“Fascimen kæmper ikke for at leve, den lever for at kæmpe.” Hamed Abdel-Samad om det prekære emne islam/islamisme. Det letter forståelsen at kalde ‘islamisme’ for rettroenhed. Ingen muslimske ledere har kunstbegrebet ‘islamisme’ i deres ordbog. Det findes, for at Politiken, de Radikale og den svenske Riksdag kan sove roligt om natten lidt endnu. Må de dø som Svend Auken, inden de vågner, det er så venligt ment, som jeg kan. Video: Hamed Abdel-Samad auf Phoenix (tysk, utekstet)

England: Ramadan-kompatible eksaminer

GCSE betyder General Certificate of Secondary Education, eksaminer for 14-16-årige

Proposals to bring forward GCSE and A-level examinations so Muslim pupils aren’t fasting for Ramadan during the exam season are to be debated at an education conference this month.According to the Mail On Sunday, another option to be discussed at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers Union (ATL) conference is holding exams in the morning when fasting pupils are less likely to be hungry.

It has also been suggested that Muslim students who feel their performance has been affected by their fasting could be eligible for extra marks due to ‘extenuating circumstances’. The problem has arisen because Ramadan, a holy period in the Islamic calendar requiring Muslims to fast during daylight hours, will fall progressively earlier in the summer from next year – eventually clashing with the May-June exam season in 2016.Plans to overhaul GCSE timetable to avoid clash with Ramadan (Did Muslim hardliners try to infiltrate and takeover 25 Birmingham schools? Probe into ‘Trojan horse’ plot expands)

The EU has no extensions to offer for a clash of civilizations

There’s an area of French society bleak beyond any let’s-pretend action-plan or incantatory chorus about brotherhood. The country’s existential problem of coming to terms with more than five million Muslims in its midst—and how these immigrants and citizens accommodate (or flout) French law and custom—is deepening into a new phase of what is described as intolerance, seeming incompatibility, and political polarization.

Minus the multi-syllabic wadding, reality says France is knee-deep in racial and religious nastiness. It is widely perceived at schools, in the metro and on the streets. And it precludes evasion.”An unhealthy climate grows day after day in our country,” the leaders of four major religious denominations warned in a statement over the weekend. “It’s urgent to react and get a grip on ourselves.” But the problem doesn’t go in a single direction. It involves a dissolving and disputed notion of French identity.

As real as discrimination against Muslims has become, researchers describe the growth of Muslim communities at the edges of large French cities that are developing parallel cultures. They are said to demand an allegiance to fundamentalist Islam, thus antagonizing the national majority’s notion of the French way of life.The result is a kind of double sense of victimization: Muslims are drawn by extremists into a rage about “Islamophobia,” while poor whites are lured toward the hard right with promises of understanding and protection by the National Front. Ultimately, France can handle its tribulations with big deficits, low competitiveness and tardiness in meeting European Union fiscal-consolidation targets. But the EU has no extensions to offer for a clash of civilizations that exemplifies Europe-wide concerns. WSJ.