Across Western Europe, a "Social Collision" Between Muslims and Non-Muslims

January 10, 2005

Source: U.S News & World Report

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/050110/usnews/10muslims.htm

On January 10, 2005 U.S News & World Report reported, "Across western Europe, religious leaders, educators, and policymakers describe a social collision between Muslims and non-Muslims. At its nucleus, they say, are radically different ideas about what constitutes religious extremism--and what is Islamophobia. Tensions have erupted into open hostility on the heels of several key events--from the debate over European Union membership for Turkey and the ban on head scarves in French schools to the commuter-train bombings in Madrid (linked to a Moroccan terrorist cell) and the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, allegedly by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim radical. Some 80 percent of Muslims polled in a recent survey of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, based in London, reported feeling harassed and discriminated against, up from 35 percent in 1999."