‘Should Muslims be treated on an equal footing?’

The recent statement by German President Christian Wulff that “Islam belongs in Germany” has provoked something of a conservative backlash. The German press is divided on whether the presence of Muslims in Germany is self-evident or cause for concern.

When German President Christian Wulff said that “Islam also belongs in Germany” during his speech to mark the 20th anniversary of German reunification on Sunday, he was initially showered with praise for recognizing the reality that around 4 million Muslims now live in Germany. Yet just a few days later, it is clear than many on the conservative side of German politics and society are still deeply uncomfortable with such a statement.

The ongoing unease in some quarters about the country’s Muslim population was revealed by a poll published by the influential mass circulation newspaper Bild on Tuesday which showed that 66 percent of those polled disagreed with Wulff’s assertion and only 24 percent agreed with it.

Spiegel, 9 October 2010

Germany: Social Democrats and Greens demand equality for Islam

Leading members of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens called on Thursday for Islam to be recognised by the state as a religious community, similar to Christianity and Judaism.

The calls came as the peak Jewish body in Germany blasted recent conservative criticism of President Christian Wulff’s reunification speech, in which Wullf acknowledged that Islam was now part of Germany alongside the faiths of Christians and Jews.

In the wake of Wulff’s speech, the centre-left parties hit back against conservatives who had previously attacked Wulff’s remarks as undermining the core values and traditions of Germany.

“Islam needs a fair chance in Germany,” Dieter Wiefelspütz, interior affairs spokesman for the Social Democrats’ (SPD) parliamentary group, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “It would be an important signal to the four million Muslims in Germany if the state recognised Islam as a religious community.”

At present, Christianity and Judaism are recognised by German law as statutory bodies, meaning they can be taught in state schools and have tithing fees collected by the German Finance Ministry as church tax.

Integration policy spokesman for the Greens, Memet Kilic, told the paper: “The recognition of Islam as an equal religious community before the law would convey to Muslims the feeling of being welcome in Germany. The (conservative Christian Democrats) must end their neurotic navel gazing immediately.”

In his speech last Sunday, Wulff said: “Christianity is of course part of Germany. Judaism is of course part of Germany. This is our Judeo-Christian history … But now Islam is also part of Germany,” he said in his speech. “When German Muslims write to me to say ‘you are our president’, I reply with all my heart ‘yes, of course I am your president’.”

Secretary general of the German Jewish Council, Stephan Kramer, also slammed the conservative response to Wulff’s speech as “close to hysterical” and said it showed “that apparently many politicians even today are shutting themselves off to the reality of an immigrant community.”

He added: “The Muslims living here are part of our society. So of course their religion also belongs in this country.” Ultimately the right to exercise freely one’s religious beliefs was anchored in the constitution, he said.

The Local, 7 October 2010

Muslims must accept that German culture is ‘based on Christian and Jewish values’ says Merkel

Merkel and Westergaard
Merkel presenting an award to anti-Muslim cartoonist Kurt Westergaard

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Muslims must obey the constitution and not sharia law if they want to live in Germany, which is debating the integration of its 4 million-strong Muslim population.

In the furor following a German central banker’s blunt comments about Muslims failing to integrate, moderate leaders including President Christian Wulff have urged Germans to accept that “Islam also belongs in Germany.”

But whereas the media stressed Wulff’s comments about Islam, Merkel – the daughter of a Protestant pastor brought up in East Germany, who leads a predominantly Catholic party – said Wulff had emphasized Germany’s “Christian roots and its Jewish roots.”

“Now we obviously also have Muslims in Germany. But it’s important in regard to Islam that the values represented by Islam must correspond with our constitution,” said Merkel. “What applies here is the constitution, not sharia.”

Merkel said Germany needed imams “educated in Germany and who have their social roots here” and concluded: “Our culture is based on Christian and Jewish values and has been for hundreds of years, not to say thousands.”

Reuters, 6 October 2010

Merkel instructs Muslims to adopt ‘fundamental German values’

Roland Koch book presentationGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded Monday that Muslims living in Germany conform to “fundamental German values,” saying there was no leeway on the issue.

The Christian Democrat chancellor, in remarks promoting a fiercely conservative book by one of her supporters, said Muslims in Germany must orient themselves without reservation to Germany’s fundamental values and constitution. “There is no leeway on this,” she said, adding that Germans’ perceptions of Islam were dominated by Sharia (Islamic law), the lack of equality between men and women and honour killings.

The book by Roland Koch, a former premier of the state of Hesse who retired this year to go into business, is titled “Conservative. No State Can Be Built Without Values and Principles”.

Germany’s president, Christian Wulff, had spoken more embracingly the previous day, saying, “Christianity belongs in Germany. Judaism belongs in Germany. And by now, Islam also belongs in Germany.” It was in Germany’s national interest to prevent prejudice from festering and people being excluded, he said.

DPA, 4 October 2010

Wilders’ Berlin speech

Here are some extracts from Geert Wilders’ speech in Berlin on 2 October:

Germany’s national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.” Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology….

The American political scientist Mark Alexander writes that “One of our greatest mistakes is to think of Islam as just another one of the world’s great religions. We shouldn’t. Islam is politics or it is nothing at all, but, of course, it is politics with a spiritual dimension … which will stop at nothing until the West is no more, until the West has … been well and truly Islamized.” …

A dispassionate study of the beginnings of Islamic history reveals clearly that Muhammad’s objective was first to conquer his own people, the Arabs, and to unify them under his rule, and then to conquer and rule the world. That was the original cause; it was obviously political and was backed by military force. “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah’,” Muhammad said in his final address. He did so in accordance with the Koranic command in sura 8:39: “Fight them until there is no more dissension and the religion is entirely Allah’s.” …

“After Muhammad’s death, based upon his words and deeds, Islam developed Sharia, an elaborate legal system which justified the repressive governance of the world by divine right – including rules for jihad and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers. Sharia is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states…. Under Sharia law people in the conquered territories have no legal rights, not even the right to life and to own property, unless they convert to Islam….

In 1954, in his essay Communism and Islam, Professor Bernard Lewis spoke of “the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition”. Professor Lewis said that “The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War …  has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs…. The aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same.”

The American political scientist Mark Alexander states that the nature of Islam differs very little – and only in detail rather than style – from despicable and totalitarian political ideologies such as National-Socialism and Communism….

Politicians from almost all establishment [parties] today are facilitating Islamization. They are cheering for every new Islamic school, Islamic bank, Islamic court. They regard Islam as being equal to our own culture. Islam or freedom? It does not really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire establisment elite – universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians – are putting our hard-earned liberties at risk. They talk about equality, but amazingly fail to see how in Islam women have fewer rights than men and infidels have fewer rights than adherents of Islam.

Are we about to repeat the fatal mistake of the Weimar Republic? Are we succumbing to Islam because our commitment to freedom is already dead? No, it will not happen….

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky argues that after the fall of communism, the West failed to expose those who had collaborated with the Communists by advocating policies of détente, improved relations, relaxation of international tension, peaceful coexistence….

Islam is the Communism of today. But, because of our failure to come clean with Communism, we are unable to deal with it, trapped as we are in the old Communist habit of deceit and double-speak that used to haunt the countries in the East and that now haunts all of us. Because of this failure, the same leftist people who turned a blind eye to Communism then, turn a blind eye to Islam today. They are using exactly the same arguments in favor of détente, improved relations, and appeasement as before….

We must realize that Islam expands in two ways. Since it is not a religion, conversion is only a marginal phenomenon. Historically, Islam expanded either by military conquest or by using the weapon of hijra, immigration. Muhammad conquered Medina through immigration. Hijra is also what we are experiencing today. The Islamization of Europe continues all the time. But the West has no strategy for dealing with the Islamic ideology, because our elites say that we must adapt to them rather than the other way round….

My friends, when Ronald Reagan came to a divided Berlin 23 years ago he uttered the historic words “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. President Reagan was not an appeaser, but a man who spoke the truth because he loved freedom. Today, we, too, must tear down a wall. It is not a wall of concrete, but of denial and ignorance about the real nature of Islam.

Wilders to address right-wing rally in Berlin today

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his antagonism towards Islam, is to speak at an event in Berlin Saturday organised by a new right-wing party.

Die Freiheit (Freedom) party was founded in September by Rene Stadkewitz, another Islam-critic and a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

In Berlin early Saturday, police erected barricades aroundthe Hotel Berlin where the event is due to take place, with left-wing groups – under the banner of “Send Geert Wilders Home” – having announced a counter demonstration.

The event comes as fears grow in German mainstream political parties of the emergence of a new anti-immigration, anti-Islam right wing movement.

DPA, 2 Otober 2010

Wilders delivers anti-Islam speech in Berlin

In a speech in Berlin Saturday, Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders said Germany needed a political party that could defend against what he called the dangers of Islam. His visit sparked angry protests.

Populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his strident anti-Islam and anti-immigration views, has held a speech in a Berlin hotel amid protests outside the venue.

“Germany too needs a political movement that defends the national identity of the country. Germany’s political identity, its economic success, is threatened by Islam,” Wilders told an audience of some 500 people at a hotel in Berlin’s Tiergarten district. “Islam is a dangerous political ideology for everyone,” Wilders, who is facing prosecution in the Netherlands for incitement to hatred, said.

The 47-year-old was invited to Berlin by a party founded in September by Rene Stadtkewitz, a former member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) who is also a critic of Islam.

The event sparked protests in front of the hotel. Police said some 80 left-wing demonstrators holding up banners reading “Berlin Against Nazis – it’s our Right to Stop Them” and “Send Geert Wilders home” rallied in front of the hotel.

Deutsche Welle, 2 October 2010

Berlin anti-Wilders protest3

55 per cent of Germans believe Muslim community is a social and financial burden

Koln anti-mosque protestor2A majority of Germans believe the country’s roughly four million Muslims are an economic burden, a poll showed Thursday, adding further fire to a raging immigration debate in Europe’s top economy.

The survey, by the Allensbach Institute for the Financial Times Deutschland, showed that 55 percent of Germans thought Muslims “cost considerably more socially and financially than they produce economically.” Only one fifth of those polled believed the opposite. Anti-Muslim feeling was strongest in economically depressed East Germany, where 74 percent had a negative view.

The poll followed weeks of debate prompted by a member of Germany’s central bank, Thilo Sarrazin, who sparked outrage when he said the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim immigrants. Most Germans, however, believe he is correct, the poll suggested, with 60 percent saying they agreed with his thesis and 13 percent disagreeing.

Sarrazin eventually resigned from the bank, but the controversy raised fears that a charismatic populist, like anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders – who is due in Germany this weekend – could win considerable support.

There are between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims in Germany, or between 4.6 and 5.2 percent of the population, according to government figures.

AFP, 30 September 2010