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France: Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, The official "face" of the new French government. Via The Independent : Thirty years ago, a four-year-old Moroccan girl emigrated to France to join her father. Yesterday, she became the official "face" of the new French government. Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, 34, is the youngest member of the cabinet which assembled yesterday under the chairmanship of President Fran�ois Hollande. She is the Minister for Women's Affairs and will be the official spokeswoman for the government and, therefore, the mouthpiece for "Hollandism". (...) A married mother of twins, Ms Vallaud-Belkacem is a "non-practising Muslim". After winning scholarships to elite colleges, she calls herself a "pure product of the [egalitarianism] of the [French] Republic". She insisted yesterday, however, that she wanted to be judged on her abilities, not on her "triple symbolism" as a young female of North African origin. ( source )

UK: Leicester, Ealing's first Muslim mayors  Via OnIslam (h/t Islam in Britain ): An Indian-origin Muslim councilor Abdul Razak Osman has been sworn in as the first ever Muslim mayor in the multi-cultural town of Leicester, the post seen as a challenge as Britain prepares for the Olympic Games. (...) �I'm proud to be the first Muslim councilor to hold the position � we've had Christian, Hindu, Sikh and now I'm able to bring the Islamic faith to the office which is a great honor," Osman added. ( source ) Via Ealing Gazette : ONE of the first Pakistanis to set up shop in Southall became Ealing�s first Muslim mayor this week. Councillor Mohammad Aslam was hailed by colleagues across the political spectrum in a rare show of unity at Ealing Town Hall on Tuesday night. The Southall businessman and Norwood Green councillor said he always dreamed of becoming mayor and was �excited� to finally take up his robes and chains.   ( source )

France: Hollande's Algerian advisers Via The North Africa Journal : In Rabat, the Moroccan government showed no significant worries as Fran�ois Hollande was declared the winner of the Presidential race. However, we picked up some signs of concerns as usually Morocco finds a more open-door policy among France�s right wing leaders and lot less accommodating Socialists. (...) Also a point of concern for the Moroccans is the people who surround Fran�ois Hollande, in particular his high-powered political adviser Faouzi Lamdaoui, a native of the eastern Algerian city of Constantine. Read this associated analysis on the � Rise of North Africans in French Politics .�  Another person to watch in the Hollande circles is Kader Arif, a Member of the European Parliament for the south-west of France. He is a member of the Holland�s Socialist Party and sits on the European Parliament�s Committee on International Trade. A third source of influence is the young Razzy Hammadi who presided over the M...

Belgium: 1.3 million immigrant voters Via Knack : According to sociologist Jan Hertogen, about 1.3 million immigrants will participate in the next municipal elections.  They are required by law to vote because they were naturalized (1.1. million) or because they signed up for the elections (0.2 million).  In total they make up 16.7% of the voters: 9.8% in Flanders, 18.1% in Wallonia and 62.3% in the Brussels Region.  In Antwerp they make up 36.3% of the voters, in Ghent 25.8% and in Mechelen 22.8%. 89.2% of Turks are obligated to vote, as well as 88.4% of Moroccans, 75.4% of Italians, 56.2% of French immigrants and 47.8% of Dutch immigrants. Of the 575,000 foreigners who will not participate in the elections: 100,000 are from outside the EU and about 475,000 are from the EU.

France: 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande Via La Vie : According to a poll by OpinionWay and Fiducial for Le Figaro, 93% of Muslims voted for Hollande.  7% voted for Sarkozy.  The poll was conducted May 6th among 1000 voters. According to the polling agency, there are about 2 million Muslim voters.  59% of Muslims voted for Hollande in the first round.  23% voted for  Jean-Luc Melenchon (Left Front) and 7% voted for Fran�ois Bayrou (Democratic Movement).  Sarkozy got 4% of the Muslim vote in the first round.

France: Islam in election debate Hollande: No special treatment for Muslims Mr Hollande, meanwhile, took a similar position to Mr Sarkozy when it came to special treatment for France's large Muslim community. He said he would not allow separate menus in public cafeterias or separate hours in swimming pools for men and women to satisfy Muslims' demands, and also said he would firmly support France's ban on the face-covering Islamic veils. ( source ) Sarkozy: There must be an Islam "of" France and not an Islam "in" France Sarkozy's first mention of Islam comes during a row over the left's plans to give the right to vote to non-European foreigners in municipal elections Why do you think that non-Europeans are Muslims? Why do you say that? Why do you say people who aren't European are Muslim? asks Hollande. Sarkozy says the right to vote for foreigners, doesn't mean Canadians, or Norwegians, but North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans, Algerians...

London: Muslim voters in fraud row 'forgot how they signed registration forms' Via the Evening Standard : A senior official at Tower Hamlets has rejected allegations of postal vote fraud � claiming Muslim voters simply forgot how they signed registration forms. Isabella Freeman, borough legal chief, spoke in a bid to explain a spike in rejected ballots following a by-election. The Met has launched an investigation into claims of voter fraud. Today the �120,000-a-year monitoring officer was accused of failing to �face up to reality� and accept voter fraud is on her doorstep � ahead of tomorrow�s London-wide elections for the next Mayor and the 25-seat London Assembly. Asked about an increase in rejected postal votes from 10 per cent to 14 per cent, Ms Freeman said this was because �voters have forgotten how they signed the registered application in the first place ... this is not unusual in relation to Muslim voters.� The council would not comment on whether she was referring to...

Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign ('Freedom, not Islam') Via the Local : A far-right party on the campaign trial in Germany's most populous state is threatening to put caricatures of Mohammed outside mosques in a string of cities, prompting fears of violence. The "Pro NRW" party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia has already shown anti-Islamic caricatures in Essen and Gelsenkirchen, though the police prevented demonstrations taking place directly outside mosques. (...) Interior Minister in state Ralf J�ger condemned the campaign and expressed support for planned counter-demonstrations. "Pro NRW is committing spiritual arson," he told the paper. "The party is consciously taking into account that Muslims will feel provoked and upset. The authorities will exhaust all legal avenues to prevent a xenophobic hate campaign." ( source )

Bosnia: Srebrenica Muslim refugees not given right to vote The 'Mothers of Srebrenica' organization say that the city's Muslims will leave if the refugees won't be allowed to vote. Via the Atlantic : Six months from now, a municipal election will be held in this isolated mining town, the scene of the largest massacre in Europe since World War Two. The town's current mayor, a 33 year-old Bosnian Muslim, says the election will hand Bosnian Serbs control of the town and complete the "ethnic cleansing," or removal, of all Muslims from eastern Bosnia. Serbs say it is democracy, plain and simple. Seventeen years ago, Serb forces executed 8,100 Muslim men and boys here in the largest single mass killing of the war in Bosnia. The U.S. and its European allies - who had declared the town a U.N. protected "safe area" - stood by as the Serbs rampaged for days in the summer of 1995. In local elections since then, a special exemption has been granted that all...

France: 'I�m Arab, a Muslim, and I vote Marine Le Pen' Via France24 : If French Muslims are largely left-leaning in their voting preferences, there are exceptions. France24.com spoke to three French Muslims of Arab descent, all of whom vote for the far-right National Front party. Here are their testimonies. Karima, policewoman: �Many of my colleagues of Arab descent vote far right, but don�t dare say so.� A 33-year-old naturalised French citizen of Moroccan origin, Karima is a mother of three, married to a Frenchman. She arrived in France 15 years ago, and has a diploma in Computer Science from a French university. Now she works as a policewoman in Paris and declined to provide her last name. Karima says she started becoming interested in the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the extreme-right National Front party, in 2002. That was almost a decade before Le Pen handed over the party leadership to his youngest daughter, Marine, in 2011. These days, Karima says she regularl...

France: Mosques accused of backing Hollande Via the Local : The rightwing UMP party has accused Socialists of courting the Muslim vote and alleges that mosques are calling for the faithful to vote for leftwing candidate Francois Hollande. "I want to condemn the conniving and irresponsible attitude of the Socialist Party and its candidate after religious leaders belonging to a network of 700 mosques called on followers to vote for Francois Hollande," writes UMP lawmaker Eric Ciotti in a press release on Wednesday. (...) Muslim religious authorities in France however deny they have called on voters to support Hollande. In an interview with the newswire AFP, Abdallah Zekri, a leader of the French Council of Muslim Faith, says imams have called on followers to vote but have not given them instructions as to who they should vote for. ( source )

UK: PM launches campaign to target �aspirational� ethnic minority voters Via the Daily Mail : The Prime Minister will today launch a major campaign to target �aspirational� ethnic minority voters in the suburbs after warnings that he can�t win at the next election without them. Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi has revealed the party aims to woo female and older Asian voters who share the party�s views but who have traditionally voted Labour. She has told Conservative Cabinet ministers and MPs that they need to do more to win over non-white voters in key marginal constituencies. They will be ordered to discuss core Tory values � hard work, good schools, the perils of welfare dependency � rather than �pandering� to received Left-wing wisdom that Asian voters are only concerned with state handouts and foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan. ( source )

Italy: President, Interior Minister visit Rome's Mosque ( photo ) Via ANSAmed : President Napolitano arrives with Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri and the Minister for Integration, Andrea Riccardi. And it is Riccardi's speech that puts the seal on a new pact of ''integration'' and living together. (...) Riccardi remarks how ''the mosque's dome fits in well with all the other church domes in Rome,'' making the capital city ''a model for integration between religions and cultures''. ''Integration arises from differences. Many predicted after the September 11 attacks that there would be a clash between the West and Islam. Ten years later, the Arab Spring has drawn a different scenario: reasons for living together and getting on have multiplied''. President Napolitano appreciated this reference to the Arab Spring. (...) Mohammad al Gramdi, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador and Chair of the Islamic Cultural Centr...

Germany: Ministry caught in Muslim study leak lie Via the Local : Germany�s Interior Minister was forced to admit on Friday that his ministry had leaked a controversial study on young Muslims in the country to populist Hans-Peter Friedrich and the tabloid newspaper both presented the study as showing that young Muslims were not integrating into German society � infuriating the authors who said their presentation was a gross distortion of what they actually said. ( source )