Europe struggles to accommodate its growing Muslim minority
A French court this month upheld a weekly magazine’s right to reprint a Danish cartoon of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. At the same time, it affirmed a lower court’s finding that the image, published two years ago, could be “shocking, even hurtful” to devout Muslims.
The split decision illustrates how France - like the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany - is struggling to accommodate its growing Muslim minority without sacrificing principles like separation of church and state and free speech, which form the heart of a cultural identity forged by Voltaire and other 18th-century philosophers.
“Europeans have to get used to living with people in their midst who have sensibilities that weren’t there before,” says Ian Buruma, author of “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance” and a professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. “If you’re going to live in mixed societies, certain rules of civility have to be taken seriously.”
That civility is being sorely tested across the region.
Full article: International Herald Tribune, 26 March 2008
