Al Jazeera :
On September 16, Germany started extending temporary controls along all its borders, to the chagrin of its European Union neighbours. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser clarified that the move is meant to not only curb “irregular” migration, but also to stop what she called “Islamist terrorism and serious crime”.
The announcement came in the aftermath of a deadly knife attack that killed three people in Solingen, western Germany; the attacker, a Syrian refugee who had been denied asylum status and was supposed to be deported, was accused of belonging to the ISIL (ISIS) group.
Some may be surprised that such a draconian measure has been imposed by the liberal-left coalition made up of the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Liberals.
But the reality is there is a shift to the right across the German political spectrum accompanied by raging Islamophobia.
Analysts have pointed to the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a driver of the rightward shift. Indeed, the party has been making significant gains at the national and state levels.
At the start of the month, it won the elections in the eastern state of Thuringia with 32.8 percent. In the eastern state of Saxony, it came second with 30.6 percent, just 1.3 percentage points behind the centre-right Christian Democrats.
But the electoral successes of the AfD are not a driver; they are a symptom of a general tendency in German politics to normalise and engage in the demonisation and scapegoating of Muslims.
Members of the ruling coalition have repeatedly denounced “Islamism” in Germany.
The leader of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Katharina Dröge, went as far as claiming in a recent statement that “the poison of Islam reaches people’s minds also here, not just abroad”; later correcting herself that she meant “Islamism” instead of “Islam.”
Words of warning about an “Islamist threat” are not just in the mouths of German politicians, they are also all over official documents and policy declarations of German institutions.
For example, the website of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a key domestic intelligence agency, warns: “Islamists aim to completely or partially abolish the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany by invoking their religion”.
The Bavarian branch of this federal office has gone even further and introduced on its website the notion of “legalist Islamism”, which it defines as a way to pursue “extremist goals by political means within the existing legal system”.
It clarifies: “Legalist Islamists attempt to influence politics and society through lobbying [and] present themselves as open, tolerant and open to dialogue to the outside world, while anti-democratic and totalitarian tendencies persist within the organisations.”
Essentially, this concept can criminalise any group of Muslims who organise politically or socially and conduct their activities within the bounds of the law.
It marks any expression of tolerance or openness by Muslims as suspect because it can be a “legalist Islamist pretence”.
