Muslims in Germany face rampant bias: commission

Muslims face rampant discrimination in German society warranting concerted action to combat hate and bias, an independent commission assigned by the government said in findings released Thursday.

Calling Muslims "one of the most under-pressure minorities" in Germany, the panel presented recommendations to political leaders, police and educators as well as the media and entertainment sectors.

"Many of the 5.5 million Muslims in Germany experience marginalization and discrimination in day-to-day life -- up to and including hatred and violence," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said after receiving the report.

She pledged that the government "would intensively study the report's findings and recommendations" and work to "fight discrimination and better protect Muslims from exclusion".

The 12-member commission cited data showing around every other German agreed with anti-Muslim statements, "providing a dangerous breeding ground" for extremist groups.

Even German-born Muslims were widely seen as "foreign" while Islam was often presented as a "backward religion" and women wearing traditional headscarves faced "particularly dramatic forms of hostility".

In an analysis of popular culture, the report found that nearly 90 percent of films the panel watched presented a negative view of Muslims, often associating them with "terror attacks, wars and oppression of women".

It noted that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, currently polling at around 20 percent nationally, had an explicitly anti-Muslim party platform.

The commission recommended the government create a task force to address bias against Muslims and a central clearinghouse to collect complaints.

Furthermore, training was needed at daycare centers and schools, police stations, government offices, media outlets and entertainment companies to combat the negative image of Muslims while textbooks and lesson plans should be overhauled.

It said that criminal statistics were beginning to show a more accurate picture of anti-Muslim attacks but acknowledged many went unreported.

Former interior minister Horst Seehofer launched the commission in 2020 after a far-right extremist killed 10 people and wounded five others in an anti-Muslim shooting spree in the central city of Hanau.

The attack shocked the country and prompted rights groups to sound the alarm about Islamophobic sentiment in Germany.

A separate report issued on Tuesday by a monitoring group found that anti-Semitic crimes in Germany remained at a high level with 2,480 cases reported in 2022, down one percent on the previous year.



AFP