Germany: The failure of multiculturalism

Germany is in a frenzy over Muslims, said Lukas Wallraff in Die Tageszeitung. Hardly a day goes by without some German politician telling us that “multiculturalism is dead, Muslims are bad, and more immigration is pointless.” This “competition of Muslim-bashing” began over the summer, when Thilo Sarrazin, a former member of the board of Germany’s central bank, released his book Germany Destroys Itself. Sarrazin claimed that Muslim immigrants are parasites who are outbreeding Germans and will dominate the country within a few generations. His book sold out in a matter of weeks. Then we had the governor of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, declaring that Muslims only come here to mooch off our generous welfare benefits. And now, for good measure, Chancellor Angela Merkel herself declared last week that “multiculturalism is a failure.”

Merkel was only acknowledging what everyone already knows, said Rasmus Buchsteiner in the Aachener Zeitung. There’s a “broad consensus” among all political parties—even the leftist Greens and Social Democrats—that Muslim immigrants have failed to integrate into our society. But simply stating that fact is not enough. What is Merkel going to do about it? Her government has already held “integration summits” and even created courses for new immigrants on how to fit into German society, but many who need such lessons refuse to take them. It’s time to consider “some kind of penalty” for immigrants who fail to integrate. “No one has anything against immigrants who want to fit in,” said Torsten Krauel in Die Welt. But there are plenty of immigrants who seem to “want to bring their own culture along,” forcing their women to cover their heads and faces, choosing husbands for their daughters. Those who can’t respect Germany’s values should “please stay away.”

The rest of Europe is listening to this debate “with a mixture of satisfaction and schadenfreude,” said Cathrin Kahlweit in Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Countries like Italy, France, and Holland, which have plenty of right-wing, immigrant-loathing populists in their parliaments, can now comfort themselves with the knowledge that even “reliable, rational Germany” has succumbed to Islamophobic hysteria. The other reaction, of course, is “disappointment.” How typical of the Germans, some say, to revert to bigotry.

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It’s too easy to just cry racism, said Frank Schirrmacher in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The problem is deeper than that. Germany desperately needs immigrants—more than 100,000 a year—to provide the tax base to support an aging population. Germans are legitimately worried that the nation’s character will change fundamentally as the Muslim population grows. “Those who don’t understand that aren’t just misjudging the public mood, they are failing to appreciate the momentum of an almost irreversible demographic development.”