At the heart of Europe, a turn against diversity

By Claude Moraes MEP

Last month, a mere five days after his appointment as the new German Federal Minister of the Interior, Dr Hans-Peter Friedrich has pronounced his views on Islam in Germany.

His verdict? The religion “doesn’t belong” in Germany.

This bizarre statement was barely reported in the British press, but should have been. The remark is at the heart of whether or not Europe will be able to cope in a globalised world. The statement was directly relevant to the UK because Germany, like Britain, has a large non-white and Islamic population, one happy with its German identity. When the idea that Islam “doesn’t belong” is announced by a member of the German government, that sentiment is a potential problem for every Muslim not just in Germany, but in Britain and Europe more widely.

Dr Friedrich did temper his remarks, adding that over three million German Muslims are a “part of society”. Following the already controversial resignation of the country’s defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (to which Dr Friedrich owes his reshuffled new position) it was probably wise to couch his views. But “that Islam belongs in Germany is something that has no historical foundation” was still the main thrust of the Interior Minister’s remarks.

This makes Dr Freidrich’s position, however packaged, barely distinguishable from other anti-Islam voices in Europe. Consider Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the French far-right Front National. She spoke out just this month in the Guardian about the “dilution” of French culture under the pressure of “never ending queues of foreigners”. She even went so far, recounted in the same article, as to compare Muslims in France to the Nazi occupation of France. Naturally, Dr Friedrich’s position was more subtle than this, and naturally Le Pen’s position is overly brazen, but at heart they are essentially the same. Both politicians believe that Islam is an alien presence in Europe. And both have not been shy.

I believe Europe is at a crossroads. In this generation we will have to decide between being a community of democratic values – and so able to absorb different cultures and ease problems associated with an aging population – or a region chronically unable to capitalise on its future opportunities. Europe can build on its existing liberal and social institutions, and in doing so maximise the benefits of its free movements of people, or it can choose to retreat into backwards looking national prejudices. The latter will not bode well for competing in a world economy of which the centre is shifting away from the West.

There is of course another, more immediate dimension to Dr Friedrich’s position on Islam in Europe. This is the current situation in the Middle East. Any suggestion that “Europe” and “Islam” are completely opposed is doubly wrong at a time when European forces were potentially about to enforce a “no fly zone” in Libya (now dubbed an anti-Muslim “crusade” by Colonel Gaddafi) and thousands of vulnerable Muslim migrants are fleeing the North Africa and arriving, desperate for help, in Southern Europe.

As well Angela Merkel’s October statement that German multiculturalism has “utterly failed”, and Nicolas Sarkozy’s illegal removals of Roma from France last year, there is a simple paradigm in all of this: to be anti-Islam is to be anti-European too.

Anti-Islamic views are an ugly way of resisting not just a social Europe, but a democratic Europe too. What concerns me is the potential for a Europe where Muslims born and raised in Member States are relegated to denizen status. This would not only be a sign of Europe turning its back on a new globalised reality, it would also be unfair, unjust and destructive.