Internationally, Germany has often been lauded for its reckoning with the Holocaust – its so-called Erinnerungskultur, or culture of remembrance.1 Whether this at times gushing praise of Germany’s historical conscience is fully warranted is another matter.2 (The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party has, for one, always demanded that the country stop banging on about…
“We see with the new FBI terminology and the new intelligence terminology, they can’t talk about the enemy. They can’t talk about jihad. They can’t talk about Muslim. They can’t talk about Islam.”— Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), speech on the House floor, April 26, 2013 Has the FBI been hamstrung in its investigation of the…
13 February 2013 Amsterdam’s city council will stop using the terminology “autochtoon” and “allochtoon” to identify citizens. “Allochtoon” refers to first or second generation migrants, as well as third generation Dutch with at least one grandparent who is an immigrant. In colloquial discourse “allochtoon” refers to those of non-western ethnic heritage and “autochtoon” to…
13 August 2010 In future, centres for Islamic Studies are to be set up at German universities to train Muslim religious scholars. In an interview with Qantara, Peter Strohschneider, chairman of the German Council of Science and Humanities, talks about these plans. He claims that the project would not only be for the “intellectual self-reflection…
According to some Muslims and Jewish people of faith, the common name of the H1N1 virus, “Swine Flu,” is offensive in its reference to pigs, because the animal is considered unclean to Muslims and Jews. Some Israeli health officials have urged changing the name to “Mexican flu.” In the United States, the Center for Disease…
