Rilek1Corner

Tag: Germany

  • German Court Overturns Ruling, Female Muslim Teachers Allowed To Wear Headscarves

    German Court Overturns Ruling, Female Muslim Teachers Allowed To Wear Headscarves

    (Reuters) – Muslim women teachers can wear headscarves as long as it does not cause disruption in school, Germany‘s top court said in a ruling that overturns an earlier ban and may fuel debate about what some nationalist groups see as creeping “Islamisation”.

    The Constitutional Court struck down its own 2003 ban on headscarves for teachers, which had led some German states to forbid Muslim headscarves in schools while permitting the use of Christian symbols such as crucifixes and nuns’ habits.

    The court in Karlsruhe, ruling on a case brought by a Muslim woman blocked from a teaching job because of her headscarf, said religious symbols could only be banned when they posed “not just an abstract but a concrete risk of disruption in schools”.

    “This is a good day for religious freedom,” said Volker Beck, a lawmaker from the opposition Greens.

    He argued that headgear worn by devout Muslim, Jewish and Christian women and men was less of a threat to German society than “opponents of diversity” such as the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), neo-Nazis and extremist Muslim Salafists.

    Christine Lueders, head of the federal anti-discrimination agency, hailed the ruling for “reinforcing religious freedom in Germany”. With education administered by Germany’s 16 states, she called on local authorities to review the relevant rules.

    But the German Teachers’ Association (DL) called the ruling “problematic”, saying it undermined the principle of political and religious “neutrality” in schools and public services.

    “We fear this ruling could lead to disruption in certain schools if, for example, non-Muslim parents do not agree with their children being taught by teachers in headscarves,” said Josef Kraus, president of the teachers’ body.

    Regional AfD leader Alexander Gauland said the ruling was “wise but only given that the crucifix goes unchallenged and is common in German schools and it’s totally right that a headscarf does not, in general, pose a concrete enough threat for peace at school or the state’s neutrality in Germany”.

    Berlin daily TAZ warned that the anti-Islam protest group PEGIDA, which began last year with marches in Dresden and soon spawned imitation rallies across Germany and beyond, would seize on the ruling to argue that Europe is being taken over by Islam.

    “PEGIDA will celebrate,” said TAZ on its front-page, beneath a photo of coloured headscarves in a shop-window in Berlin.

    Enthusiasm for PEGIDA, which stands for ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West’, fizzled after its members began to be outnumbered by anti-racist demonstrators and PEGIDA founder Lutz Bachmann posed for a photo with a Hitler moustache.

    Chancellor Angela Merkel has accused the PEGIDA organisers of spreading hatred against immigrants, whom she says Germany, with its shrinking workforce and ageing population, badly needs.

     

    Source: http://uk.reuters.com

  • Germany Ceases Arms Exports To Saudi Arabia Indefinitely Due To Political Instability After Death Of King Abdullah

    Germany Ceases Arms Exports To Saudi Arabia Indefinitely Due To Political Instability After Death Of King Abdullah

    BERLIN — Germany has decided to stop exporting arms to Saudi Arabia, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag said today (Jan 25), citing government sources as saying the kingdom was “too unstable” for it to be receiving deliveries of weapons.

    The newspaper said Germany’s national security council, which holds its meetings in secrecy and is made up of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel and seven other ministers, had made the decision on Wednesday.

    The German economy ministry declined to comment on the article and said it would publish its report on 2015 arms exports next year. But it added that would only include exports that had been approved, not those which had been declined.

    The council members all declined to approve arms export to Saudi Arabia or deferred their decision until further notice, Bild am Sonntag said.

    Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah died on Friday and his successor, King Salman, takes charge at a time of uncertainty in the kingdom. The Middle East is in tumult and the Saudis are nervous about both Iranian influence and the spread of Islamist militants.

    In October, a document showed Germany’s national security council approved the export of arms to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries in the Middle East. Arms approved for Saudi Arabia included six weapons systems for testing and electronic surveillance equipment.

    In contrast, two-thirds of proposed arms export licenses were declined May 2014, according to media reports, including to Arab states.

    According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany was the world’s third-largest arms exporter from 2008-2012, behind the United States and Russia.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • A Muslim’s Response To Anti-Islam Protesters In Germany

    A Muslim’s Response To Anti-Islam Protesters In Germany

    Dear 25,000 Anti-Islam Dresden Protesters and Pegida,

    I hear you marched in your thousands against my religion. Last week, and last month. You marched against immigrants, foreigners, and anyone a shade darker. I will not draw comparisons to Nazi Germany. I will not call you bigots, I will not insult you, and I will not label you. But we do have a problem.

    You marched with banners claiming your city is overcrowded with Muslims. Yet 0.1% of Dresden are Muslim. You marched claiming immigrants are cramming your schools and leaving your children to travel miles for an education. Yet 2.5% of Dresden are foreign-born.

    You claim that Germany is being invaded by Muslims. Yet only 5% of Germans are Muslim.

    You march “against the Islamization of the West”. Yet within a century containing two World Wars, the decolonisation process, countless civil conflicts, foreign intervention, globalisation, and further displacement, Muslims remain a fringe minority in Europe. Less than 6%. A pretty lousy colonisation process, no?

    You marched against refugees and asylum seekers, claiming Germany is their target for welfare and social security. Yet according to UNHCR, there are 51.2million refugees worldwide. Germany caters for less than 0.01% of them. Is that too much to ask? Is such a humanitarian obligation too large for the Refugee Convention 1951 your government ratified? Or is it actually punitive, for example, in comparison to Lebanon where every fourth person is a Syrian refugee?

    Protesters, you are not alone. In my country, Britain, we have our own anti-immigration party. Ukip won their first seat in Clacton with nothing but anti-migrant rhetoric. Yet only 4.3% of Clacton are foreign-born. In a Parliamentary-based system, where each constituency elects a representative to voice their views, there is nothing Ukip can do for the people of Clacton.

    Do you see a pattern? Perhaps I should explain. Your kind tend to establish themselves where their “problem” does not actually exist. Is this therefore an issue of negative perception? Fear of the unfamiliar? Intolerance in ignorance? Scapegoating an underclass? Media misinformation?

    I will elaborate. London has a 36.2% foreign-born population. Relatively, that is fifteen times the population of foreigners in Dresden. A far greater diversity. Ukip poll the lowest in London compared to the rest of the country– in every demographic, foreign or not. London is a metropolis of brown, black, and white working side by side. We thrive. I saw an atheist today. Guess what? I did not try to convert him nor behead him for blasphemy; I helped him off the bus. He was 74 years old.

    Does that make sense?

    Your only insight into Islam is a box in your living room. Confirmation bias andcognitive dissonance infest the information you expose yourself to. Information which dehumanises and polarises anyone unlike you.

    You enjoy the far-right media portrayal of Islam. It makes you feel good. Superior. Better. The barbaric Muslims, we are. We disrespect women, and we impose our beliefs on to others.

    Yet did you know that Turkey, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, all Muslim majority stateshave had more elected female heads of state than almost every other Western country? Did you know that the Quran explicitly says “there is no compulsion in religion” (2:256), and our Prophet clarified “whomever hurts a non-Muslim will not smell a whiff of paradise”?

    Did you know that your twisted misrepresentation of my religion helps the terrorists? Did you know that you and the terrorists agree on what seems to form an integral part of your identity: that Islam is violent? Did you know that you even use the same methodology to proclaim this; taking a verse out of context and evading any intellectual discourse?

    What are Muslims to you, anyway? Arabs? Less than 20% of us are Arab. Indian or Pakistani? Again, less than 20%. Turkish? Less than 5%. Nothing else? That is more than half of us you cannot identify.

    You assume our identity by our race. Is it not disheartening to you that such a narrow world view is legitimately held by so many? Does it not display a perspective so constrained to the contents of immediate life and prejudice? Is that not likely to lead to ignorant assumptions and offence in face of what is unbeknownst?

    What becomes of the German Muslim, I wonder? Is he spared because he is white? Or is he declared a traitor and shunned? Is it difficult to choose between racism and neglecting a fellow countryman? Choose neither. Choose education. Tolerance. Kindness.

    Detach from the vicious cycle of far-right media (who are unfamiliar with foreigners) feeding the far-right populace (who are unfamiliar with foreigners) what they should think about foreigners.

    I ask you, have you ever met a Muslim? “Met” is not a synonym for shouting abuse at or stabbing to death in or outside their home. No, have you ever sat with a Muslim? Talked to a Muslim? Worked with a Muslim?

    You should. At an airport perhaps, where we are 42 times more likely to be searched, and thus declared safe for human interaction.

    Sincerely,
    A Real-Life Muslim (not the ones on TV)

     

    Source:www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

  • Anti-Foreigner And Anti-Islam Sentiments Dividing Germany

    Anti-Foreigner And Anti-Islam Sentiments Dividing Germany

    DRESDEN (Germany) — The fear of foreigners, especially Muslims, threatening or drowning out national and regional identities forged over centuries seems to have a growing pull in Europe, where populists and nationalists scored record gains in elections in May for the European Parliament and where recent protests against immigrants flared up in Germany and Sweden.

    The simmering resentment and suspicion have driven debates across Europe about tighter controls on immigration. Worries about immigration have helped buoy right-wing parties in Britain, Denmark, France and Hungary. German officials recorded more than 70 attacks on mosques from 2012 to 2014, including a case of arson, and the police in Britain have recorded an increase in hate crimes against Muslims.

    Protesters marched in several German cities on Monday against higher levels of immigration and what they see as the growing influence of Islam, in defiance of an appeal from Chancellor Angela Merkel to spurn rallies she views as racist.

    The German rallies, organised by a new grassroots movement known as PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, have become an almost weekly event in the east German city of Dresden in recent months. About 18,000 people, the biggest number so far, turned out in Dresden on Monday, but similar rallies in Berlin and the western city of Cologne were heavily outnumbered by counter-protesters who accuse PEGIDA of fanning racism and intolerance.

    In her New Year address last week, Ms Merkel urged Germans to shun the anti-Muslim protesters, saying their hearts were full of hatred. “We need to … say that right-wing extremism, hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitism should not be allowed any place in our society,” she said on Monday in the eastern town of Neustrelitz.

    Ms Merkel was joined in her sentiment yesterday when top-selling German tabloid Bild and 50 prominent Germans called for an end to what they see as rising xenophobia. Bild published a “No to PEGIDA” appeal yesterday, covering the front page and a double page spread on pages 2 and 3 with quotes from the 50 politicians and celebrities.

    “(They) are saying ‘no’ to xenophobia and ‘yes’ to diversity and tolerance,” Bild deputy editor Bela Anda wrote in a commentary. “We should not hand over our streets to hollow rallying cries.”

    Elsewhere, hundreds of Swedes gathered last Friday outside the royal palace in Stockholm and in other cities to show solidarity with the Muslim population a day after an unknown assailant threw a bottle filled with flammable liquid at a mosque in the northern city of Uppsala and sprayed racist slogans on the building. The firebomb caused no injuries and did not damage the building.

    But as each day brings more reports of immigrants who have boarded ships and sneaked across European borders, the famous tolerance of the Swedes is being tested as never before.

    Despite a lacklustre economy, Sweden was third behind only Germany and France in the number of people registering for asylum in 2012, said the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. Relative to its population, Sweden received the second-highest share of asylum applications in the European Union after Malta, the institute said.

    Even so, there are few places where the turn against immigrants is more surprising than Sweden, where a solid core of citizens still supports the 65-year-old open-door policy towards immigrants facing hardship that has long earned international respect for the country.

    The Syrian conflict has boosted the number of asylum seekers. Of 81,000 people seeking asylum in Sweden in 2014, roughly half were from Syria, the Swedish Migration Board said.

    Opposition to the rising numbers is growing. The far-right, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats had their best showing ever, nearly 13 per cent of votes, in elections in September.

    Mr Omar Mustafa, president of the Islamic Association of Sweden, which represents about 40 communities across the country, said the recent fires at mosques were the culmination of a year of rising anti-Islamic attacks, from women having their hijabs, or head coverings, pulled off in the streets to the vandalism of 14 mosques, as well as racist or anti-Muslim vitriol spread through social media.

    “It is a scary development in Swedish society,” Mr Mustafa said in a telephone interview. “It is a big movement that is moving from the Internet to the real world.”

    Germany, too, has some of the world’s most liberal asylum rules, partly due to its Nazi past. The number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany, many from the Middle East, jumped to around 200,000 last year, four times as many as in 2012. In Cologne, home to a large Muslim population, there were 10 times as many counter-demonstrators as PEGIDA protesters. In similarly multi-ethnic Berlin, about 5,000 counter-demonstrators swamped around 400 anti-Muslim protesters, local police said.

    “Germany is a country where refugees are welcome and the silent majority must not remain silent but rather go out onto the streets and show itself,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said at the Berlin counter-demonstration.

    Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks, switched its lights off to protest against the anti-Muslim rallies. Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate turned off its floodlights in a similar gesture of solidarity.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • 60 Of Estimated 550 Germans in Syria and Iraq Are Believed To Have Died

    60 Of Estimated 550 Germans in Syria and Iraq Are Believed To Have Died

    BERLIN – The number of Germans fighting alongside Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq has increased sharply to 550 and around 180 have returned, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.

    “We are concerned about the high number of departures. Especially in the last six weeks, it has risen further,” Hans-Georg Maassen told Welt am Sonntag.

    By now we are counting 550 people, that is how many have left Germany to go to Syria and Iraq,” he added. The previous number was 450 people.

    Around 60 of them have been killed during fighting, with at least nine killing themselves in suicide attacks, Maassen said. “That is a sad success for the Islamist propaganda.”

    As with other Western European countries, Germany is struggling to stop the radicalization of young Muslims, some of whom want to become jihadists in Syria or Iraq. Officials also worry that they might return to plot attacks on home soil.

    Since Germany is part of the alliance fighting Islamic State, the country is “naturally” a target for the militants as well as al Qaeda members, Maassen said.

    Intelligence services estimate that around 180 jihadists have returned to Germany after having fought in Syria and Iraq, Maassen said.

    In one of the largest sweeps against alleged Islamists in Germany yet, authorities last week arrested nine men suspected of supporting militant groups in Syria and raided numerous properties in several German states.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com