Heads of leading German Islamic groups have criticized the AfD’s proposed ban on minarets and burqas. Germany’s Islamic Council has even compared the far-right party with the NSDAP.
“I think the AfD is playing with people’s fears,” Burhan Kesici, the head of the Islamic Council, told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “We had a wave of refugees last year, we have a lot of unemployment, we have other problems. I think now they are trying to score, using Islam to attract new voters,” he added.
The leader said that Islam was “obviously compatible with the German constitution” and that there was no need for Muslims to expressly campaign against the AfD’s opinions. Muslims were well-integrated within German society and those converting to radical Islam were usually youth who had drifted away from the mainstream, he said.
Kesici’s comments came shortly after the far-right “Alternative für Deutschland” or “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) party called for a ban on minarets and burqas. Its Brandenburg leader Alexander Gauland said Islam was “not a religion like Catholic or Protestant Christianity, but rather always associated intellectually with the takeover of a state.” The party’s deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, said the religion was a “political ideology that is not compatible with the constitution.”
Politicians like von Storch and her colleague Gauland wanted to put an end to a society based on peace and democracy, the head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek said. “It is not Islam which is against the Basic Law [the German constitution], but the AfD which does not conform to it,” Mazyek claimed.
The Islamic representative also tweeted this message on the AfD’s stance, writing: “That is not an anti-Islamic policy, that is an anti-democracy policy.”
Source: DW
