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Snip It?!

Presentation of a study on the circumcision debate followed by a discussion as part of the Judeo-Islamic Forum (video recording available, in German)

The verdict of the Cologne Administrative Court classifying the ritual circumcision of boys as bodily harm sparked a controversial debate in the summer of 2012. How Jews and Muslims experienced this discussion is investigated in the study Signals from the majority conducted by the European Studies Centre at Oxford University. Based on interviews with Jews and Muslims, the impact of the debate on identity, sense of belonging, and integration in Germany are illuminated. Professor Kerem Öktem presents the results and then discusses them with Mounir Azzaoui, Dr. des. Alexander Hasgall, and Dr. des. Hannah C. Tzuberi.

Moderated by Dr. Yasemin Shooman

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)

Recording of the presentation of a study on the circumsision debate (in German)

Participants

Mounir Azzaoui is a political scientist and consultant for religious policy. As founding managing director, he led the Avicenna-Studienwerk to being officially recognized by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as Germany’s 13th sponsorship organization for the academically gifted in 2013. He currently works for the Mercator Foundation as a project manager in the field of science.

Alexander Hasgall is a historian and works as a research coordinator at the University of Geneva. He coordinated the “European Forum on Antisemitism” in 2009/2010 and addresses the current challenges facing the Jewish community in Europe in his journalistic activities.

Kerem Öktem has been Professor of Southeast Europe and Modern Turkey at Graz University since 2014. His areas of interest are Turkish contemporary history and politics, in particular Kemalist nationalism and Turkish minority policy. He was previously at Oxford University where he conducted several studies on the social acceptance of diversity, including the Signals from the majority study in 2013.

Hannah C. Tzuberi studied Jewish and Islamic Studies and currently works at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Free University Berlin. Her research areas are rabbinic literature, feminist theory, and contemporary discourses on Jewish and Muslim identity in German majority society.

One of the accompanying events for the Snip it! Stances on Ritual Circumcision exhibition.

Where, when, what?

  • When4 Dec 2014
  • Where W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
    Klaus Mangold Auditorium
    Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
    (Opposite the Museum)
    See location on map

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