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Tahrir Square meme: Event
openAwakening in conjunction with the University of East London is organizing a three-part event series on ‘The Tahrir Square Meme’ to be held at UEL's Dockland Campus.
Our first event is Rap and the Arab Spring.
The Long Revolution
The Long and the Quick of revolution Anthony Barnett
We live in revolutionary times... but what does this mean? Anthony Barnett
The precariat: why it needs deliberative democracy Guy Standing
The Long Revolution Raymond Williams
Occupy movement
Our Authors
Jim Gabour Sunday Comics
James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do
Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
Paul Rogers on Global security
Li Datong on China from the inside
Mary Kaldor on Human security
Daniele Archibugi on Cosmopolitan democracy
For England's Sake!
Book - Fred Halliday's oD essays
The Drugs Policy Forum
Postcards from the future
Demotix: photo partner
Is this another case of Europeans and Muslim-Europeans engaging in mutual antagonism?
I just read this story this morning, and I have a few questions about it.
First of all, why is it necessary to have minarets on these mosques? Are they actually going to be used to call the faithful to prayer, or is it just for architectual accuracy? I have seen scores of mosques in America, but have never seen any with minarets as they would be generally useless for their intended purpose when the neighbors are overwhelmingly non-Muslim.
Secondly, it doesn't appear that the Swiss have an issue with the building of mosques, but just the minarets. Why then are some calling them "racist"? The Swiss are very aggressive when it comes to keeping their country postcard-perfect, so why should this be any surprise?
Switzerland is a democracy, and the people have decided that for whatever unknown reasons they would prefer not to have minarets in their midst. End of story. Assigning racist motivations to their decision seems quite unfair to the Swiss.
Am I missing something here?