Religion
Related: About this forumTeaching the Holocaust to Muslim Germans, or Not
In Germany, field trips to concentration camps sites for all senior High School students is a way to make sure there are no Holocaust deniers in Germany.
Problem: some students of muslim descent (Turkish, but more markedly, Arabs) balk at the visits as they inject in the Mideast conflict (in families antisemitic on religious-political grounds)
Which shows how religion pollutes something which had been planned as progressive nation building, modern Germany owning up to and differentiating itself from its past.
By ALISON SMALEJUNE 17, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/world/europe/teaching-the-holocaust-to-muslim-germans-or-not.html
BERLIN — In Germany’s ever-swirling debate about its past, it is a relatively recent, always delicate question: How do you teach Muslim Germans about the Nazis and the Holocaust?
The topic has bubbled up in recent weeks, after discussion in Bavaria about a proposal for all eighth or ninth graders there to visit a former concentration camp or the newly opened center in Munich documenting Nazi crimes.
In Bavaria today, only pupils in a gymnasium, the top rank of high school, are required to make such visits. (..)
One conservative lawmaker, Klaus Steiner, praised the intent, but he suggested that Muslim pupils would need special preparation and implied that some might be exempted.
Lower-ranked secondary schools, he said, have a higher proportion of immigrant pupils, often recent arrivals whose parents sought refuge from war and hardship. “Many are from Muslim families,” Mr. Steiner said. “These children and their parents will need time before they can identify with our past.”
He further questioned whether anti-Semitism, “which is certainly latent here and there,” could “really effectively be countered” with obligatory visits to former camps.
(..)
Gisela Sengl, a lawmaker for the Greens, argued that it was precisely the less educated who were susceptible to antiforeigner, anti-Semitic chauvinism.
(..)
Outside Germany, the debate predictably stoked controversy. Details appeared in The Jerusalem Post, and the head of the European office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris wrote an open letter to Germany’s federal education minister.
Mr. Steiner’s language, wrote the director, Shimon Samuels, “reeks at best as Holocaust denial and, far worse, a German endorsement” for radical Islamists’ assertion that the Holocaust “is a lie.” He went on to link Mr. Steiner’s behavior to Germany’s recent decision to establish centers for Islam at a number of major universities, part of a program to train educators and scholars to serve the estimated four million Muslims now in Germany.
That program is intended to counter what many experts see as radical Islam propagated at some mosques in Germany, given that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were conceived and perpetrated in part by Muslims who met in Hamburg.
Mouhanad Khorchide, a Palestinian from Beirut, Lebanon, and a professor of Islamic studies in Münster, said any question about teaching Muslim students about Nazi crimes against Jews was an extension of Middle East politics.
“If there was no Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would look different,” he said by telephone.
The idea of Muslim Germans visiting former concentration camps “is more and more strongly accepted,” Professor Khorchide said. But the effect depends on family background. “Especially Arab children whose parents grew up in the Middle East have stronger prejudices” than, say, Turks or Kurds, he said.
(..)
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delrem
(9,688 posts)Wouldn't want another holocaust, with Muslims as victims this time. Would we?
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)I am sure you are aware Hitler despised Christianity and had respect for Islam?
delrem
(9,688 posts)HITLER and MUSLIMS!
I knew it!
Way to go!
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Besides, I am sure you are aware the only troops raised on islamic religious grounds during WWII wore uniforms on the German model?
At the behest of the grand mufti of Jerusalem.
Those nazi muslims who created the holocaust, with Hitler at the helm, were evil, that's for sure.
Thanks for fighting the good fight against those nazi muslims who caused the holocaust.
It's such a good thing you're doing, with your OPs.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Let's just follow some basic logic (context: I have disregard for all religions)
1- I post a thread showing how one religion (Islam) interferes with a progressive civic move.
I hope you will not contest that it is good for Germans to remember the Holocaust?
I suppose you agree the text says some muslim families have qualms because of antisemitism?
2- you come in with heavy sarcasm trying to hint that I equate muslims to nazis.
I just shot back at you that yes, the only armed forces organised by muslim religious leaders during WWII were on the German side. Your attempt at caricaturing it into "those nazi muslims who created the holocaust, with Hitler at the helm" is childish at best.
but more importantly, (3) what are you trying to say?
My point that religion stood in the way of integration in Germany.
What is your point? Does this article show a positive role of religion?
Do you usually defend all religions or Islam only? Even when they are wrong?
delrem
(9,688 posts)You don't think I appreciate your fine thinking?
Well, what can I do but thank you again for explaining that those nazi muslims are a REAL PROBLEM!
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Integration problem because of Islam becomes negated by nazi muslims.
The problems in Germany just disappeared thanks to your enlightened obfuscation.
Well done.
And all my compliments for your deftness at hiding behind your strawman to avoid answering real questions:
- do you defend all religions, or just Islam?
- do you still defend religions in cases such as this where their influence is clearly bad?
delrem
(9,688 posts)I don't want to be rendered...
rendered into what, good golly spagettimonster!
Even tho' the "rendering" is totally secular. Really!
Please, please, don't accuse me of the unforgivable crime of "defending religions"!
Just accept my thanks for explaining about the muslim Hiltler-loving nazis who created the holocaust. You did a service!
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)What is your point about the article? My point is clear, and I will summarize it.
Mine is that Islam plays a negative role for the integration of immigrants in Germany.
Do you have any thing to say on the topic, other than your fascinating nazi muslims?
delrem
(9,688 posts)They're so progressive.
Response to delrem (Reply #11)
Post removed
delrem
(9,688 posts)Thanks for explaining it to me!
Add that thanks to the thanks I've already given you for your progressive posts, explaining about the muslim nazis.
delrem
(9,688 posts)"disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate"
All of the terms that Yorktown used are regularly used not only on DU but in the MSM to describe what I'll call "the existing situation", in context of a "War on Terror" that's been going on in especially blistering fashion for going on 2 decades, with roots going on 3 and 4 decades and more.
I would say more, but with Yorktown out of the picture I won't.
