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RELIGION

Muslim students denied high school prayer slot

High school student Ibrahim El Kadi asked if he could pray while at school. “No,” said his principal.

Published: 18 November 2011 10:15 CET
Updated: 18 November 2011 15:18 CET

He asked for a quiet prayer area “for all religions” and was quoted the Education Ministry’s official line.

“No one has the legal right to religious practice during working hours, neither employees nor students.”

The denial compelled El Kadi and some 40 other students in “multicultural” Ulsrud High School to protest in mock prayer outside the school’s library. Now they pray in the bitter cold of a nearby parking lot.

The principal, for his part, said he had received complaints from students who felt “excluded” by the prayer. So, he told the Muslim students to leave and stop praying, although recess provided just enough time for prayer.

City schools committee councillor, Torger Ødegaard, told broadcaster NRK that quiet rooms for prayer are not a good idea.

“School is not a religious institution. School is a knowledge institution,” Ødegaard told NRK.

Meanwhile, El Kadi and the Oslo school’s Muslim students said they won’t relent until they have a prayer space.

“We’ll pray out here even if it snows,” said fellow student protester Aslihan Bozkurt.

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RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Published: 26 January 2023 15:10 CET
Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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