Germany: ‘Experts’ Say ‘Islamophobia’ Behind Muslim Anti-Semitism

Rising ‘Islamophobia’ in Germany is behind anti-Semitic attitudes amongst Muslim youths living in the country, according to a study by taxpayer-funded “experts”.

The findings of a three-year project to highlight and tackle anti-Semitism in Muslim school pupils in Germany were published in a report announced by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (FACE) Monday, entitled ‘Extremism out — Empowerment instead of anti-Semitism’.

The three-year project saw “experts” from the Liberal Islamic Federation and the Ibis Institute for Interdisciplinary Counseling and Intercultural Seminars work at schools on a programme aiming to “shed light on and dispel anti-Semitic attitudes among young people who follow the Muslim faith in order to empower and support them in understanding their independence and autonomy as part of German society”.

Funded by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the programme was piloted at schools in Dinslaken and Duisburg with a view to rolling it out at more schools across the country.

According to the 178-page report, so-called Islamophobia in Germany along with the allegedly “profound, traumatic consequences” of “discrimination and violating experiences” that they face in the country play a big part in Muslim anti-Semitism.

Educators should tackle “the challenge of dealing with” anti-Semitic attitudes in “adolescent members of the Muslim faith”, many of whom have been “devalued and discriminated themselves against as a result of Islamophobia”, by “mak[ing] them aware of other forms of group-focused enmity” where they can recognise others’ “socially marginalised position”, the report says.

Asserting that “many members of Germany’s Muslim minority are looking for an even smaller minority to scapegoat for their own discriminatory theories”, it states that “the full inconsistency of these views only becomes clear when the teenagers learn their minority… is in a similar victim position”.

“From this perspective, they then demand similar solidarity processes as are had by organisations for the Jewish community,” says the report, though it stresses that teachers should use language in a “sensitive, conscious” way to impress upon young people that Germany is a “nation of immigrants” with no differentiation between “The Germans” and “The Muslims”.

In addition to Islamophobia, the study also noted there was “a clear connection between fundamentalist religious views and anti-Semitism” and “so-called Israel criticism and anti-Semitism among Muslim youths”, the background of which it said stems from an “imagined Muslim or ethnic collective identity”.