In a fairly tolerant society of Germany, the Interior Minister Horst Seehofer made controversial remarks that Islam does not belong to Germany as apolitical slogan ahead of regional elections in Bavaria coming this fall. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed his comments by saying that the religion of four million German Muslim citizens is part of the country just like Christianity and Judaism. Germany has the second largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.
Successive governments of Germany have shown a generous attitude to the incoming immigrants from Turkey and large number of asylum seekers mainly from Islamic countries even before the economic integration of West and East European counties. Among the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, three million are of Turkish origin. Many of them are second or third generation of Turkish families who migrated to Germany in the 1960s and are almost well integrated in the country. In sharp contrast to the governments of other countries of European Union, Chancellor Angela Merkel opened her country’s borders to the heavy influx of Syrian war refugees despite the opposition from far right political parties like Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD). The party is known for its virulent anti-immigrants and anti-Muslims stance. AfD emerged the third largest political by securing 94 seats in Bundestag in October 2017 elections.
The main reason for the ant-Muslim feeling is socio-economic as the rate of unemployment and inflation has gone up and economic burden of unemployed immigrants and asylum seekers is affecting the German economy. Germany is the only European country that provides health facilities to illegal immigrants and refugees at par with the German citizens. Like the US president Trump America first policy the AfD leadership stands for Germans first campaign. However, the German demographers propagate the opposite view and they support immigration. More than 60 percent of Germany’s population consists of old and retired people and 30 percent youth is sustaining the economy. In their view, the country needs young immigrants to be trained and skilled to contribute their services for supporting and boosting the German economy. In the decade of 1990s the asylum seekers and war refugees were denied the opportunities of getting education, training and employment but now the situation and environment is vice versa.
By default, Germans are imbibed with a true spirit of humanity because they have suffered oppression and atrocities of two World Wars, hence to assume their innate phobia for any religion or race is out of question. If somebody wants to probe the issue of Islam-phobia, he or she will find its roots in the American Imperialism, particularly in their agenda of New World Order. It was the conservative US leadership that introduced the phraseology of radical Islam and included it in the Lexicon.
Germany is the EU, s largest economy which has witnessed growing Islam phobia in recent years triggered by propaganda from far right parties which have exploited it over the refugee crisis and terrorism. Since 2015, Germany received more than one million refugees mostly from Syria and Iraq. In a backlash to Turkey’s military operation against Kurd militants in Turkey and Syria, the PKK/PYD rebels have attacked a number of Turkish mosques in Germany. These incident may also be exploited the far right parties to pent up feelings of Islam phobia but that will not influence the humane people of Germany.
A number of incidents of acid throwing have been occurred in Briton. A teenage Egyptian girl student Mariam Moustafa was lynched by a group of English girls’ right in front of a shopping Mall in Nottingham on February 20. Neither the people in the shopping Mall nor the British Police came to her rescue and stop the cold blooded murder of an engineering student who would have aspired for a bright future. It is time of introspection for the rulers of Islamic countries whose hands are at each other throats in the ongoing Syrian conflict.
