ANALYSIS: Germany caught up in fevered integration debate

By Helen Maguire Oct 19, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Berlin - Germany is in the throes of a debate over Islam and integration that says less about new social realities and more about the country's fresh willingness to break taboos in an ugly fight for political ground.

In a speech on Saturday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany had not succeeded with the notion of multiculturalism ('multikulti' in colloquial German), according to which people happily live 'side by side' in a patchwork of cultures.

'Multikulti has failed, absolutely failed,' Merkel told young conservatives in her Christian Democratic Party (CDU), speaking out in an uncharacteristically strident tone.

Instead, the chancellor called on immigrants to integrate better into Germany, stressing that they 'must not only respect our laws, but also master our language.'

Merkel's soundbites were nuanced by her message that integration needs to succeed in Germany, where declining birth rates are making it harder to meet the demand for skilled labourers and welfare contributors.

But Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said Merkel was using catchy headlines to appeal to those who are accusing her of being too soft and generous on welfare spending.

'It's a pure campaign to mobilize elements within the CDU who, it is feared, could drift to the right and form a new party if the CDU does not offer them concessions on integration issues,' he said.

The debate raging through Germany was sparked last month when central banker Thilo Sarrazin launched a book blaming Islam for the integration problems experienced by people of Turkish or Arabic origin in Germany.

Sarrazin has since resigned from his job at the Bundesbank, but bestseller lists are dominated by his book, in which he argues among other things that immigrants' below-average intelligence is genetically passed on.

At the start of the month, President Christian Wulff sought to appease the brewing controversy by pronouncing that, alongside Christianity and Judaism, 'Islam also belongs in Germany.'

But a week later, Horst Seehofer, the leader of Merkel's Bavarian conservative allies, said Germany should not accept more immigration from 'alien cultures' such as Turkey and Arab countries.

Merkel's ensuing remarks come just weeks before she faces reelection as the head of the CDU, and in the buildup to state elections next year that could see her fortunes plummet.

The integration polemic, casting Islamic values as fundamentally incompatible with German society, is symptomatic of a rightward shift sweeping across Europe.

In Germany however, the discussion is taking place on historically loaded territory, and Germany's flirtation with anti-Islamic rhetoric has prompted comparisons to Nazi ideology.

Wolfgang Benz, an expert on anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University, sees such parallels in the generalizations being made about Muslims, as well as the widespread fallacy that their holy scriptures are inherently incompatible with Western democracy.

'If we have not learned from the Holocaust not to arbitrarily place minorities under general suspicion, then we have learned nothing,' Benz said.

For a long time, Germany brushed aside integration issues by claiming that it was not a 'migration country.' Only in recent years has it become easier to acquire German citizenship, and mentalities are starting to adjust.

Twenty years after German unification, a new generation is taking over from those who remember World War II and the country is emancipating itself from post-war guilt.

Within this context, anti-Islamic sentiment in Germany carries overtones of glee at breaking historical taboos, as prejudices that have always been uttered behind closed doors are reaching the political mainstream.

This swing to the right is making it harder to address Germany's declining birth rates and gaping skills shortages, compounded by the fact the country is now seeing net emigration.

Industrial bosses are asking what incentives will help to compete for a globally mobile workforce.

Hans Heinrich Driftmann, the president of the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, warned that a shortfall of 400,000 engineers and skilled craftsmen is costing the economy 25 billion euros (35 billion dollars) a year, or 1 per cent of economic growth.

Wulff, who is currently on a visit to Turkey, is on a mission to reassure people that his country is still home for its estimated Turkish community of 2.5 million people, after more Turks left Germany in 2008 than moved to the country.

Meanwhile, the government is considering proposals to speed up the process for foreign qualifications to be recognized in Germany, to reduce the number of skilled foreign workers who end up as waiters or taxi drivers.

But Neugebauer believes that discussions about the economic importance of Germany's immigrant communities also miss the point.

'Germany's basic law speaks of (the inviolability of) human dignity,' the political scientist said. 'There is no suggestion that this is subject to the person's economic usefulness or abilities.'

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