Muslims Against Terrorism
The recent murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, has prompted a broad discussion about the immigration of minority groups in several European countries. In the wake of the killing, there has been a wave of anti-muslim attacks in the Netherlands, and German and French politicians fear that the violence could spread over their borders. For the first time in France, a country which has the biggest Muslim and the biggest Jewish community in Europe, representatives from both French Muslim and Jewish organisations have held talks on the difficulties faced by both communities and agreed upon common initiatives. In Germany where about three and a half million muslims live, more than twenty thousand people demonstrated in the western city of Cologne over the weekend against the use of violence in the name of Islam. Michael Katerla spoke to Ephraim Nimni, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales.