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German Official Blames West for Mistrust Among Muslims
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“We
do not want foreigners to fight their own wars on our lands,”
Mulack said.
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Mustafa
Abdel-Halim, IOL Staff
CAIRO,
December 9 (IslamOnline.net) – The West has itself to blame for
mistrust among world Muslims, with the US-British invasion of Iraq and
failure to settle the long-standing Middle East conflict, Germany's
first-ever commissioner for dialogue with the Islamic World said.
“Frustrations
are running high in the Islamic world, and lack of justice in
international relations appears no less than a fact,” Dr. Gunter
Mulack said in an interview with IslamOnline.net.
Mulack,
now visiting Egypt for a series of lectures, acknowledged that as long
as the peace process to defuse tension between Israel and Palestinians
is stalled, “our credibility will thus remain at risk.”
Many
in the Arab world slam the US over full bias towards Israel, and
Europe for allowing the establishment of a Jewish state on the land of
Palestine.
On
November 2, 1917, the British government decided to endorse the
establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine, then under the British
mandate.
After
discussions within the cabinet and consultations with Jewish leaders,
the decision was made public in a letter from British Lord
Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The contents of this
letter became known as the Balfour
Declaration.
The
declaration has created a long-standing crisis, for Palestinians have
since called for restoring their occupied lands, whose seizure to
create Israel led to massive explosion of four to five million
refugees across the world, including European countries.
No
Democracy
Mulack,
whose job includes launching dialogue among civilizations, said many
citizens in the Muslim world are infuriated by lack of democracy,
something he said stands as an obstacle to bringing people of
different faiths together.
“Those
people wonder why the West insists on dealing with dictatorships at
the helm of their countries.”
He
claimed that the lack of democracy back home obstruct the integration
of immigrants hailing from Muslim countries.
“Immigrants
from such countries as those of North Africa have failed to integrate
in a free democratic Germany because they did not experience freedom
or democracy in their original homelands.”
Mulack
is the first-ever commissioner for dialogue with the Islamic world - a
post created by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer after the 9/11
attacks to understand the root causes of terrorism and improve
relations with the West.
“Muslim
foreigners bring their conflicts with them, whether they are Sunnis,
Shiites or Ahmadis, in addition to the Middle East conflict and the
Iraq invasion,” he said.
German
prosecutors this week accused a 30-year-old Iraqi man of recruiting
fighters for resistance in the occupied oil-rich Iraq and smuggling
wounded fighters back to western Europe for treatment.
“We
do not want foreigners to fight their own wars on our lands,” Mulack
said.
Self-Blame
Mulack
admitted, however, that Germany is to blame for the failure of Muslim
immigrants to integrate as well as growing misconceptions about Islam.
“We
had been willing to accept foreigners only as guest workers, not as
permanent residents in our country. From a long time ago, Germans have
a problem to integrate with foreigners.”
Mulack
said Muslim students granted scholarships in Germany would be allowed
to study only German philosophy and society and not technical fields.
The
number of Muslims in Germany is estimated at 4.4 million, mostly of a
Turkish origin.
A
recent study shows that xenophobia is once again on the rise in
Germany.
A
suggestion for a holiday at the end of the Muslims’ holy fasting
month of Ramadan by a veteran left-winger was met
with fierce opposition by all sides of the German political
spectrum.
Language
Barrier
Although
denying any political affiliation, Mulack echoed calls by German
opposition for those living in the country to learn the language,
accept German values and send their children to German schools.
“We
were dreaming of multicultural society, but it did not work,” Mulack
said, calling on Muslims to accept the German culture as their own.
“We
could not have a parallel culture in Germany - which is a secular
country not an Islamic one,” he added.
Bavarian
Premier Edmund Stoiber told opposition conservatives on Tuesday,
December 7, that immigrants unwilling to embrace the German values and
speak its language have “picked the wrong country.”
That
came one day after the country's main opposition leader Angela Merkel
said that immigrants must adapt to Germany's majority
Christian-influenced culture because efforts to create a multicultural
society are doomed to failure.
Releasing
a 20-point
strategy to step up the Muslim integration into society,
German integration minister Marieluise Beck said Tuesday, November 23,
imams coming to Germany should have a knowledge of the German language
and society.
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