The death of a 15-year-old girl, stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend in a drugstore in the German town of Kandel, has not only sparked a public outcry but also become a case of high political salience – because the suspected killer was an Afghan refugee. The case The girl’s death occurred on December 27,…
Germany, like many locales, is currently undergoing processes of societal boundary drawing giving renewed salience to religious difference. The aftermath of President Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital brought fierce debates about the (real or imputed) anti-Semitism of Muslim immigrants and their descendants. The result was a further instance of the discursive…
In a new survey on Germans’ religious views and practices conducted by the Allensbach institute, a clear majority of respondents conceptualises of their country as a quintessentially Christian one. Growing emphasis on a Christian heritage 63 per cent assert that Germany is “strongly marked by Christiantiy and Christian values” – a mere five years ago, only…
Following President Trump’s announcement to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and thereby officially recognise the city as the Israeli capital has sparked strong reactions across the world. Western European leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, have generally taken a critical stance. They point to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian accords, which had left the final…
In flashy advert campaigns, Berlin, Germany’s capital city, vaunts itself as the world’s “capital of freedom” defined by the coexistence of the widest possible array of diverse lifestyles.1 On a more mundane level, however, successive city administrations have struggled to come to terms with the implications of ethnic and religious diversity. Berlin’s ‘laic exceptionalism’ Unsurprisingly,…
