(Georg-Eckert-Institut. Leibniz-Institut für Internationale Schulbuchforschung, 2013-04-17) Vella, Yosanne
Islamaphobia has long been a phenomenon in Malta due to the island’s strong Catholic culture and long history of conflict, with Muslim Arabs or Turks frequently regarded as “the enemy”. Today with the appearance of irregular immigrants from Africa who started arriving in Malta after 2000, the local population is now faced with a new situation, that is, with the presence of a small but growing Muslim community on the island. This paper details an attempt to use history teaching as a possible tool to combat prejudice and onesided images of “the other” within the Maltese context using a topic from the Maltese history National Curriculum, that of the Great Siege of Malta in 1565.
