Free Republic

Study: Germans pessimistic on Islam By GEORGE CONGER German public opinion believes a clash of civilizations" is under way between Christians and Muslims that will lead to further domestic and international conflict, a report commissioned by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung finds. Germany is in the midst of "a conflict spiral," researchers from the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research reported last week. "Conceptions of Islam were already negative" but have hardened "noticeably in recent times," the survey's authors Elisabeth Noelle and Thomas Petersen reported. "Germans are increasingly of the opinion that a lasting, peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world will...

BRUSSELS: Angela Merkel reached out on Wednesday to the United States in her first foreign trip as German chancellor, saying it was time to heal the trans-Atlantic rift caused by Germany's opposition to the US-led war in Iraq.

BRITISH Muslims are to boycott this week’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz because they claim it is not racially inclusive and does not commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict. Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has written to Charles Clarke, the home secretary, saying the body will not attend the event unless it includes the “holocaust” of the Palestinian intifada. He said similar events held in other European countries was an “inclusive day” that commemorated deaths in Palestine, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as the former Nazi death camps. “We wrote to the...