There is growing alarm in Germany over the torching of mosques, churches and schools in the Netherlands following the brutal killing of Islam-critical film director Theo van Gogh.
| "Oh, hold me, Dieter! I'm so concerned!" |
With 3.4 million Muslims comprising 4 percent of Germany's population, the question was put this way by a banner headline in the conservative Bild newspaper: "Is the hate going to come here?" asked the biggest selling tabloid.
| So you get sand up your nose when you bury your head like that? |
 The Berliner Zeitung, a left-leaning paper in the German capital where about 200,000 mainly Turkish Muslims live, claims to know the answer: "The feelings of hated against the majority Christian society are growing." So far there has not been a high profile killing in Germany to match the stabbing and shooting of van Gogh. But a series of attacks on Jews in Berlin by Arab youths have sharply raised concerns. Germany's tough-minded interior minister, Otto Schily, spoke at the weekend of "a danger" to the country despite successes in integrating the majority of immigrants. Schily drew headlines earlier this year with a harsh warning to Islamic fundamentalists: "If you love death so much, then it can be yours."
| I knew there was a reason I like Schily... |
German opposition conservatives are demanding a ban on preaching in mosques in any language other than German. Calls for such a move were fuelled by a dramatic TV film secretly made last week in a Berlin mosque. "These Germans, these atheists, these Europeans don't shave under their arms and their sweat collects under their hair with a revolting smell and they stink," said the preacher at the Mevlana Mosque in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, in the film made by Germany's ZDF public TV, adding: "Hell lives for the infidels! Down with all democracies and all democrats!"
| "Oh, ja, ja! RÃŒle ÃŒs mit der Kalif chösen fÃŒr uns by learned höly men! MÀke us schÀven unser pittzen!" |
There are also demands for loosening German laws to make it easier to expel foreign extremists after years of wrangles to win approval for deportation of radical Turkish Islamist, Metin Kaplan, the self- styled "Caliph of Cologne". Udo Ulfkotte, a German journalist who has received death threats since writing a critical book on Islam titled "The War in our Cities," underlines that many of the group responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US had lived in Germany.
| We certainly did, a while back in fact ... |
Asked about van Gogh's killing, Ulfkotte said: "The spark could jump over here at any time. We just need a provocation like in Holland. Islamists in Germany approved of (van Gogh's) murder and many of them actually cheered it." But other experts - while not downplaying threats - warn against being alarmist.
| "Nein, nein! Lassen wir nicht be so hÀsty! Sömeöne cöuld get hurt!" |
Steffen Angenendt, a migration expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations and member of the German government's "Council of Experts on Immigration and Integration," argues Germany is far better off than the Netherlands.
| "Oh, ja! Ve got it much bettern dem!" |
Holland, says Angenendt, now faces "the rubble" of its failed policy of tolerant multi-culturalism for which it was the European flagship during the past decades. Only limited efforts were made at integration in the Netherlands after which the foreign communities were largely ignored, says Angenendt. Germany has three big advantages compared to the Netherlands, he argues. - First is geography: Germany is not nearly as densely settled as the Netherlands and people have more room. "The Dutch feel as if they have no space," said Angenendt.
- A second plus for Germany is that unlike Holland the cities with big foreign populations, such as Berlin and Frankfurt, mostly do not have districts totally dominated by one group. Even Berlin-Kreuzberg with its big Turkish community is still a multi-ethnic society, he says.
- Thirdly, integration has generally worked better in Germany than in countries like the Netherlands, Angenendt says. This will improve further from January 1 when Germany's new immigration law comes into force. Under this legislation all new immigrants will have to take 600 hours German language instruction plus a 30 hour course on German society. In addition, 50,000 immigrants already here will be eligible to take the courses each year.
- A further point, not directly mentioned by Angenendt, is the fact that 75 percent of Germany's Muslims are from Turkey. A survey by the Islam Archive in Soest - which houses a major collection of Islamic books and documents - found that the majority of Turks in Germany do not even practice their religion. Says Buelent Arslan, head of the German-Turkish Forum: "We have an Islam which is very influenced by Turkey and this is the most enlightened and secular."
Still, even a small percentage of extremists is deeply worrying. Germany's "Verfassungschutz" - the domestic intelligence service - estimates there are 31,000 radical Islamists living in Germany of whom several thousands are prepared to use violence. The biggest group is a Turkish movement named "Milli Goerues" with 26,500 members, which fights against integration of Turks into German society. In a court case which set security establishment alarm bells ringing, a judge ruled last week week that Milli Goerues membership did not justify a German airport's bid to ban an employee from working within its security zone.
| Perhaps Hizzoner would like a Milli Goerues mechanic to maintain the brakes on his car, then? |
The number of reported crimes carried out by foreign extremists in Germany almost tripled last year compared with 2002, warns the Verfassungsschutz. |