In its election campaign, the far-right Alternative for Germany plays on fears of Islam and Muslim criminality. Will that lead to a backlash at the polls? DW looks at the tricky political situation of German Muslims.
A perfect example was the party's final policy paper presentation before the September 24 vote in Berlin on Monday.
- Hardliner Alexander Gauland began by defining Islam as a "political phenomenon" that as such was "not part of Germany."
- His fellow leading candidate Alice Weidel followed by citing statistics about violent crime among Muslim migrants and asylum seekers, claiming that it had resulted in lawless "no-go areas" throughout Germany and calling for a host of draconian punitive responses.
- Admitting large numbers of Muslims, so the logic, had caused what Weidel called an "erosion of law and order."
- When challenged to name a "no-go" area in Berlin, Weidel came up with Kottbusser Tor, a fairly well-known square in neighborhood of Kreuzberg with its large Turkish population. In fact, the city has beefed up police presence there, crime is down in 2017, and the square is home to supermarkets, bars, a small vegetable market and even a youth hostel.
Hardly a no-go area. But the AfD seems to hope that the stereotype of Islamified, crime-ridden Kreuzberg will resonate with Germans unfamiliar and wary of the urban environs of their country's capital.
The spread of right-wing populist movements has raised doubts about whether the practice of Islam is compatible with Western democracy. DW takes a closer look at some common misconceptions.
Image: picture-alliance/Godong/Robert Harding
How successful is linguistic integration?
Three quarters of German-born Muslims grow up with German as a first language. Among immigrants, only one fifth claim that German is their first language. The trend of language skills improving with successive generations is apparent across Europe. In Germany 46 percent of all Muslims say that their national language is their first language. In Austria this is 37 percent, Switzerland 34 percent.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
How do Muslims view interreligious relationships?
According to a 2017 study by Religion Monitor, 87 percent of Swiss Muslims have frequent contact with non-Muslims in their free time. In Germany and France it is 78 percent, while in the UK it's 68 percent and Austria, 62 percent. A large majority of Muslims in succeeding generations are found to have constant contact with non-Muslims, despite existing societal hurdles.
Image: imago/Westend61
Do Muslims feel connected in Europe?
Ninety-six percent of French Muslims feel connected with their country. The percentage of Muslims feeling the same way is equally high in Germany, while Switzerland has the highest levels, at 98 percent. Yet despite its relatively longer history of institutional openness to religious and cultural diversity, fewer Muslims, (89 percent) report feeling close ties to the UK.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Neubauer
How important is religion in the daily life of European Muslims?
Muslims from immigrant families maintain a strong religious commitment which continues across generations. Sixty-four percent of Muslims living in the UK describe themselves as highly religious. The share of devout Muslims stands at 42 percent in Austria, 39 percent in Germany, 33 percent in France and 26 percent in Switzerland.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Dean
What percentage of Muslim students pursue a degree?
According to data, 36 percent of German-born Muslims finish their education by the age of 17, without pursuing further studies. In Austria too, this proportion is around 39 percent. On the other hand, owing to a more equitable school system in France, Muslims there register significantly better educational outcomes. Only one in ten Muslim students leaves school before reaching 17.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Berg
What percentage of Muslims are in the job market?
About 60 percent of all Muslims who moved to Germany before 2010 now hold a full-time job, while 20 percent work part-time jobs. The figures are similar to those of non-Muslims. Muslims in Germany had higher employment rates than in other European countries. In France, the unemployment rate among Muslims is 14 percent, far higher than the 8 percent reported for non-Muslims.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/U.Baumgarten
How widespread is the rejection of Islam?
More than one in four non-Muslims in Austria do not want Muslims neighbors. This percentage is remarkably high in the UK as well, at 21 percent. In Germany, 19 percent of non-Muslim respondents say that they would not welcome Muslim neighbors. The figure stands at 17 percent in Switzerland and 14 percent in France. Overall, Muslims are among the most rejected social group.
Image: AP
‘Muslims in Europe - Integrated but not accepted’
The information included in this picture gallery is from the Bertelsmann Foundation’s study titled ‘Muslims in Europe - Integrated but not accepted?’ Conclusions are based on a representative survey of more than 10,000 people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and the UK. Muslim refugees who arrived in Europe after 2010 were not surveyed for the study.
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The AfD saw its electoral fortunes dip in 2017, as the number of asylum seekers dwindled and a belief began to spread that the refugee crisis was over. So it appears that far-right populists have gone over to a strategy of alarmist Islamophobia in an attempt to lure more voters to the polls. The tone is getting shriller and more hostile by the day.
The Muslim reaction
Sulaiman Wilms, editor of the Islamische Zeitung newspaper, told DW that the media hadn't drawn as much attention to the latest incendiary remarks as to earlier controversial statements by Gauland and Weidel.
"In the past weeks, we've experienced a constant breaking of a taboos and radicalization (by the AfD)," he said
The head of Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, disagrees. He says that media are only just now waking up to how far to the right the AfD, originally founded in 2013 as an anti-EU party, were from the very start.
"They were always radical," Mazyek told DW. "What is perhaps new is the realization in the past few days that this is a radical right-wing party, of which neo-Nazis and other extremists are part."
The AfD walked out of a meeting with Mazyek (left) and other Muslim leadersImage: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Nietfeld
Why this is significant
Mazyek sees the populists as the direct heirs of the extreme right-wing nationalist fringe parties of the past like the National Democratic German Party (NPD).
- "Whipping up resentment and dividing society between Muslims and non-Muslims was always the bread and butter of the extreme Right," Mazyek said.
- "The AfD completely took that over. I said years ago that the AfD was drifting further and further to the right and would try to subsume the NPD."
But the AfD currently enjoys far more mainstream acceptance than the NPD ever did – a threatening scenario for German Muslims.
Most AfD leaders and supporters have little personal experience of MuslimsImage: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Schmidt
The AfD has consistently refused to engage in dialogue with German-Muslim groups and its supporters seem disinterested in differentiating between stereotypes and actual Muslim life in the country. The party is most popular in the eastern part of Germany, where the fewest Muslims live.
How Muslims might vote
Ironically, given the AfD's depiction of Islam as a monolithic entity, Muslims in Germany, of whom 1.5 million are eligible to vote, are a very heterogeneous category - there has never been a cohesive Muslim voting block.
And the Central Council of Muslims is offering a draft sermon entitled "My vote counts" for religious services on Friday, September 22. It describes voting in the election two days later as a religious duty.
"This is all the more so because we Muslims as a social group in this country are directly effect and our religion has become a topic of party platforms,” the sermon reads. "Unfortunately, as we all know, there are parties running whose platforms are based on xenophobia and fear of Islam…we can't complain about far-right populism that is increasingly directed against Muslims, if we can't even turn out and vote."
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
