Laura Alice Woods Johnson Flomaton Al

Islamophobia as a challenge to democracy and tolerance - By Wolfgang Benz

Islamophobia as a challenge to democracy and tolerance - By Wolfgang Benz

decades in Germany on one of the most famous fighter for more

tolerance: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Benz

The renowned researcher speaks Tacheles Semitism and sees parallels to anti-Semitism in 19 Century: Islam-haters, it's about the cancellation of the hard-won liberal consensus on the coexistence of different cultures and relgion

building blocks of the enemy image are generalization and reduction of real or supposed facts on negatives. Gossip subconscious, hearsay, literary and folk tradition rise to "facts" - the only live by faith.

The classic example, the design offers the most widely used text of anti-Semitism: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ". At the end of the 19th Century, it was as anti-Semitic pamphlet, which was to prove a Jewish world conspiracy. Although the Protocols were exposed as a fake in every detail, they have the Russian Tsar and the Nazis made services, today they are common in Islamic culture. They serve as propaganda against Israel Weapon. Millions believe in the image of the Jew as the incarnation of evil in the world, which suggest the "Protocols".

Who is indignant, and rightly so, about the stupidity of the enemies of the Jews, but must also consider the enemy image of Islam-critical (which sometimes uses an aggressive, applied philo). It is a matter of science, the insights gained from analysis of the anti-Semitic resentments to make use of a paradigm.

The subliminally to coarse practiced defamation of Muslims as a group by so-called "critics of Islam" has historical parallels. Currently Islam is conceptually linked with extremism and terrorism, which all members of the Islamic religion and culture that would be established and discriminated against an enemy image.

incitement and defamation


so-called neo-Nazis and Islam critic
make propaganda against Muslims and
nobody notices allegedly

If you wanted to define the Catholic Church historically only about the suffering that pa ; pstliche crusades against "infidels" in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition and witch trials to modern times through unfortunate have put innocent people (or these days just about priests, the assault on minors), then would prefer you look at the charges of defamation - the generalization is deplorable excesses of agitation with the aim of discrimination. To evoke the danger of Islam act, "critics of Islam" but under increasing applause with exactly this method.

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834 - 1896) German, renowned historian and popular writer saw once in his fear of foreign infiltration Germany surrounded by enemies and by unwillingness of the Jewish minority threatened to assimilation within. By authority and eloquence, he gave the anti-Semitism reputation and thrust. That was in 1879 when he triggered the Berlin Antisemitism Dispute. "From the inexhaustible Polish cradle," claimed the scholar urging, "a group of aspiring, beginning pants final sale youths, whose children and grandchildren will one day dominate Germany's stock exchanges and newspapers" would. The parallel is obvious

when as a tactical weapon in the battle for geargwöhnten the "Islamisation of Europe" today the puerperium the Muslim woman is summoned. Treitschke's attack against German Jewry marked the termination of the hard-won liberal consensus on integration. The Berlin anti-Semitism dispute was essentially a debate about identity, a debate about what it should mean for the emancipation of the Jews to be German and German to be a Jew.


intolerance for granted

currently taking place once again such a debate. But it's no longer about the emancipation of Jews, but the integration of Muslims. The rage built with the barricades und Positionen verteidigt werden, ist beträchtlich, die Intonation der Debatten erschreckend, wenn etwa die Verweigerung von Toleranz gegenüber der zu diskriminierenden Minderheit der Muslime als selbstverständlich dargestellt wird.

In Internet-Foren, in denen Islamfeindschaft besonders schamlos verhandelt wird, wurde vor kurzem der Mord an der Ägypterin im Dresdner Gerichtssaal freudig kommentiert. Die Tat sei zu verurteilen, schrieb einer, "allerdings gibt es jetzt eine islamische Gebärmaschine weniger".

Ein anderer meinte, im Koran werde "in über 60 Suren zum Mord an Andersgläubigen und Ungläubigen, especially to Jews and Christians "called. This conviction, he will defend against all the evidence about the actual contents of the Koran as vigorously as the anti-Semite does not stop the bad faith of the contents of the Talmud, in Jewish ritual murders and other delusional fantasies. A third party knows that they work with high pressure for a goal: "destruction of Germany by immigration and Islamization."

challenge to democracy

The discourse on headscarves and minarets - as symbols of a fundamentally rejected and branded as a threat Culture - Is conducted in such clarity in the public part of the Internet. But its expansion has long been underway. The equation of German citizens with Muslim religious fanatical terrorists is method and is staged with an appeal to the healthy popular sentiment on the right have the majority.
The symbolic discourse on minarets is really a campaign against people who are discriminated against as members of a group, a declaration of war against tolerance and democracy.

The historian Wolfgang Benz, 68, heads the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin. He is the editor of "Dachau issues," with whom he established the concentration camp research.
The present text was first published on 04.01.10 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Reprinted with permission of the author