A female member of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) wore an Islamic full-face veil to parliament as Germans debate whether or not to ban the garment in public.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) deputy parliamentary chairwoman in Thuringen, Wiebke Muhsal, came into parliament Thursday wearing a full-face Islamic veil or niqab.
The female MP entered the chamber and wore the garment during a debate on daycare until she was forced to remove it by the President of the parliament Christian Carius, reports Focus Online.
Ms. Muhsal spoke to exclusively to Breitbart London saying: “The niqab and the burka make women faceless,” adding that the garment prevents another person from confronting them face to face.
“The intention of wearing the niqab today was to represent this terrible situation for women. A ban on such full-face veils is the right way to stop this development and to protect our liberal order,” she said.
Even after Ms. Muhsal was forced to remove the garment, there was a debate in the parliament about her actions.
Birgit Pelke, a member of parliament for the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), said that it was “unworthy” for the AfD to use the chamber as a stage to protest issues like the Islamisation of Germany, a subject which the AfD has been keen on tackling after launching their manifesto at their annual party conference earlier this year in Stuttgart.
The AfD have been sharply criticised by media and other parties for their new tougher stance on Islam in Germany. Their proposals to ban the building of minarets, end public calls to prayer, and ban the burka have led to critics calling the party “Islamophobic”.
However, public reaction to their policies has largely been positive with the AfD’s polling numbers continuing to rise.
In the region of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the party has even overtaken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to become the second largest party in the region ahead of local elections to be held this Sunday.
The AfD have made substantial gains this year in local and regional elections and have gone from polling in single digits to being the third largest party in the country. After the election on Sunday there will be an election in the German capital of Berlin where the AfD is steadily gaining ground ahead of the federal election next year.
While the polls have shown an increased support for the party, resistance to their ideas has gone from media and politician criticism to real world violence in the past few months.
Increasing attacks on AfD members and supporters have become almost commonplace with two prominent members of the party being physically assaulted by left-wing extremists this week. One member was brutally assaulted on a public street and the other was almost severely injured as a left wing radical threw a frozen pie at his head, the equivalent of a brick.
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