It was bound to come to this clash between the civilisations, says writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in an interview with Orla Blog. She adds that, even though it may sound cynical after the attacks on Western diplomatic buildings, the conflict still offers a great opportunity. "Thanks to these cartoons, Islam could make the progress of centuries within just a few years. It's high time there was an uprising. Had the cartoons not been published, the discussion about the Prophet Muhammad would never have arisen. It's important to remember that Islam hasn't undergone all the reforms and adjustments which Christianity and Judaism have undergone over the past thousand years. On the contrary, Islam is stagnating. Its laws are geared towards tribal society. Now all Muslims in Denmark and Europe are being forced to reflect on what their attitude should be towards Muslim taboos that are incompatible with modern democratic society." (07/02/2006)

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"The Arabs and Muslims themselves are mainly responsible for the defamation of this religion and of the Prophet Muhammad's image, because they convey a distorted picture of this divine and immortal message and its revered prophet. We should all ask Mohammed for forgiveness for defacing his image," writes Arab author Baha al-Musawi, and asks: "Why don't we portray Muhammad as a devout, honourable and tolerant human being, instead of letting him be reduced to an image of Osama bin Laden, of a sword, of killing, of the Taliban, of beheadings and suicide? How can we permit the murder of the unbelievers when Mohammad honoured them? How can we oppress women when Mohammed revered them? How can we spill blood when Mohammed has forbidden it?" (07/02/2006)

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Irshad Manji, a Canadian and Visiting Fellow at Yale University, asks why people shouldn't be allowed to make jokes about Muslims. "We Muslims can't pretend to have the integrity to demand respect for our religion if we don't respect the religions of others. When have we ever demanded that Christians and Jews be allowed to set foot in Mecca? Only when they come for business reasons are they allowed to enter. As long as Rome continues to welcome non-Christians and Jerusalem welcomes non-Jews, we Muslims should be protesting against more than these cartoons." (07/02/2006)

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Tabish Khair, an author, english professor and self-professed "moderate Muslim" says he has remained silent on the cartoon controversy "because there is no space left for me either in Denmark or in many Muslim countries. ... Between the Danish government and Islamist politicians, between Jyllands-Posten and the mobs in Beirut ... The moderate Muslim has again been effectively silenced. She has been forced to take this side or that; forced to stay home and let others crusade for a cause dear to her - freedom - and a cultural heritage essential to her: Islam. On TV she sees the bearded mobs rampage and the clean-shaven white men preach. In the clash of civilisations that is being rigorously manufactured, she is in between. ... She cannot scream. Come to think of it, can she really express herself at all now?" (07/02/2006)

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Todos los textos disponible de » Tabish Khair

Abdennour Bidar, a philosophy professor in Nice, shares his views on "the profound democratic changes to Islam" in Europe brought about "by the daily reality of Muslims living there". "The shift is characterised by what I call a 'self-Islam', that is to say, a culture of autonomy and personal choice, thus a culture based on diversity and differentiated identity - an Islam of individuals, and not of the community! ... 'Self-Islam' is, in fact, the expression of a culture that has radically mutated beyond its original authoritarian form, and which has become democratised via a process through which each European Muslim, looking to his conscience, has appropriated the question his own identity. Let's acknowledge this change and adjust our understanding of European Islam by working to deconstruct this 'community' fantasy." (07/02/2006)

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The Milanese daily applauds the return of the writer Sebastiano Vassalli to the centre stage of the Italian literary scene with "The Death of Marx and other stories". The thesis of the novelist, who specialises in using historical themes to write about the contemporary world, is that "we live in an era in which the values of the French Revolution have been definitively lost. We are witnessing the bankruptcy of modernity and democracy. ... That which we today call democracy is the negation of man as an individual and a thinking subject. It is the apotheosis of the electoral man: the 'mass-man', the one-thought-fits-all man. It is government of numbers." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Filosofía, » Italia
Todos los textos disponible de » Paolo Di Stefano

After announcing that a new law on euthanasia was in the works, the Swiss Federal Council may soon backtrack, following a report from a ministerial working group that recommends refraining from passing legislation. Sylvie Arsever asks in an editorial "how long this political abstention will remain worth it. The emotions aroused by 'suicide tourism' have shown that a gulf can emerge between the actions of those who are most committed, and the general public's sensitivity. Moreover, applying practice to reality is today running up against limits that are impossible to overcome in the absence of a real democratic debate. ... The position of the DFJP [the working group] is reasonable. But it is not clear that it is the most opportune. And it is certainly not the most courageous." (07/02/2006)

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Tuesday, February 7 marks a day of protests in France against Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's new measure aimed at giving a boost to young people entering the workforce: the contract for first-time employment (CPE). This contract, spread over two years, gives employers the right to fire an employee without giving a justification. The editorial writer Philippe Reclus maintains that the CPE will break the rigidity of the French labour market, "because it is capable of symbolising a true rupture in the way one approaches the issue in France. For the future. Because it will allow us to say whether public opinion is ready to commit to a course of radical change - one which does not involve dumping the entire French social model in one fell swoop, but rather attempting, in a step-by-step manner, to remove the bolts that are barring access to the labour market." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Política interior, » Francia
Todos los textos disponible de » Philippe Reclus

A few days ago, opposition leader Viktor Orban said in a speech that he understood parents who didn't want to send their children to schools attended by Roma children. Laszlo Kallai, a civil rights activist for the Roma, protests in an open letter to Orban: "If the children of poor families or Roma families are forced to attend separate classes, they will receive a lower standard of education. Segregated schools have lower standards regardless of whether it's because of skin colour or their parents' social background that the children are separated from the rest of the children. Children in segregated schools have little opportunity to acquire the knowledge that will enable them to survive in a competitive society. They end up without jobs and become dependent on social welfare." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Sociedad, » Hungría
Todos los textos disponible de » Laszlo Kallai

Recent layoffs and media proprietors' growing preference for regional news coverage reflect "the increasingly parlous state of Scotland's news-gathering operations," Ruaridh Nicoll writes in the sunday paper. "Job cuts at the Scotsman. More cuts at the Herald. Swingeing cuts at Scottish Television. ... It was never meant to be like this in a devolved country. ... Journalism has long been an area where Scotland exports. Scots run publications that range from American supermarket tabloids to the Melbourne Age, to Granta and New York's super- fashionable Black Book. There are few London papers without graduates of the Scottish press at every level. ... A lack of aspiration in Scotland's media will be bad for devolution, but it will also mean the supply of such talent drying up." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Medios de comunicación, » Gran Bretaña
Todos los textos disponible de » Ruaridh Nicoll

Pavel Masa reports that Czech sculptor David Cerny is experiencing the consequences of the Mohammed cartoon dispute first hand. "For fear of the potential reaction of the Islamic world, the mayor of the Belgian city of Middelkerk has banned the exhibition of Cerny's sculpture 'Der Hai' ('The Shark'). The sculpture portrays former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a shark swimming in an aquarium." Masa says he can't understand the Mayor's decision. "By doing this he is showing that part of the West is willing to make great sacrifices in the face of Muslim violence." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Cultura, » La República Checa
Todos los textos disponible de » Pavel Masa

This year "Beszelö", the first and most important of the former underground newspapers, celebrates its 25th anniversary since it was founded in 1981. Editor Zoltan Adam describes the time as one of constant liberalisation and democratisation. "Founded in 1981, this Samisdat publication represented an alternative both at a political level and in everyday issues to the blunted awareness of a society which had been incapacitated by the totalitarian regime. Its writers were openly critical of the system and its editors published their real names and even their addresses and telephone numbers to assert their rights as free people. Nowadays, fortunately, such heroic deeds are no longer required. Society still sometimes shows itself to be immature in certain aspects, but being a free person is no longer construed as criticism of the system." (01/01/2006)

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Todos los textos disponible de » Zoltan Adam

Sergio Pitol, the Mexican writer and 2005 laureate of the prestigious Spanish literary award, the Cervantes Prize, confides in an interview that his latest book "El Mago de Vienne" (The Magus of Vienna) is the one he is most proud of, even if it achieves nothing but "reflections, approximations, stutterings in the quest for meaning and in the search for this narrow zone situated between darkness and light". He also evokes "the role of the book in society". In his view, "books allow a society to be more cultivated, more secular, more open." The author strikes an optimistic note on the future of literature and is not "afraid that it will become obsolete; the Internet does not pose a threat to the book." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Cultura, » España
Todos los textos disponible de » José Andrés Rojo

Starting a series about the situation of the German cinema industry, film producer Günter Rohrbach writes: "The sharpest drop in movie attendence is seen among the 12 to 25-year-olds. They're the most demanding of all moviegoers. They want the screen to explode; they want constant action; they want the films to display the whole range of special effects. This kind of movie, which costs millions to produce, is the sole province of the Americans, and that's why for young people cinema is synonymous with Hollywood." Rohrbach calls for the cinema industry to shift its focus back to adults. "This mainly concerns the movie theatres themselves. Over the past few decades, they were entirely adapted to the tastes of young audiences. Most adults don't feel comfortable in that coca-cola and popcorn atmosphere. If you want to win them back, you've got to roll out the red carpet." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Cultura, » Alemania
Todos los textos disponible de » Günter Rohrbach

"For the past two years, whenever a Genevan has vanished from sight the question one has asked is whether he might not have moved to the German capital. If the missing person is under 50 and has anything to do with any artistic scene, chances are you will find him over there," observes Nic Ulmi of the German capital's allure for Swiss of a creative bent. For the DJ and musician Water Lilly, interviewed by the daily, Berlin "is the magnet-city, like London a few years ago. Its appeal lies in its breeding-ground quality, its effervescence, especially in electronic music." Nor is the classical scene neglected, according to Hermann, the daily's cartoonist, who himself divides his life between Geneva and Berlin: "There are three times more plays than in Paris, for a smaller population." (07/02/2006)

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Más de la revista de prensa sobre el tema » Sociedad, » Alemania
Todos los textos disponible de » Nic Ulmi