On September 16, Germany began extending non permanent controls alongside all its borders, to the chagrin of its European Union neighbours. Inside Minister Nancy Faeser clarified that the transfer is supposed to not solely curb “irregular” migration, but additionally to cease what she referred to as “Islamist terrorism and critical crime”.
The announcement got here within the aftermath of a lethal knife assault that killed three individuals in Solingen, western Germany; the attacker, a Syrian refugee who had been denied asylum standing and was alleged to be deported, was accused of belonging to the ISIL (ISIS) group.
Some could also be stunned that such a draconian measure has been imposed by the liberal-left coalition made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberals. However the actuality is there’s a shift to the correct throughout the German political spectrum accompanied by raging Islamophobia.
Analysts have pointed to the rise of the far-right Different for Germany (AfD) as a driver of the rightward shift. Certainly, the get together has been making vital positive aspects on the nationwide and state ranges. At the beginning of the month, it received the elections within the jap state of Thuringia with 32.8 p.c. Within the jap state of Saxony, it got here second with 30.6 p.c, simply 1.3 proportion factors behind the centre-right Christian Democrats.
However the electoral successes of the AfD aren’t a driver; they’re a symptom of a basic tendency in German politics to normalise and interact within the demonisation and scapegoating of Muslims.
Members of the ruling coalition have repeatedly denounced “Islamism” in Germany. The chief of the Inexperienced Occasion within the Bundestag, Katharina Dröge, went so far as claiming in a latest assertion that “the poison of Islam reaches individuals’s minds additionally right here, not simply overseas”; later correcting herself that she meant “Islamism” as an alternative of “Islam.”
Phrases of warning about an “Islamist menace” aren’t simply within the mouths of German politicians, they’re additionally throughout official paperwork and coverage declarations of German establishments. For instance, the web site of the Federal Workplace for the Safety of the Structure, a key home intelligence company, warns: “Islamists goal to fully or partially abolish the free democratic fundamental order of the Federal Republic of Germany by invoking their faith”.
The Bavarian department of this federal workplace has gone even additional and launched on its web site the notion of “legalist Islamism”, which it defines as a option to pursue “extremist targets by political means inside the current authorized system”. It clarifies: “Legalist Islamists try and affect politics and society via lobbying [and] current themselves as open, tolerant and open to dialogue to the skin world, whereas anti-democratic and totalitarian tendencies persist inside the organisations.”
Basically, this idea can criminalise any group of Muslims who organise politically or socially and conduct their actions inside the bounds of the legislation. It marks any expression of tolerance or openness by Muslims as suspect as a result of it may be a “legalist Islamist pretence”.
Utilizing these ideas as a framework, numerous establishments on the state and federal ranges have created “de-radicalisation” programmes which have focused solely Muslims. Whereas such initiatives have been criticised and opposed in nations like the UK and the US by many social justice employees, in Germany, on the entire, they’re perceived as well-justified and efficient.
One such programme, the Bavarian Community for Prevention and Deradicalisation, lately produced a video about “Salafi radicalisation” that includes racist tropes about Muslim males exploiting Muslim ladies.
Earlier this month, the video was posted on social media by the Bavarian state authorities – at present managed by the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) – and instantly sparked criticism of its hateful illustration of Muslims.
The choice to publish made clear that the German authorities understand the outwardly observing Muslims as a safety threat and a hazard to German society.
The clip was ultimately taken down and the Inside Ministry issued a press release to the media, apologising for the “irritation and misunderstandings” and claiming the video tried “to indicate the strategy of Salafists and different Islamists to garner new, younger followers”. It additional mentioned that some scenes of the video can be “revised”.
What in all probability hastened the Bavarian authorities’s choice to take away the video was the response of some commentators who noticed parallels between its imagery and that of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. Particularly, the scene of a bearded man with evil-looking options devouring a girl appears very near Nazi representations of a Jewish man devouring ethnic Germans.
The anti-Semitic tint of Islamophobic imagery produced by German establishments is hardly stunning. As Israeli-German thinker Moshe Zuckermann has written, Islamophobia is the projection of an unutterable anti-Semitism.
The emotions mirrored in Germany’s previous anti-Semitism can’t be publicly expressed anymore because of the state’s official embrace of philo-Semitism. That’s the reason they’re channelled via Islamophobia. What can’t be achieved to the Jew anymore, can simply be achieved to the Muslim.
The historic parallel right here is tough to overlook: far-right forces are rising, as a racist hysteria focusing on one racialised group of individuals spreads via the German state and society. Historical past might not repeat itself absolutely. Mass extermination could also be changed by mass expulsion because the far-right idea of “remigration” is shortly gaining floor; it has lengthy left the far-right fringe to turn out to be more and more extra mainstream.
As German politicians of varied stripes and hues leap on the bandwagon of Islamophobia, they might do properly to do not forget that their predecessors doing precisely the identical virtually a century in the past didn’t finish properly for them. Hate isn’t a “profitable” technique.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.