Abstract
Holocaust education can play a role in countering the ongoing problem of prejudice and incitement to hate that can lead to racial tension and violence. This article examines the beliefs of Muslim school children towards Jews in Sydney, Australia. It then discusses efforts to use Holocaust education to combat racist beliefs and hate language, and an alternative approach that illustrates the common values in the Abrahamic faiths. The article analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of using various school programmes to counter anti-Jewish feelings amongst Muslim children and ends with a discussion of whether such programmes should be compulsory.
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Notes
Figures for both communities based on the Australian Census, 2006, cited at http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:fKRbCztdksIJ:www.immi.gov.au/living-in-australia/a-diverse-australia/communities/muslim-community/conference-Australian_Imams/Muslims_in_Australia_snapshot.pdf+2006+Australian+census+Muslims&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a, accessed 30 December 2007.
The broader study, on the Political Sociology of Australian Jewry, was funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC)/Linkage Grant that Professor Emeritus Sol Encel and I received for the period December 2004 to July 2008.
Statistics supplied by Dr. Ken Cruickshank; see Cruickshank (2006). In 2005, there were 25,194 Arabic-speaking school children, the second largest group after Chinese. Of these, 16,536 reside in the South Western suburbs of Sydney. See Table 4, New South Wales Department of Education and Training (2006).
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Rutland, S.D. Creating effective Holocaust education programmes for government schools with large Muslim populations in Sydney. Prospects 40, 75–91 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9144-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9144-8