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Sadiqu al-Mousllie sees humor as a good way to fight growing anti-Islam sentiment in Germany.

He lives in Braunschweig, in western Germany. Earlier this month, he decided to go downtown and hold up a sign that read, "I am a Moslem. What would you like to know?"

"This is a bridge of communication," the Syrian-born German says. "Some people dared to ask, some others not, so we went to them and give them some chocolate and a say of our prophet to know what Muslims are thinking about."

Mousllie, 44, says he hopes to do it every other week.

Several members of his mosque — including his Danish wife, Camilla, and their 17-old daughter, Sarah — joined him on the first outing.

The teen says many passersby were curious about her and her mother's Islamic headscarves.

"The weirdest question I got was if I'm showering with my hijab," Sarah says. "And I'm just — no, I don't shower with hijab, how should I do that? No one showers with their clothes on."

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Born in Syria, Mousllie (shown here with his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah) came to Germany more than 20 years ago and is now a German citizen. Soraya Nelson/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Soraya Nelson/NPR

Born in Syria, Mousllie (shown here with his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah) came to Germany more than 20 years ago and is now a German citizen.

Soraya Nelson/NPR

Her mother, who converted to Islam, says many Germans are equally confused about her being Muslim.

"They don't know ... where do I belong," says Camilla Mousllie, 42. "Some are confused and ask: Are the Danish people Muslim?"

But Sarah says she doesn't mind answering strange questions if it can help put to rest any misconceptions about Muslims and open up a dialogue with non-Muslims.

Their community in Germany is under increasing scrutiny after several recent threats and fatal attacks linked to Islamic extremists in Europe. The scrutiny sparked criticism from German Muslim leaders, who say it's is unwarranted and alienates Muslim citizens who've worked hard to integrate into German society.

Misinformation and discrimination, the dentist says, often hit Muslim children — including his own — the hardest.

Born in Damascus, Mousllie came to Germany nearly a quarter century ago to study; he eventually settled here and became a German citizen.

His five children, who were born in Germany, are Danish citizens like their mother, but they largely identify as German, Mousllie says. So when his son was in fourth grade and was told he didn't belong, the boy was upset.

"A friend of his in the class, he told [my son]: 'You are not a real German because your name is not German,' " Mousllie recalls. "That was a very bad situation for him. I felt it was like a world falling down for himself because he felt, well, am I part of this country or not?"

In recent years, Mousllie says he's been asking himself the same question.

At his specialty dental practice, Mousllie says he is treated like any other German. Outside the office, it's another matter.

"It's getting more difficult because a lot of Islamophobic themes are coming, people now mixing Islam and terror, so we have to explain a lot," he says.

Also alarming, Mousllie says, is the rising number of incidents against Muslims and mosques around Germany, including an attack three months ago in Braunschweig on a Syrian-born woman wearing hijab whose foot was run over by a car.

"You keep thinking what about my children, what about my family, how it's going to be in two years," he says.

Mousllie says watching democracy in Germany inspired him to fight for similar freedoms in his native Syria, and he serves as the German representative of the opposition Syrian National Council.

At home in Germany, as the Lower Saxony spokesman for Germany's Central Council of Muslims, Mousllie says he's tried to get authorities to help reduce tensions, including by not using what he and others in the Muslim community view as inappropriate words — for example, Islamism — when talking about extremists.

His efforts suffered a setback on Feb. 15 when Braunschweig authorities canceled a famous annual Carnival because of what Police Chief Michael Pientka called an Islamist-related terror threat.

"We know we have an Islamist scene here," Pientka told reporters, adding that from now on, the authorities would be watching it more closely.

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Muslims

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Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister turned prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead today on a street in central Moscow, the Interior Ministry told the Interfax news agency.

The Russian-language news website Meduza reported that Nemtsov was walking with a woman near the Kremlin at the time of the attack. A spokesman told Interfax that at least seven shots were fired at Nemtsov from a passing car.

Police are investigating, Interfax said.

Nemstov, 55, was the head of the opposition Republican Party of Russia-People's Freedom Party. He served as governor of the Novgorod region and as deputy prime minister in the 1990s. As NPR reported in 2007, in the 1990s Nemtsov "was an icon of democratic reform, a crusading minister anointed by former President Boris Yeltsin to be his political heir."

He later became an opposition leader and sharp critic of Putin.

Last year Nemtsov was among opposition leaders who gathered in Moscow to protest the government's crackdown on independent media and opposition groups. As NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reported at the time Nemtsov likened the mood in Russia to "Germany of the 1930s when Adolf Hitler called anyone who disagreed with him a traitor."

"It's honestly like in the Hitler time," Nemtsov said at the time. "If you are against Putin, you are against Russia. If you are against Putin, you are American spy.

Boris Nemtsov

Russia

Andrea Pino was the first person in her family to go to college. When she found out that she had been admitted to the University of North Carolina she was thrilled. "Not only was I going to college — I was going to my dream school," she says. "... I was definitely one of those students that, you know, cried and threw their laptop on the floor and couldn't believe that I was going."

But Pino's college experience didn't turn out the way she had expected. "I never thought that these campuses were anything but safe," she says. But in her sophomore year, while at a party with friends, she "ended up being dragged in to a bathroom and violently sexually assaulted."

Pino tells her story in a new documentary called The Hunting Ground. She and Annie Clark, another assault survivor featured in the film, talk with NPR's Kelly McEvers about the problem of rape on college campuses and what they are doing to address it.

Interview Highlights

Andrea Pino struggled with whether or not to report the assault she experienced because she did not know the name of the perpetrator. "How could I tell somebody if I didn't even know what the whole story was?" she says. Courtesy of Radius hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Radius

On reporting the assault

Pino: I didn't really think about reporting it at first mainly because I didn't know who he was. I didn't have anyone that had seen what had happened. You know, how could I tell somebody if I didn't even know what the whole story was? And I ended up dropping my name in an anonymous reporting box that was actually created by Annie Clark when she came forward for the first time in 2007.

On the anonymous reporting boxes created by Clark

Clark: So when I was assaulted in 2007 I was actually met with a very victim-blaming response and I wasn't even trying to formally report, I was actually just trying to get resources. I talked to one campus employee and she gave me this extended metaphor about how rape was like a football game and I was the quarterback in charge and what would I have done differently in that situation.

And it was at that time that I decided that you shouldn't have to go in to an office and formally say something so I came up with the idea of anonymous reporting boxes. Literal boxes on the wall that had resources and also reporting forms so you could take a form without having to have that face-to-face initial conversation so it would be on your terms. Andrea used that box to report her own sexual assault and after realizing that I created it, she reached out to me. And so we started talking and realized that this was not an isolated incident, that it was a national epidemic and no one had really connected the dots because we had been looking at these cases in isolation.

On the research they did into Title IX

Pino: Title IX is a gender equity law and what it guarantees is equal access to educational programs. If you have a campus that has rampant sexual assault, there is no equal access, mainly because female students do not feel safe going to libraries, they do not take night classes, they do not feel safe walking home at night. And because of that the campus itself is not equal.

On the Title IX complaint they brought against the University of North Carolina that encouraged a lot of other assault survivors to tell their stories

"How are two 20-somethings going to take on a 200-year-old university and have it become a thing?"

- Annie Clark

Clark: It took a while for the issue to get traction because how are two 20-somethings going to take on a 200-year-old university and have it become a thing? And what we realized though, with the framing of it, we said this is not about UNC. We're not doing this to vilify our institution. In fact we love our institution, and it's because we love our institution that we have this sense of responsibility to call out you know when something's going wrong. And it's no accident that you can you know hear a story in New York and it matches one in Texas.

On the Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia and how the details of that article have come into question

Clark: The media just picks apart every bit of the survivor's story and what we know from research, particularly about trauma and memory, is that these stories — they're true, but, you know, you might remember some detail. I can talk about you know my own experience. I remember things very clearly, but I don't remember the exact time. Does that mean something didn't happen? And the answer is no. So we don't know what happened in Jackie's case. I don't know her. I haven't talked to her but I do believe something happened there — and the fact that UVA has been under investigation and that's not even brought in to this conversation — instead it's attacking the victim instead of looking at the systemic problem at UVA and other schools.

On whether their current efforts as activists have helped them process what happened

Pino: You know I think back to what got me to step up at my campus. It's that same motivation that gets me to come here to D.C. and lobby Congress and that gets me to go to different campuses and talk to students and help empower them, too.

More On Sexual Assault On Campus

NPR Ed

The History Of Campus Sexual Assault

A Closer Look At Sexual Assaults On Campus

Student Activists Keep Pressure On Campus Sexual Assault

A Closer Look At Sexual Assaults On Campus

Some Accused Of Sexual Assault On Campus Say System Works Against Them

Shots - Health News

The Power Of The Peer Group In Preventing Campus Rape

Clark: I definitely want to point out that there are many ways to heal and there are many ways to be an activist and that it's just simply doing what is right and best for you. And I think we need to trust survivors, especially in their decision to report and go to counseling and trusting them to know what's best for them.

On what they would say to their own sons or daughters before they left for college

Clark: I think for me, when or if I have kids, I would hope that we start talking about this issue way earlier. The fact that the first time, you know, many people hear about sexual assault is at college orientation is way too late.

Pino: I think it's the same thing I tell parents who are taking their kids on the tour you know as soon as you get on to campus and even before, you know what are the rights of Title IX? What are their rights as students? What resources do they have, and what schools do about it?

Clark: Yeah I would hope that all students know that they have a right to a safe education and fair learning environment. And I really hope that we put the burden on men to say: Don't rape. You know instead of telling women: Here's a safety whistle. That conversation needs to change. But I will say I know survivors out there are listening right now and I just would like them to know that it's not your fault, and I believe you, and you are not alone.

Rocker Gary Glitter, best known for the stadium rock anthem "Rock & Roll (Part 2)," was sentenced to 16 years in prison for sex offenses during the 1970s and '80s against three girls between the ages of 8 and 13.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was sentenced today for attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under 13, the BBC reports. A jury found the 70-year-old guilty of the charges on Feb. 5, and Judge Alistair McCreath said then that Glitter would remain jailed until his sentencing.

"You did all of them real and lasting damage, and you did so for no other reason than to obtain sexual gratification for yourself of a wholly improper kind," McCreath said today.

The judge said despite the seriousness of the crimes, he was permitted to use only the more lenient guidelines of '70s and '80s while sentencing Glitter. For example, the charge of having sex with a child under 13 carries a life sentence today, but carried a seven-year sentence at that time.

Glitter, 70, showed no emotion as he left the dock, the BBC noted.

As we have previously reported, Glitter had denied the allegations.

He was convicted of child sex abuse in 2006 in Vietnam and sentenced to three years in prison. In 1999, he was convicted of possessing as many as 4,000 images of child abuse and jailed for four months.

Glitter was the first person to be arrested as part of the British investigation into allegations of child abuse against the late BBC television host Jimmy Savile.

U.K.

Gary Glitter

child sex abuse

Jimmy Savile

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