The Balkan Chronicle

An ‘industry’ built on hate: How the right-wing successfully brought anti-Muslim bigotry into the American mainstream

Ahmed Sharif was a 44-year-old Muslim Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York City. It was August 24, 2010, a time that marked the height of vitriolic protests against a planned Islamic center to be located in lower Manhattan, a few blocks away from the site of Ground Zero. Sharif picked up 21-year-old Michael Enright for an early evening ride. Everything was going smoothly until Enright, three blocks away from his stop, yelled at Sharif, "this is a checkpoint, motherfucker, and I have to bring you down."

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Book Review - Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century

With this book, Paul Mojzes has again put Eastern European scholarship in his debt. His edited volume, Religion and the War in Bosnia (1998) and his monograph, Yugoslavian Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans (1994), both contributed significantly to understanding and interpreting what was transpiring in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

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Dutch book on islamophobia in the Netherlands now available for download

SINCE 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 – and especially since the murder of Theo van Gogh – Muslims and Islam have frequently been unfavourably portrayed at the heart of public debate.

Manifestations of Islamophobia can be found on the Internet, in comments by the PVV, and in acts of violence committed against mosques. Dutch anti-discrimination policies are coming under pressure now that this ideology has forced its way to the centre of the political stage. How do negative connotations about Muslims come about? Where are the acts of violence taking place?

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New Book: Muslims in Poland and Eastern Europe. Widening the European Discourse on Islam

While Islam has been firmly placed on the global agenda since 9/11, and continues to occupy a prominent place in media discourse, attention has recently begun to shift towards European Muslims, or "as some would prefer to say" Muslims in Europe.

Apart from the usual concerns, mostly articulated in the media, on the radicalization of Muslim youth, their failure to integrate into mainstream society and so forth, a vast body of academic literature on Islam and Muslims in Europe has sprung up since the late 1990s. This discourse and body of literature on Muslims in Europe, however, are confined to the west of the continent, viz. the old EU. This gives the impression that Europe stops at the banks of the Oder. Central and Eastern Europe – both new EU members and other countries – has been placed outside the realm of discourse, i.e. outside Europe.

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The Great Anglo-Celtic Divide in the History of American Foreign Relations

For over two centuries the ethnic heritage of American presidents has shaped America’s foreign policy. From George Washington to George W. Bush, presidential cultural background has been more important than presidential religion, party, age, or national or international political experience in predicting how an American president will act in matters involving war, peace, and alliance making. Changes in presidential ethnicity better explain changes in American foreign policy than changes in political party or international political dynamics.

Two distinct groups with roots in the British Isles have dominated the American presidency and American foreign relations, Anglo-Americans and Celtic-Americans. The struggle between the two cultural groups for political supremacy had its origins in the struggle between Anglo-Saxons and Celts for control of the British Isles. In Ireland and North America, Anglo-Saxon factions used Celts to gain power and to conquer Ireland and North America. England’s Celtic allies felt abused by their overlords and many fled Ireland for North America, taking with them bitterness toward the English.

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Translation of Hitler’s Manifesto Sparks Row in Albania

A previously unknown publisher has translated into Albanian Adolf Hitler's political manifesto, Mein Kampf, sparking debate on whether the book should be banned.

"This book considered as Hitler's political treatise combined with autobiographical elements is necessary to understand the Holocaust and the totalitarianism of any colour," the publisher Belina H said in a statement.

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