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This article draws upon and contributes to current discussions in the study of conversion, Muslims in Europe, and gender and emotion by taking media productions as an ethnographic starting point for analyzing the subject position of women who converted to Islam. In contemporary Western European contexts, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam evokes various affective responses, including bewilderment, concern, and fear. This article assesses the frames through which female converts to Islam are represented in the media and particularly explores the existing focus on mother and daughter relationships. Based upon an analysis of the emotions named and generated, this article argues that such affective framings contribute to the shaping of the subject position of female converts to Islam. It moreover demonstrates that emotions such as concern, sadness, grief, and fear are the result of, as well as constructively infuse, contemporary debates on religious and cultural diversity in the Netherlands in which Islam and Muslims are considered to pose a "problem" for Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article traces the motives and reasoning of several national Evangelical Alliances (EAs) in Europe in establishing the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA), that are predominantly theologically and partially culturally driven. Topics include examines that British EA had been the coordinating body of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) since the British EA's beginnings in 1846; and considered that research on the history of the evangelical alliances focus on the nineteenth century.

Even though no relevant evidence exists about the revival of religion in the Eu- ropean public sphere, certain «moral policies», such as those dealing with the regulation of abortion, have unleashed the protest of Christian-inspired lay groups, advocacy coalitions and churches. Social mobilization against this type of policies is not surprising in democracy, but one of the new traits of the antiabortion protest over the last decades is that it has been led by social groups and experts, not cormected with the church, who emphasize scientific, rather than moral or religious arguments. On their part, churches in different countries have played different roles: unlike other religious institutions, the Spanish Catholic church (SCC) has clearly played the role of an adversarial interest group and has been de facto an important ally of Christian social groups. The adversarial strategy of the organized Christian world is basically due to the new Socialist agenda (2004-11), which has stressed morally-sensitive issues such as the liberalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and the subject of Education for Citizenry. The analysis of Christian social group shows however that important differences regarding their framings and repertoires are to be found. Likewise, relevant overlapping membership between these groups and the SCC can be detected, even though both actors have reiterated that no formal links exist between them. Finally, that religion in secularized societies may become a public issue should there be religiously-inspired actors who successfully mobilize Conservative sectors in the society which express a high intensity of preferences in the face of morally-laden policies, is another finding to be borne in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on debates over the restriction of rights towards Muslim women in Great Britain. Particular attention is given to Muslim women wearing the niqab, which is a face veil. The article argues that despite the political conflicts caused by the "veil debate" in 2006 on the niqab, government regulation against wearing it was not predicted. The article suggests that wearing the veil is not against the law because of Britain's church and state policies as well as Article Nine of the European Commission of Human Rights.

On their journeys through the Dutch Republic and the German territories, seventeenth-century Quaker missionaries came into contact with a wide variety of religiously inspired groups and individuals. This article considers some problems of conventional historiographical approaches to the new religious diversity in early modern Europe. Persecution was an especially important issue for travelling ministers. Despite their own experience, some religious radicals strongly objected to the Quaker view on persecution, so that, among others, 'sufferings' became a controversial subject. This article argues that controversy was part of a transnational process of mapping out the new, radical spectrum in which many religious radicals were actively involved. Dynamics within this spectrum can also be argued to have contributed to a new culture of religious debate. Two examples of contemporary response to Quaker 'sufferings' are presented and discussed with this wider perspective in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the future of Europe's encounter with Islam. The author states that Turkey's interest in joining the European Union was to provide the country with a political and juridical framework to enlarge and enforce the institutionalization of democratic rights and freedoms in Turkey. The country provided a site for studying Islamic movements in a politically secularist, pluralistic context. Islamization in Turkey is not the same way as in other Muslim-majority countries, where Islam is taking over political power and gaining influence in all aspects of life.

This essay reports on secularism and religious differences among Muslims and Europeans. Public debates focusing on the presence of Muslims in Europe has been raised when the new generations of migrant Muslims make religious claims, and when Turkish claims for membership in the European Union. New generation Muslims claim their religious difference as a source of self-affirmation, social distinction and cultural confrontation with the European values of self and democracy. The confrontation between Islam and the West becomes a confrontation between two different cultural values and orientations toward modernity.

Discusses the dispute between theologians and humanists during the Renaissance over the issue of whose more competent when it comes to the Bible. Clamor humanists for a revision of the biblical text; Lorenzo Valla's textual criticism of the Bible; Reflection of the dispute in the `Letters of Obscure Men.'

The author responds to a previously printed article titled "L'anabaptisme au Pays de Liège (1533-1593)," by Olivier Donneau, which appeared in the no. 32, 2003 issue of "Annuaire d'Histoire Liégeoise." He discusses the diaspora of Anabaptists from the region of Liège, Belgium to Geneva, Switzerland in the sixteenth century. Religious disputations between Anabaptists Herman de Gerbihan and Audry Benoît and French founder of the Reformed Church Gillaume Farel led to the city's government expelling many Anabaptists, including printer Jean Zurel, a native of Lamorménil, Luxembourg.