both in the provinces and in the elite Janissaries. The Janissaries, who comprised of young Christian boys being conscripted into the dervishme system, were trained to be officers, governors and soldiers

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Christmas and Muslims: Tradition vs. Religion I’ve been running behind with various stories, and so only now I’ve gotten around to some of the Christmas stories. While I was summarizing them up, I realized they all revolve around the same motif: Is Christmas a religious holiday or a traditional national-cultural holiday

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Denmark: Schools drop Christmas traditions out of consideration for Muslim students Via Jyllands-Posten (Danish): Schools are increasingly changing Christmas tradition in order to take into account a growing number of bilingual children. At the Klostervænget school in Copenhagen, the school administration changed a few verses in the ‘A Child is Born in Bethlehem’ hymn sung by the children because they thought it would be preaching too much to the bilingual children. At Møllevang school in Aarhus the school administration asked a music teacher to choose hymns that took into account the Muslim students, after students in a 3rd grade class and their parents protested that the children were expected to sing “Here come your little ones, Jesus”

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Brussels: Plans for first Muslim retirement home Via HLN (Dutch): Muslim theologian Abdelkader Dahmichi intends to open the first Muslim retirement home. The private home will be open for everyone and could be open in 2014, possibly in Molenbeek, according to a report in La Capitale. Dahmichi is concerned about the situation of elderly Muslims.

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Denmark: Immigrant families reject special-ed schools Via Avisen (Danish): In many immigrant families, parents object to their children being sent to special-ed schools. “We use many resources to convince them that their children can’t take part in regular classes. It’s a crack in the family’s pride, and often the parents decide in advance to change schools – typically to an ethnic private school,” Sabah El Tawil, a teacher at Rådmandsgade School (Copenhagen), told Jyllands-Posten

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Toulouse: School tagged with anti-Arab graffiti Via La Dépêche (French): A high-school in Toulous was tagged with racist and anti-Arab graffiti: “Arabs out of France”, “Arabs get lost” “Islam get out” (the latter in English) as well as Nazi symbols. Some parents said they had to explain the meaning of the symbols to their children. The Louis-Nicolas-Vauquelin school is located in the at-risk neighborhood of Mirail

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