Her Road from Damascus: A Syrian Refugee Story
How Raghad Alhallak and her family sold their home and bakery in Syria, scaled a mountain, fought off wild dogs, evaded border guards and nearly drowned at sea — before being welcomed in Germany. The Alhallak family fled Damascus at the end of the summer of 2013, after selling their jewelry, their bakery and their […]
Circumcision and Human Rights
For both Jews and Muslims, circumcision is a religious and cultural practice. Within the last few weeks, Germany outlawed the practice of male circumcision for any but the strictest medical reasons. An atypical alliance of Jews and Muslims successfully challenged the German court's ruling and Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised to make religious circumcision practices […]
Homophobia in Soccer
Type the name of Philipp Lahm into the Google search engine and the first thing its “autocomplete” feature throws up about Germany’s national football captain is “Philipp Lahm schwul” – “Philipp Lahm gay”. […]As elsewhere in Europe, Germany has no openly gay men in the professional leagues. Given the amount of repressive hide-and-seek going on, […]