The German Interior Minister was recently interviewed by Spiegel. It begins with a nice example of the “authenticity” error (i.e., my understanding of the tradition is correct and any other is false):
Interior Minister: But we also have to realize that the abuse of Islam by Islamist extremists has contributed to this.
Spiegel: Anders Breivik claims to [...]
Tags:Anders Breivek·authenticity error·Christianity·essentialism·German identity·Germany·Hans-Peter Friedrich·Islam·Islamists
At one elementary school in Germany, the fifth grade curriculum includes a unit on the “Stone Age.” As an anthropologist, I have to say this sounds great in theory. It was a bit morbid in execution.
As reported by Spiegel, the teachers invited a local farmer to provide instruction on killing and butchery. In years past, [...]
Tags:butchery·children·curriculum·Easter Bunny·elementary school·Germany·killing·rabbit·Stone Age·trauma
In a series of just published articles not so subtly titled Murderers and Martyrs: The Difficult Struggle of Christians in the Orient, the German newsmagazine Spiegel details the sorry plight of Christians in Egypt and Pakistan. Although the facts and reporting are unfortunately accurate, this is sure to ratchet up the already considerable levels of [...]
Tags:Bernard Lewis·Christians·colonialism·Coptic Christians·Copts·Edward Said·Egypt·essentializing·Germany·imperialism·Murderers and Martyrs·Muslims·Orient·orientalism·Pakistan·persecution·radical Islam·Spiegel
Watching Germany grapple with its rough beast is sort of like cultural voyeurism — outsiders are weirdly fascinated even as Germans seem unsure of how to proceed. Two recent articles in Spiegel offer powerful reminders that gawking, a paradoxical product of attraction and revulsion, can be unsettling.
The first, by Frank Hornig and Michael Sontheimer, discusses [...]
Tags:Berlin·Bethlehem·Civil Religion·eschatology·Frank Hornig·Fuhrer·German History Museum·Germany·Hitler·Ian Kershaw·Jews·Michael Sontheimer·Muslims·National Socialism·nationalism·Nazi·Ole Reissmann·racism·rough beast·salvation·schadenfreude·The Second Coming·uncivil religion·W.B. Yeats·weltanschauung·xenophobia
Nearly all the interesting discussions about Islam are coming from Europe rather than the United States. In Germany the debate was given a major jolt by Thilo Sarrazin, as I noted in German Angst and Islam. Unlike debates in the United States — which are usually reduced to simple dichotomies that can be quickly judged [...]
Tags:Bolshevism·essentialism·Europe·Germany·Hamed Abdel-Samad·Ho Chi Minh·Islam·Islam is like a drug·Lenin·Mao·Marxism·moderate Islam·Muslims·political action·radical Islam·The Downfall of the Islamic World·Thilo Sarrazin·vanguard
In the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Karl Marx famously observed that “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Nowhere is this more true than in Germany, where the mass of history is heavy and sometimes suffocating.
With this in mind, the recent furor over Thilo [...]
Tags:18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte·adultery·Arabs·Craig Martin·dead generations·enlightenment·execution·Fremdarbeiter·German Muslims·Germany·honor killings·integration·Islamist·Karl Marx·Koran·Matthias Matussek·nightmare·pre-Enlightenment·radical Islam·Religion Bulletin·separatist Islam·stoning·terrorism·Thilo Sarrazin·tradition·Turks·weltanschauung
This is awkward — a Spiegel (i.e., German) reporter interviews the Iranian Foreign Minister:
SPIEGEL: Mr. Foreign Minister, you are the senior diplomat of the Islamic Republic of Iran. You represent a nation that prides itself on a cultural history stretching back more than 2,500 years. Don’t you find it shameful that people are stoned to [...]
Tags:adultery·execution by stoning·Germany·Holocaust·Iran·Jews·religious crimes·Sharia law·stoning
