A major conference on German-Muslim relations has ended in failure after Muslims attending the event refused to acknowledge the government's concerns about the threats to security posed by radical Islam.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich had wanted the eighth annual German Islam Conference, held in Berlin on May 7, to focus on finding ways the government could work together with "moderate" Muslims in Germany to combat Islamism and extremism.
But Muslims attending the gathering were apparently offended by the insinuation that Islam could be radical or violent, and demanded instead that the German government take steps to make "Islam equal to Christianity" in Germany.
The German Islam Conference was launched by former Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in 2006, and has been billed as the "central forum for dialogue" between German politicians and representatives of the estimated 4.3 million Muslims now living in Germany.
The stated aim of the annual event -- where Muslim organizations and individuals are invited to sit at the table with representatives from federal, state and local government -- is to promote Muslim integration into German society.
This year's event was focused around three main themes: institutional cooperation between Muslims and the German state; gender equality as a common value, and prevention of extremism, radicalization and social polarization.
Muslims attending the conference evidently wanted to focus only on the first theme, which included "promoting the introduction of comprehensive Islamic religious instruction in public schools, including through conferences and publications." Although the government has already made many concessions in this regard, Muslims complained about German "interference" in selecting the teachers who provide Islam training in German schools.
In respect to the second theme -- gender equality -- the German government had hoped to find solutions to the problems of honor violence and forced marriage. But Muslims refused even to acknowledge any connection between Islam and forced marriage. Instead, they managed to turn the gender issue on its head by demanding that German employers promise not to discriminate against Muslim women who want to wear burkas to work.
The third theme -- the prevention of Islamic extremism and radicalization -- undoubtedly caused the most controversy at this year's conference.
Interior Minister Friedrich had been hoping to enlist the support and cooperation of Muslims at the conference to help in the fight against the radicalization of young Muslims in Germany.
Since taking office in 2011, Friedrich has led Germany's multifaceted response (here, here and here) to the rise of radical Islam there. Friedrich and other German security officials are increasingly concerned about the threat posed by home-grown terrorists inspired by Islamic extremists, who openly state that they want to establish Islamic Sharia law in Germany and across Europe. (A recent poll found that more than half of all Germans view Islam as a threat to their country and believe it does not belong in the Western world.)
But Muslims were perceptibly furious when Friedrich refused to give in to their demands to drop discussion of security-related aspects of Islam at this year's conference.
The director of inter-religious dialogue at the Turkish-Islamic Union for Islamic Affairs [Türkisch-Islamische Union der Anstalt für Religion (DITIB)], Bekir Alboga, complained that Friedrich had rendered the conference "pointless" by bringing "security policy themes too far to the fore." Alboga said the German Islam Conference "makes no more sense in its current form. I do not see any genuine partnership." He added that "we [Muslims] do not want to be seen as being a security factor."
In a speech he delivered at the conference, Alboga used logical gymnastics to blame Germany of promoting "extremism and radicalization" by not doing enough to stop "Islamophobia."
Later, in an interview with the German news agency Deutsche Welle, Alboga said he was hoping that German Chancellor Angela Merkel would be defeated in federal elections in September 2013 so that the Muslim-German dialogue could continue in a more positive way with a new government led by the more Muslim-friendly Social Democrats. "I yearn for a real partnership," he said.
It should be noted that Alboga's DITIB is a branch of the Turkish government, which controls over 900 mosques in Germany. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long used DITIB to dissuade Turkish immigrants from integrating into German society.
Alboga's complaints were echoed by the Secretary-General of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany[Zentralrats der Muslime in Deutschland (ZMD)], Aiman Mazyek, who said the Islam conference "urgently needs a general overhaul" because it is not a "dialogue among equals."
The head of the Turkish Community in Germany [Türkische Gemeinde in Deutschland (TGD)], Kenan Kolat, called on the German government to create a new Integration Ministry that would take the responsibility for organizing the German Islam Conference away from the Interior Ministry.
The director of the Islamic Council of Germany [Islamrats für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (IR)], Ali Kizilkaya, described the German Islam Conference as "a train heading in the wrong direction" because the event is built on "security concerns and mistrust."
The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), eager to court disgruntled Muslim voters in a desperate bid to unseat Merkel this fall, has jumped on the anti-Friedrich bandwagon with enthusiasm.
The Interior Minister of Lower Saxony, the SPD's Boris Pistorius, accused Friedrich of fomenting "Islamophobia" by making "insensitive comments." Pistorius said the original goal of the German Islam Conference "was to talk about Islam" but Friedrich and his predecessor, Thomas de Maizière, changed the focus to "security and terrorism" and this shift has "alienated" Muslim participants. Pistorius said that after the federal elections, a victorious SPD would re-conceptualize the conference by "carefully separating the concepts of Islam and Islamism."
The parliamentary secretary of the SPD, Thomas Oppermann, accused Friedrich of leading the Islam Conference to an impasse, and said, "We want to put the dialogue with Muslims on a new basis." The Integration Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, SPD politician Guntram Schneider, hinted at what such a "reorientation of the conference" might entail when he complained that the event did not address "Islamophobia."
Potential SPD coalition partners also joined the electioneering. Left Party politician Christine Friedrich Buchholz accused Friedrich of not being really interested in a genuine dialogue with Muslims. Green Party leader Renate Künast said the conference needed a "reset" because Friedrich had "smashed too many dishes."
In any event, this is not the first time the German Islam Conference has ended in failure. The official focus of the conference in 2012 was to find ways to deal with the spiraling rates of forced marriages and domestic violence among Muslims in Germany.
But Muslim representatives attending that event were in no mood for compromise. Then, like now, they refused to accept responsibility for any of the innumerable irritants in German-Muslim relations. Instead, they insisted that the German government amend its "misguided" approach to Muslim integration.
The 2012 event ended without a joint press conference because of lingering Muslim pique at "offensive" comments that were allegedly uttered at the press conference that ended the 2011 event.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org
UN Pressures Germany to Bow to ‘Hate Speech’ Hysteria
A recent decision by the United Nation’s (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination(CERD) foreshadows an ominous future for free societies should Muslim entities like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) achieve their goal of having “Islamophobia” defined internationally as a form of prejudice.
Former German central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin has got himself in trouble with the UN, as the Turkish Union in Berlin-Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin-Brandenburg or TBB) stated with satisfaction in an April 18, 2013, German-language press release. The spokesman of this German-Turkish interest group, Hilmi Kaya Turan, praised a February 26, 2013, “historic decision” by the CERD condemning Germany for not having prosecuted Sarrazin’s criticism of Arab and Turkish immigrants.
Sarrazin, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD), produced astorm of controversy with his August 2010 book Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab: Wie Wir Unser Land aufs Spiel Setzen (“Germany Abolishes Itself: How We Are Risking Our Country”). In the context of this controversy, CERD’s detailed 19-page decisionextensively excerpted in English translation a fall 2009 interview with Sarrazin. In the interview, the Berlin magazine Lettre International discussed some of the upcoming book’s themes.
CERD complained that “[i]n this interview, Mr. Sarrazin expressed himself in a derogatory and discriminatory way about social ‘lower classes’, which are not productive’ and would have to ‘disappear over time’ in order to create a city of the ‘elite’.” Sarrazin specified that about 20% of Berlin’s population depended on welfare payments, which he wanted to cut, “above all to the lower class.”
Berlin’s indigent included within the immigrant population a “large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown through erroneous policies, have no productive function, except for the fruit and vegetable trade.” Compounding the problem for Sarrazin was a birthrate among Arabs and Turks about three times their percentage of the population. Sarrazin thereby saw “Turks…conquering Germany just like the Kosovars conquered Kosovo: through a higher birth rate.” Sarrazin “wouldn’t mind if” these immigrants “were East European Jews with about a 15% higher IQ than the one of Germans.” Central to Sarrazin’s thesis was the assumption that “human ability is to some extent socially contingent and to some extent hereditary.” Sarrazin’s “solution to this problem” was “to generally prohibit influx, except for highly qualified individuals and not provide social welfare for immigrants anymore.”
As noted by CERD, Sarrazin’s interview comments prompted on October 23, 2009, a criminal complaint by the TBB under the German Criminal Code’s Article 130 against “Incitement to Hatred” (Volksverhetzung). Yet upon review, German prosecutors suspended their investigations on November 23, 2009, deciding that Sarrazin’s views fell under the protection of free speech contained within Article 5 of Germany’s Basic Law (Grundgesetz). Prosecutors quoted by CERD had judged Sarrazin’s statements as a “contribution to the intellectual debate in a question…very significant for the public.”
Following this domestic defeat, the TBB turned in 2010 to Article 14 of CERD’s governing convention (Article 14), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article 14 provides that the CERD may “consider communications from individuals or groups of individuals within” a consenting State Party’s “jurisdiction claiming to be victims of a violation by that State Party of any of the rights set forth in this Convention.” In response, CERD agreed with TBB that Sarrazin had made discriminatory comments and that the German “State party failed to provide protection against such discrimination.” CERD thus wanted the “State party” to “review its policy and procedures…to give wide publicity to the Committee’s Opinion,” and to deliver “within 90 days, information from the State party about the measures taken.”
CERD’s decision did not involve Islam directly, for Sarrazin had referenced the ethnicity of Arabs and Turks, not their majority-Muslim faith. Yet CERD’sdecision noted various party submissions according to which in Germany the “labels ‘Turks’ or ‘Arabs’ are applied as synonyms for Muslims.” Citing various evidence examples, CERD agreed with one submission that “Mr. Sarrazin’s statements led to public vilification and debasement of Turks and Muslims in general.”
Any such foreign judgment of a country raises sensitive questions of national sovereignty, particularly when involving limitations of free speech. Sarrazin’s case was no exception, especially in light of CERD members mocked by the German conservative website Politically Incorrect as “torches of democracy and human rights.” Analyzing this roster, Germans might well wonder what they could learn in equality under the law from members hailing from Algeria, Burkina Faso, China, Niger, Pakistan, Russia, Togo, and Turkey, among other countries.
The Sarrazin case exemplifies how international law and its institutional developments can impact domestic matters. Observers of the OIC, an international organization of 57 majority-Muslim nation-states (including “Palestine”), would be well advised to keep Sarrazin in mind when considering the OIC’s longstanding campaign against “Islamophobia.” This campaign would only too willingly extrapolate from Sarrazin’s comments about Arab and Turk immigrants, however controversial, to a condemnation of criticizing Islamic ideas as well.
Defenders of free speech should beware. The transnationalist, multiculturalists and OIC have a new mechanism to override domestic legal hate speech decisions. Precedent is slowly but surely being set.
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