Germany grapples with return of pro-Kurdish fighters from Syria

Much public concern and political squabbling in Europe has focused on returnees from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. Above all, anxieties have been centred on the potential security risks posed by former fighters and supporters of the so-called Islamic State. Over 1,000 German citizens and residents had joined the self-declared caliphate in the Levant;…

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As the far right seeks to co-opt the Jewish vote, uncomfortable questions about Germany’s culture of memory arise

On October 7, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party welcomed the creation of its newest inner-party pressure group: up to 20 Jewish AfD members gathered in the Hessian city of Offenbach to form a circle aiming to represent Jewish interests within and through the AfD. The move has been trumpeted by a number of…

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Football players’ meeting with Erdogan causes uproar in Germany

Germany is a nation crazy for football. As the country gears up for this year’s world cup in Russia, the national team’s coach, Joachim Löw, announced his preliminary squad on May 15, signalling the onset of the countdown to the tournament. Two footballers posing with President Erdoğan Yet the squad presentation was overshadowed by politics: On…

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Planned rebuilding of Berlin synagogue brings together Muslim policy-maker and Jewish community

For years, German public debates have asked whether ‘Islam’ has a rightful place in the country and whether it can be considered part of its identity. Yet the reasons given by those that see the religion as alien to Germany have fluctuated over time. Shifting discourses of Islam’s ‘incompatibility’ First of all, as the years…

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Anti-Semitism row over Muslim rappers dominates German headlines

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…

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