Anti-islam outburst rocks Merkel’s new government

“Islam belongs to Germany.” That’s the much-quoted line that Germany’s then president, Christian Wulff, came up with in 2010, said Klaus Ungerer in Humanistischer Pressedienst (Oberwesel). Politicians love to talk like that: it sounds determined and strong – but no one knew what it meant then, and we are none the wiser now. But this month, when Germany’s new interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said “Islam does not belong to Germany”, his meaning was clearer. His words have got Angela Merkel’s new coalition off to a very rocky start. Seehofer, who is also leader of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU – has form in this regard, said Jacques Schuster in Die Welt (Berlin). He was fiercely critical of Merkel’s decision, back in 2015, to let in close to a million refugees. And after his party got a pasting in last year’s election (it could even lose to the far-right Alternative for Germany, AFD, in state elections later this year) he has been quick to stake out an anti-immigrant position within the government, calling for the Schengen Agreement to be suspended and for border checks to be intensified. Merkel quickly slapped him down for his latest remark and left-wingers reacted with their usual outrage, as if they’d just “stepped in dog poo”. But a poll shows 76% of Germans agree with Seehofer. What I can’t stand is the way Seehofer claims he’s against Islam, but not ordinary Muslims, said Malte Lehming in Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin). Some 4.5 million German citizens are Muslims, so he has to talk that way. But it’s like Catholics denouncing homosexual acts while saying gays must be treated with “compassion”. In a sense, the row proves that Islam does indeed “belong to Germany”, said Ferda Ataman in Der Spiegel (Hamburg). Islam has a compulsive fascination for Germans: the need to argue over it is now part of their identity. The most striking image of the last election was a caricature of Merkel in a niqab. Hating Islam almost defines the far-right: it is to the AFD what “the wooden leg is to the pirate”.

The endless obsession with Islam is just one more example of the general sense of “helplessness” pervading Germany, said Ines Pohl in Deutsche Welle (Bonn). There is of course a crucial debate to be had on the issue, but Seehofer’s aggressive statements – at a time when attacks on mosques are soaring – simply fuel divisions. Instead of firing up extremists, he should be asking what kind of Islam does belong in Germany and be joining with civic-minded Muslims in helping to bolster it.