Most people in Germany express a certain degree of anxiety over the growth of the Islamic religion and culture in the country, according to a poll by Infratest-Dimap released by ARD. 33 per cent of respondents are very concerned about this matter, and 29 per cent express moderate concern.
Category Archives: Germany
Muslims don’t actually want to live in ghettos, shock survey finds
Most of Europe’s Muslims want to live in mixed communities, not segregated neighbourhoods, a new report says.
The work by the Open Society Institute (OSI), an independent think-tank, looked at the social integration of Muslims in 11 West European cities. It calls for improved efforts to tackle discrimination.
Europe’s Muslim population is expected to double by 2025 and could reach 40 million. But data on them is very limited, OSI says.
The report says religious discrimination remains a critical barrier to their participation in European society, and the situation has worsened in recent years. The OSI says its aim is to promote tolerance and fairness.
Nazia Hussein, who supervised the work, says many Muslims are still seen as outsiders.
“The majority of Muslims that we’ve spoken to across 11 cities feel very strongly attached to their neighbourhood and city, they feel quite strongly attached to their country,” she told the BBC. “But at the same time they don’t believe that their fellow countrymen or the wider society sees them as either German or French or English.”
The report offers a series of snapshots from: the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Rotterdam), Belgium (Antwerp), Germany (Berlin and Hamburg), Denmark (Copenhagen), the UK (Leicester and London), France (Marseille and Paris) and Sweden (Stockholm).
German banker rapped over headscarf remark
Amid a rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe, a former finance senator in Germany has been strongly criticized for his racist, anti-Islam comments. On Sunday, Thilo Sarrazin, former Berlin finance senator and currently a member of the German Central Bank committee called for a headscarf ban in German schools.
His comments come only four months after the official let loose against “Arabs” and “Turks” living in Germany in an interview with the culture magazine Lettre International. “A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he had said.
In his controversial remarks, Sarrazin also alluded to a new plan proposed by the country’s Immigration Commission, which would oblige foreigners seeking to live in Germany to sign “integration contracts” to respect Western values. “I don’t need to respect anyone who lives off the state, denies the state, doesn’t do anything to educate their kids, and just produces more headscarf girls,” Thilo Sarrazin had said.
Following his disparaging remarks, the senior official has faced strong criticism, with many calling on him to quit. On Sunday, Claudia Roth, leader of the German Green Party lambasted the executive board member, demanding his immediate resignation.
France: chief rabbi urges more tolerance for Muslims in Europe
France’s chief rabbi said Europe must change its attitude about Islam.
Rabbi Gilles Bernheim said a Swiss vote Nov. 29 forbidding the construction of minarets alongside mosques was a clear sign that Western European leaders had “failed” at building tolerance toward Muslims, and he called on “all religions” as well as political leaders to increase interfaith dialogue.
“Today we need to act so that Europeans, and not just the Swiss, change their opinion about Islam,” he wrote in an editorial published Wednesday in the French daily Le Figaro.
He compared the law aimed at minarets to past sanctions against European Jews. “The problem” with the Swiss vote “is the discrimination that it introduces by authorizing the construction of church steeples and tall buildings by all other religions except Islam”. Bernheim noted that in the past, Jews were forbidden to construct synagogues taller than churches.
See also The Local, which reports:
An official from the German Jewish Council warned on Wednesday that Switzerland’s vote to ban mosques with minarets was an expression of Europe’s deep-seated aversion to Islam that was aggravating the integration of Muslims.
While Muslims are regularly accused of an unwillingness to integrate or engage in dialogue, the majority of European society does “very little” to be hospitable or respectful, he said.
“A climate of trust can only happen if Muslims are naturally entitled to the right to their own religion, culture and language, and cultural diversity is considered to be a benefit and enrichment to our country and not a threat or burden,” Kramer said.
German courtroom killer gets life
A man has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murdering a pregnant Egyptian woman in a German courtroom. The Dresden state court also ruled that Alexander Wiens would not be eligible for early release.
Wiens, 28, admitted stabbing Marwa Sherbini to death at a court hearing involving them both in July. The crime sparked outrage across the Muslim world. Egypt said justice had been served with the sentence.
Wiens, a Russian-born German citizen, had argued his action was not premeditated. But prosecutors at the trial, which took place amid tight security, insisted he was motivated by a “hatred of non-Europeans and Muslims”.
See also the Times, 12 November 2009
Paul Ray’s new friend
Paul Ray, originator of the English Defence League, has found a new friend: Nick Greger, the German former neo-Nazi who is now a close associate of the Northern Ireland Loyalist Johnny Adair.
Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion has the details.
Thilo Sarrazin – racist hero
This summer we saw the ugly face of racism in the US with the rise of the “tea-baggers”. Now racism is being mainstreamed in Germany after a member of the Bundesbank – Thilo Sarrazin – let loose against “Arabs” and Turks living in Germany in an interview with the culture magazine Lettre International:
“A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he said.
“Forty per cent of all births occur in the underclasses. Our educated population is becoming stupider from generation to generation. What’s more, they cultivate an aggressive and atavistic mentality. It’s a scandal that Turkish boys won’t listen to female teachers because that is what their culture tells them”, he said. “I’d rather have East European Jews with an IQ that is 15pc higher than the German population,” he said.
Robert Spencer: teaming up with Euro-supremacists again
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was dead chuffed that he was recently invited to speak at a rally in Berlin organised by an outfit called Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa, which Spencer described as “the most important German human rights organization, seeking to preserve European values, freedom and democracy”.
LoonWatch examines the actual ideology of the BPE. They note “an emerging trend amongst some right-wing and fascist groups proclaiming their unconditional support for the state of Israel. What is likely is that many of these organizations, whose roots are steeped deep in a history of anti-Semitism are recreating themselves; dropping a now unpopular prejudice (anti-Semitism) for one more in vogue – anti-Muslim Islamophobia. Gone are the days when what they claimed to champion were the ‘Christian values and traditions of Europe’; now they have added ‘Christian-Jewish’ values to their slogans.”
Research shows multiculturalism is working in the UK
Muslim teenagers in the UK are much more assimilated with the nation than their counterparts growing up in other European countries, new research claims.
For the study, young second generation Pakistanis and Indians who were also Muslims living in Blackburn and Rochdale were compared with Moroccan and Algerian youngsters in France and Turks and former Yugoslavs in Germany.
The British “multicultural” approach of accommodating immigrants actually works better than the French or German approaches, it is claimed.
In France, where head coverings have been banned in schools, there is no allowance for ethnic and religious differences by the state. And the widespread ethnic tensions seen between North Africans and the police in France in 2007 were repeated this summer.
In Germany, unless you have a German ancestor you cannot legally become a German citizen no matter how long your family have settled in the country. Citizenship relies on a German blood line.
The research is to be published in a new book out tomorrow, titled Children of International Migrants in Europe. Professor Roger Penn, from Lancaster University, who co-authored the book said:
“Perceptions of discrimination were lowest in Britain and highest in Germany, reflecting the failure of the German model of exclusive ‘ethnic nationalism’. Britain’s model of multiculturalism is proving far more effective for the incorporation of ethnic minority groups than the French ‘assimilation’ or German ‘ethnic nationalist’ ones. There is simply a moral panic going on about young Muslims because of 7/7.”
Al-Sherbini: Questions for Europe and its Muslim organizations
Anas Altikriti draws the lessons from the brutal murder of Marwa Al-Sherbini.