Muslims Demand Germany "Make Islam Equal to Christianity"

by Soeren Kern
May 15, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3715/germany-islam-christianity

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Muslims attending the German Islam Conference were apparently offended by the insinuation that Islam could be radical or violent.

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.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Related Topics: Germany | Soeren Kern

Scottish Universities Hotbeds of Anti-Jewish Sentiment

by Samuel Westrop
May 15, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3711/scottish-universities-anti-jewish

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The greatest problem to tackling anti-Jewish incitement is the denial that there is any such problem. The facts, as we have seen, tell a rather different story.

A charity ball organized by the University of St. Andrew's Jewish Society, guarded by plain-clothes police officers, was held in secret last week after threats were made against staff at the original venue. The increasing security and secrecy surrounding this annual student event is an illustration of the sentiments aimed at Jewish students in Scotland.
The ball was originally supposed to be held at the Golf Hotel in St. Andrews, a small University town on the east coast of Scotland. After a campaign organized by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a number of threats were directed at the hotel's staff, and a number of violent comments were posted on social media, with one protester writing: "Friday we send them into hell."
The Golf Hotel cancelled the event over "safety concerns." One member of the Jewish student society said that the decision to cancel the event was "pathetic…. They [the Golf Hotel] had no right to violate their part of the contract. The Golf Hotel is scared of them. A victory does not come from bullying people into submission, it comes from engaging people and opening their minds."
Although activists from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign [SPSC] were able to pressure the hotel into cancelling the charity ball, it was held secretly at another location, and raised over three times the amount of money for its nominated charities.
The SPSC offers a free book to all new members: Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People -- a book the central argument of which is that the Jewish people, as a single collectivity, do not exist. Last year, the group also protested in support of a student at St. Andrews, Paul Donnachie, who was charged and found guilty of racially abusing a Jewish student.
In 2006, the SPSC commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day by performing a reading of "Perdition," a play that claims the Holocaust was a joint venture between Zionists and Nazis. In 2009, the group commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day by running an event with Azzam Tamimi, a spokesperson for the terror group Hamas. And in 2010, the group reproduced the winning entry from Iran's offensive Holocaust cartoon competition of 2006.
Senior SPSC member John Wight has previously promoted a website called the "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust." Wight has said: "As soon as the scales fall from the eyes of international Jewry with regard to the racist and fascist ideology that is Zionism, the world will begin to emerge from the iron heel of war and brutality in the Middle East."
Similarly, Edinburgh PSC chair Mike Napier has referenced a number of neo-Nazi websites in an article that vindicated the murder of eight Jewish students at a religious school in Jerusalem, on the grounds that the school is "the main educational and training centre of the fanatical Israeli settler movement," and that the students are taught to regard Gentiles as cattle and to use Arabs for "medical experiments" and to send "Arabs to the gas chambers."
The "We are all Hana Shalabi Network" also supported the protest against the St. Andrews Jewish Society. This group campaigns in support of Hana Shalabi, a member of the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad. In 2012, Shalabi visited Tehran as part of a delegation from the Islamic Jihad movement. In front of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Shalabi spoke of her commitment to "jihad and resistance" and praised the Iranian revolution in 1979 as the "beginning of a new era."
Across Scotland, Jewish students regard the line between anti-Israel activism and anti-Jewish incitement as wearing dangerously thin. Several months ago, a number of Jewish students the University of Edinburgh abandoned their courses because of the "toxic atmosphere" on campus.
Moreover, the University of Glasgow is a participant in a European Union-funded program, "Lifelong Learning in Palestine," in which the Islamic University of Gaza is one of the main beneficiaries. The Islamic University of Gaza is the "the brain trust and engine room of Hamas," the Palestinian terror group that rules Gaza. In 2008, Hamas was using the University to build explosives and rockets for use against Israeli civilians.
In 2011, security guards had to step in to protect Arab-Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi at the University of Edinburgh, after a student mob surrounded him while screaming "Viva, Viva Palestina."
Increasingly, Jewish students' choice over which university to attend is influenced by the potency of anti-Israel sentiment. The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has reported a rise in the number of inquiries from parents and potential students in the US and Europe about the safety of Jewish students.
In 2011, the British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, claimed that the image of Universities being "hotbeds of anti-Israel sentiment" was false. University authorities also downplay the extent of the campus extremism. Last month, Baroness Warsi, the Minister of State for Faith and Communities, and Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, both claimed that the problem of university extremism is greatly exaggerated. The facts, as we have seen, tell a rather different story.
The greatest obstacle to tackling anti-Jewish incitement is the denial that there is any such problem.

Related Topics: United Kingdom | Samuel Westrop

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