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The Indonesian Embassy in Prague has filed a complaint to the Czech Foreign Ministry over Friday’s police raid at the headquarters of Prague’s Islamic Foundation and a mosque on the outskirts of the city. The raid, made in connection with an allegedly racist publication, took place during Friday prayers disrupting the ceremony attended by around one hundred believers, including women and children. Among them were members of the Indonesian Embassy who were detained for an hour and a half despite their diplomatic status. The police detained 20 people and charged one of inciting racial hatred and xenophobia.

The Czech Republic’s Muslim community has complained after police raided the headquarters of Prague’s Islamic Foundation and a mosque on the outskirts of the city during Friday prayers, detaining some 20 people and filing hate crime charges against one man. Muslim community leaders say the operation was over the top – and deny inciting ethnic or religious hatred.

One person, a 55-year-old Czech national, was detained by the police following a raid at the headquarters of the Islamic Foundation – a cultural centre near Wenceslas Square in Prague, on the suspicion of the illegal publishing and distribution of a book inciting racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. On Saturday, a day after the raid, he was formally charged. Around 20 people were brought in for questioning; the foreigners police launched extradition proceedings against several of them, ČTK reported, citing the spokesman for the anti-organised crime squad.

The police’s organized crime squad raided several Prague sites on Friday, including the headquarters of the Islamic Foundation, a cultural centre near Wenceslas Square, on suspicion of the illegal publishing and distribution of a book inciting racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, a spokesman for the organized crime squad said on Friday. One of the raids took place in the Islamic Foundation’s house of prayer, disrupting the religious gathering. One of the people present, the first secretary of the Indonesian Embassy, told the ctk news agency the police stormed the premises telling people to lie down face of the floor as they searched the grounds. Five people were arrested. The police did not specify what publication they were looking for.

The Czech Republic has just experienced its first controversy over Muslim headwear. Two young women studying to become nurses at a Prague school left the institution after the headmistress refused to allow them to wear headscarves in class.

A nursing secondary school in Prague has forbidden two of its female Muslim students to wear the tradition hijab headdress to class, causing the students to leave the school. One of the students offered to wear the scarf in a way that would only cover her hair, but the school’s principal said that it was still unacceptable. The other student began attending classes without the hijab, but also left the school a few days later. The school said that wearing any headgear is against official policies and that the 23-year-old Somali and the 25-year-old Afghan students had other problems with school rules, which the young women deny. There are currently no laws in the Czech Republic, which concern religious dress in public.

A good deal of the ongoing economic and financial turmoil on world markets has been blamed on the unscrupulous practices of the international banking and financial sector. Islamic banking, on the other hand, is seen as a fairer and more balanced alternative which has been much less affected by the crisis. Can the Czech Republic benefit from a financial system based on the Islamic law? And can Islamic banking help boost Czech exports into Muslim countries? These are some of the issues debated at an international conference on Islamic banking held

Young Christian Democrats, the youth wing of the Czech political party, have filed a petition with the Culture Ministry to cancel the registration of the country’s Muslim community over alleged anti-Semitic preaching. The news website idnes.cz reported on Thursday the group reacted to a sermon delivered at a mosque in Brno in 2008 that recently appeared on the internet and which quoted a prophecy calling for the killing of Jews. The head of the country’s Muslim community, Hassan Muneeb Alrawi said he considered the move a “targeted attack”.

Some 400 Muslims gathered in Brno on Tuesday to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan with a joint prayer session. Due to the high number of participants, the event could not be held at the country’s oldest Islamic house of prayer and instead had to be moved to the city’s Hotel International. The leader of Brno’s Muslim community, Munib Hassan, said that since the late nineties, the number of people who are of Muslim faith in the country has increased significantly and that due to the growth of the community, a permanent solution for holding larger events needs to be found. He added that space in the old mosque is not just a problem during holidays, but also during the traditional Friday prayer sessions, which are visited by some 150 to 200 people every week. However, finding a location for a new house of prayer in the city has been met with opposition by local politicians.

Anders Behring Breivik, who admitted carrying out Friday’s twin terror attacks in Norway that killed 93 people, visited the Czech capital last year in search of weapons. In a manifesto published on the day of the attacks, attributed to the Mr Breivik, the terror suspect wrote that his failure to do so in Prague led to him to acquire a rifle and a handgun legally in his homeland. In the document, the 32-year-old right-wing, anti-Islamist fundamentalist also quotes Czech President Václav Klaus’ criticism of the EU.