Month: March 2021

Germany: “No right to be spared from contact with Muslims” – Hesse state government decides that public calls of the muezzin do not need permission

According to the Hessian state government, muezzin calls are also possible without permission. “Contrary to the assumption of the questioners, Muslim calls to prayer, with or without loudspeakers, do not require a permit (under immission control law); permits have therefore not been issued and therefore cannot be withdrawn or revoked,” the CDU/CSU-green state government replied to a parliamentary question from the AfD parliamentary group.The reason given in the parliamentary reply was that the loudspeakers used for the Islamic call to prayer are installations that do not require a permit. The government does not have an overview of the municipalities in Hesse where the muezzin call is heard.The background to the question was, among other things, a ruling by the Münster Higher Administrative Court, which had decided in autumn that the Ditib congregation in the town of Oer-Erkenschwick may again call for prayers via loudspeakers. A resident had previously filed a complaint against the exemption granted by the city under immission control law and had been successful in the court at first instance.In its question, the AfD had complained that the Islamic call to prayer was “often met with massive disapproval from the non-Muslim population concerned, who see the muezzin call as an expression of Islamic claims to dominance and a violation of their own religious and cultural identity”.The opposition party also raised the question of whether the muezzin call does not constitute an interference in the sense of negative religious freedom. This is understood to mean the freedom not to have a faith or not to have to make a religious confession. The Hessian government, however, took a different view: “In a society that gives space to different beliefs, there is no right to be spared from contact with deviant expressions of faith or religious symbols, even under the aspect of so-called negative religious freedom.”The alien calls to prayer cause political debates again and again. The Green Party in Gelsenkirchen recently spoke out in favour of a public muezzin call and introduced a motion to this effect in the Council for Migration and Integration.

https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2021/muezzinrufe-hessen-genehmigung/

Conservatives at English-speaking universities: Discrimination and self-censorship

In the USA, Canada and Great Britain, a significant proportion of academics discriminate against conservatives in terms of promotions, grants and publications. This is the result of a study published on Monday by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), which is affiliated with Nottingham University.

Accordingly, more than four in ten US and Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter and one in three British academics would never help a Brexit supporter in obtaining a job.

At the same time, right-wing academics experienced “a high level of institutional authoritarianism and peer pressure”. In the United States, more than a third of conservative academics and PhD students have been threatened with disciplinary action because of their views. Some 70 percent of conservative academics complained that there was a “hostile climate” for their views at their university institute.

More than half of conservative researchers in North America and the UK admitted to self-censorship in research and teaching. The lack of diversity of opinion among teachers underpins the authoritarianism at universities, noted the study authors associated with the Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann. The highest approval rate for a dismissal campaign against allegedly controversial research colleagues can be found mainly among extreme-left academics.

The CSPI was founded in 2020 to aid the study of under-explored ideas in political psychology and the social sciences. “With the rise of populism, increasing polarization and identity-based movements around the world, there has rarely been a better time to examine these issues,” according to the website.

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/03/02/conservatives-at-english-speaking-universities-discrimination-and-self-censorship/