Demonstrations in Western cities in support of Gaza (Germany) (social networking sites)
Nearly 200,000 Jews, 300,000 Palestinians, and approximately 6 million Muslims live in Germany. German politicians affirm their strict commitment to protecting Jewish life in Germany and guarding the Israeli state in the Middle East, saying; They learned from history.
The language circulating about Muslims in the media has been suffering from widespread disarray for some time, but it has witnessed a dangerous deterioration since last October 7. Political discourse has developed to the point that Israel is considered a supreme German interest (Staatsraison). Christ is presented, in the media and educationally, as a Jewish man who was mistakenly misunderstood by a group of Jewish fanatics. German institutions insist on merging Judaism with Christianity, Zionism with Semitism, and the Israeli project with German national security.
Recently, the authorities made a fundamental change in the structure of the citizenship test, which is a written examination that measures an individual's knowledge of German history and geography. The applicant for German citizenship must, from now on, answer a series of questions about the Jewish religion and the State of Israel.
Although a third of the citizens of the State of Israel are not Jews, German discourse, and Western discourse in general, insists on calling it a Jewish state. If it is not a Jewish project, it will take the form of a Western settlement outpost, and the same will happen to it as happened to other colonial phenomena.
The mosque, which was opened in 2018, in the presence of Turkish President Erdogan, has been the focus of controversy at all levels in Germany since 1992, since the beginning of the idea.
Its Jewishness gives it a right within history and a place at the center of the Near East. Choosing the wrong answer will place the person in the field of anti-Semites, who are a broad spectrum of people who do not deserve to belong to a society with which they do not share the same values. Judaism lies at the center of German moral value, and perhaps hijacks it, and one can no longer be a true German if one does not bear reverence and reverence for the Israeli project.
At the beginning of the war on Gaza, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the German opposition in Parliament, said that his country would not take refugees from Gaza because “we have enough anti-Semitism.” Talk of a direct relationship between anti-Semitism and the increasing size of the Muslim community in Germany has become something like an established fact.
The Ministry of Interior repeats the same claim, going beyond the data provided by its institutions that completely contradict these allegations. According to the “PMK Politically Motivated Crimes” report, the number of synagogues that were attacked in 2022 reached twenty-eight, a decrease of 43% compared to the previous year.
Details of the report revealed the following: The German right committed 17 cases of attacks, and the radical left carried out 3 cases, while it was difficult for the agencies to classify six cases, and two cases of attacks were attributed to an ideology imported from abroad without classification. The same report revealed another picture that Islamic religious institutions, mosques in particular, suffer from.
Despite the noticeable decline, 10%, in the rate of attacks on religious facilities in Germany, what is happening to mosques is going in another direction. The Ministry of Interior recorded a 15 percent increase in the level of aggression, compared to the previous year. The Ministry of Interior’s data coincides with what is published by the Mediendienst Integration Project, from Berlin, where we read in its data that 95 mosques were subjected to attacks in the year 2019, compared to 22 cases in the year 2010.
In 2020, a German fanatic shot nine people of immigrant origins in the city of Hanau in the state of Hesse. The then Interior Minister - Seehofer of the Christian Coalition - formed an expert committee to study Islamophobia in Germany. More than two years later, the Committee of Nine Experts issued a 400-page report on the state of anti-Islamism in Germany.
The report goes on to say; It is a structural phenomenon, rooted in German discourse and imagination. In the section related to building mosques, the report said: It is an issue that raises widespread debate and anger on many levels, and the arguments witnessed in the debate can be referred to an anti-Islamic mood Antiislamische Haltung. In general, the report says: Muslims build their mosques in abandoned places and facilities, such as: “factory halls, warehouses, and shops,” the words of the expert committee here.
The situation is different with Jewish synagogues, which are establishments located in the heart of cities and rival in their splendor and architecture rivaling cathedrals. The report of the expert committee referred to came in the case of the Köln Central Mosque. To demonstrate the anti-Islamic situation in the country.
The mosque, which was opened in 2018, in the presence of Turkish President Erdogan, has been the focus of controversy at all levels in Germany since 1992, since the beginning of the idea. Experts noted that the controversy raised, including the language used in public debate, could be traced back to a preconceived position that sees the Islamic religion in an inferior position, unqualified to express itself, and unworthy of being present in the public space Sichtbarkei.
The mosque became visible, then, so the debate moved to another matter: the lesser visible does not have the right to become audible, or Hörbarkeit der muslimischen Glaubenspraxis. Controversy still exists over the five minutes given to the call to prayer once a week.
Other Germans lecture on religious diversity, and they and their European comrades issue annual reports on the state of freedom of belief and expression in the world. These reports are filled with eloquent sermons delivered by men and women well-trained in speaking to the world. However, the idea of building a mosque in a place that is not an abandoned workshop or a warehouse becomes an existential challenge for German culture.
Germany is trying to deal with its sins in the last century, but its capacity is barely sufficient to absorb the Jewish question. The political field, as well as the media field, is filled with anti-Muslim linguistic expressions, linguistic tools that are very similar to those used against the Jews a century ago. Our party must be free of Muslims, says parliamentarian Bellman of the Christian Democratic Party. It is related to our Christian vision of man, and a Muslim cannot be part of it.
Last November, the Ministry of the Interior held a conference in the city of Cologne. The conference wanted to warn against the “Islamophobia” that the regime, through its tools and arms, contributes to creating. However, things went off the agenda and went in the direction they had always gone.
The former president of Germany, Christian Wulff, stood on the podium and warned the Muslims of his country: This is Germany, not Yathrib of the seventh century. You cannot do to the Jews what Muhammad did to them. Well-known Islamic federations were excluded from attending the anti-Islamophobia conference, and the Minister of the Interior spoke a lot, until she said; She wants to hear tolerance for Israel in her Friday sermons.
In the 1830s, Heinrich Heine, the German Jewish poet, was deported to France and his books were burned. He said in his famous play “Al-Mansur,” about the last Muslim ruler in Andalusia: “Where books are burned, man will eventually be burned.” Exactly a century later, in the 1930s, the Nazi Germans put European Jews in the Holocaust. The culture of remembrance has failed to provide sufficient advice and lessons. Here is Germany, after another century, preparing to stand before the International Court of Justice to refute a lawsuit filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of contributing to committing human genocide.
Politicians do not speak publicly about Islamophobia, and in response to a question submitted by the Left Bloc in Parliament, the Ministry of Interior spoke of a thousand cases of direct attacks on Muslims, from threats to vandalism of property and serious physical injuries. The Ministry of Interior classified recorded crimes against Muslims, individuals and property, as criminal misdemeanors. While the “criminal misdemeanors” to which Jews were exposed did not exceed 68 cases.
Germany's skies are covered with rhetoric about Jews whose lives are in danger, and German intellectuals base their approach to the issue on deceptive studies that survey Jews' impressions of society, rather than on real data.
In numerous polls, more than a third of German Jews said; They believe that Muslims pose a threat to their lives, but Interior Ministry data confirms that the danger is coming from within German society, from the far right and left. Regarding Muslims, the matter goes beyond impressions to facts. The percentage of Germans who see Islam as a danger has been between 50-60% since 2012, according to periodic polls conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation.
In line with what the Bertelsmann Foundation offers, a study from Leipzig said: 40% of the population of eastern Germany, where the radical AfD's strength is concentrated, want to ban Muslims from entering Germany. Across Germany, according to the study, 27% support the same opinion.
Islamophobia, the German version, extends to all Arab manifestations. Since October 7, Germany has criminalized Palestinian icons and given school principals the right to punish students who carry the Palestinian flag or keffiyeh. These icons have become explicit anti-Semitism that “contradicts our values and does not belong to our tolerant society,” as is the daily rhetorical refrain.
As if the physical existence of the Arab-Muslim, before action and speech, had become an existential threat to Semitism. In recent days, the German media has circulated news about the intentions of Muslim activists, in addition to anti-Zionist leftists and Jews. The Palestine Conference will be held in Berlin between April 12-14. The conference agenda says: He will call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and will demand that Germany and Israel pay compensation to the Palestinians for what happened to them.
The conference, according to a statement by its organizers, will call for an end to criminalizing activities sympathetic to Palestinians. German newspapers attacked the idea of the conference and its organizers. The attack included those “Jews isolated from their community,” as the German media refers to them, meaning the association “Jewish Voices for Peace in the Near East.”
The Conference of Shame, the Conference of Hate, the Conference of Shameless Terrorism, a race in choosing titles and a breathless competition in defaming the conference, its organizers and its guests. The organizers did not disclose the names of the guests; For fear that the German authorities would issue a decision preventing them from entering Germany.
The unknown guests, whose names no one read, were given great epithets.
They are anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, terrorist sympathizers, and those who call for the erasure of Israel from existence. According to an incendiary report by the Tages-Spiegel newspaper. The security services eliminated doubt and stormed the homes of those calling for the conference, and confiscated the possessions and documents they found.
One can see the Dawn Visitors in Germany, a version of which military dictatorships are now rising above. It is no longer rare news that says; The security services raided the home of a vascular surgeon, of Palestinian origin, at four in the morning. Because of his political activity. You can't miss the trembling of the words on the lips of the German Radio correspondent when she is asked a question about the echo caused by a Palestinian director's call at the Berlin Film Conference for a ceasefire.
Those working in the fields of culture and media fear that the wrong words will come out of their lips. From the stage of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the director of the fair gave a sharp speech to her guests last fall, telling them: “We do not want to hear a word but.” German culture no longer tolerates “but,” and a person can express his opinion provided that he says the right words, as the artist Wei-wai, a prominent intellectual and visual artist who fled his country in 2015 for the free world, only to find - in his words - less tolerant of freedom. Expression of what he experienced in the capital, Beijing.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.