BERLIN
The deputy editor-in-chief of Germany’s best-selling newspaper Bild has accused Muslims of criminality, racism, intolerance and anti-Semitism, sparking criticism from colleagues, politicians and activists on social media.
The backlash came after Nicolaus Fest wrote in his column at Bild am Sonntag, the Sunday edition of the Bild daily, that he was an atheist who had no problem with religions like Christianity, Judaism or Budism, but added: “Only Islam increasingly disturbs me.”
He said: "The disproportionately high number of criminality among young Muslim people with immigration background disturbs me."
"Islam’s intolerance - ready to kill women and homosexuals - disturbs me.”
Fest listed various accusations, from anti-Semitic massacres to problems of forced marriages, honor killings and what he claimed was intolerance among Muslim immigrants.
Sharp criticism
No other religion apart from Islam was an obstacle to the integration of immigrants in German society, he claimed.
Fest said: “This should explicitly be taken into consideration when it comes to asylum and immigration issues."
“I do not need imported racism, and what else Islam stands for, I do not need those either.”
Fest’s generalizations drew sharp criticism from colleagues and politicians on social media.
Greens Party MP Volker Beck, who heads the German-Israeli parliamentary friendship group, said on his Twitter account: “One cannot credibly fight hate against Jews by stirring up hatred against Islam."
“For this article, Bild should apologize to all Muslims."
'Ethics violated'
Ethnic-Turkish German MP Ozcan Mutlu also sharply criticized the columnist.
“This is not a smear campaign, but rather pure racism. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression,” Mutlu wrote on his official Facebook page.
Der Spiegel’s Daniel Steinvorth said on his twitter account that Fest has violated the ethical rules of journalism.
Thorsten G. Schneiders, an Islam expert and editor of German Radio Deutschlandfunk, said that Fest’s article was a good example of Islamophobia for his courses and studies.
“Nobody has to wonder about widespread Islamophobia in Germany, if biggest newspaper Bild incites like this,” he tweeted.
Negative feelings
Marion Horn, editor-in-chief of Bild am Sonntag, backed Fest, claiming in her Twitter account that he was in no way an Islam hater and the media group had been open to all sorts of opinion.
But the editor-in-chief of Bild, Kai Diekmann, distanced himself from Fest.
“I believe that his article today was wrong,” Diekmann tweeted from his official account.
Germany has approximately four million Muslims; around three million of them of Turkish origin.
Support for immigration curb
A recent study by Leipzig University has revealed a higher prevalence of negative feelings against Muslim immigrants.
Almost 37 percent of Germans said that they were in support of the prohibition of immigration of Muslims to Germany, while 43 percent of Germans said that they “sometimes feel like a foreigner in their own country due to so many Muslims living here,” according to the research conducted in February, March and April this year.
A total of 24.1 percent argued that foreigners should be sent back to their home countries, should there be a scarcity of jobs in Germany.
The research team interviewed 2,432 citizens aged between 14 and 90, a representative group reflecting the social characteristics and demographic composition of the German population.
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