Merkel Vows to Protect Germany’s Jews, Muslims from Extremism

Chancellor Angela Merkel promised yesterday to protect Jews and Muslims living in Germany from prejudice, saying vibrant democracy was the best way to combat the sort of extremist violence that shook France last week.

Merkel, a staunch ally of Israel and defender of Germany’s renascent Jewish community, has responded with unusual vigor to the growth of a grassroots, antiIslam movement in Germany and the attacks by Islamic radicals in Paris that killed 17 people.

Saying that Islamist extremism and anti-Semitism “often go handin-hand”, she told the Bundestag lower house of parliament that Christians, Jews and Muslims all had a place in Germany. Echoing her comments on Monday that “Islam belongs to Germany”, she said: “Jewish life belongs with us.”

“We will prosecute anti-Semitic crimes by all legal means,” she said during a debate on the Paris attacks. “And attacks on mosques will be prosecuted rigorously, because we won’t be divided by those using Islamist terrorism to cast suspicion on all Muslims in Germany.”

“As chancellor I will protect Muslims in our country. All of us in this house will do that,” she said. Merkel is criticized by some of her own Christian Democrats for her impassioned defense of Germany’s 4 million Muslims. They accuse her of playing down Germany’s Judeo-Christian roots.

The debate has been inflamed by the growth of PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, whose weekly marches in Dresden call for stricter immigration rules.