Police in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria are investigating two officers suspected of performing the illegal Hitler salute.

The German constitution makes it a crime to exhibit Nazi symbols and the incident is likely to feed into a heated debate about racism and the rise of the far right after a record influx of mainly Muslim migrants three years ago.

Police said in a statement on Saturday the two policemen had shouted anti-immigrant remarks and made the salute in a pub in the city of Rosenheim on Thursday. It based its information on a witness who was in the same beer garden as the two officers.

A third man, described as a security guard in the police statement, had also taken part and made the salute. The policemen have been suspended.

German politicians have been urging action to combat a rise in hostility toward foreigners after skinheads last Sunday clashed with police in an eastern city where a man was fatally stabbed and two migrants were identified as the main suspects.

Skinheads raised their arms in Nazi salutes, chased people who appeared to be outsiders and wrestled with police in Chemnitz after police identified the suspects as a Syrian and an Iraqi.

The leaking of the arrest warrant for one of the two stabbing suspects to the anti-Islam group PEGIDA raised concerns that some justice officials in the state of Saxony, where Chemnitz is located, were sympathetic to the far right.

“We will not allow the extreme right to infiltrate our society,” Justice Minister Katarina Barley told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday, urging authorities in Saxony to investigate far-right groups.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal immigration policy remains deeply divisive in a country that has taken in more than 1.6 million people over the last four years.

The influx contributed to the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which entered parliament for the first time in an election last year with a campaign that proclaimed Islam to be incompatible with the German constitution.

Some 8,000 people took part in a demonstration organised by the AfD and the anti-Islam group PEGIDA in Chemnitz on Saturday. About 3,000 people attended a rival protest by leftist groups.

Police said on Sunday that the demonstrations were largely peaceful.

Leftist groups will hold a concert in the city on Monday to denounce xenophobia and hatred against refugees and foreigners.

Tensions between South Africans and foreigners rose again in Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg recently.

Authorities say despite government pleas for peace, damage to property, acts of violence and looting continue to be reported in Pretoria.

The Home Affairs minister spoke out Thursday to respond to reports from the Nigerian government claiming that 116 of its citizens had been killed in South Africa over the past two years.

“I’m not privy to the figures from the Nigerian government and how they collected them. And we haven’t, I don’t think it’s a discussion we want to get into. I think it will turn out very bad. Should we start counting how many South Africans have died in South Africa at the hands of Nigerian nationals? I don’t think that’s going to end up very well, in terms of our good relations, as countries,” said Malusi Gigaba, South African Home Affairs Minister.

More than 136 people have been arrested in relation to tensions between foreigners and locals.

A march, organized by a group called Mamelodi Concerned Residents, was meant to be peaceful, but soon chaos broke out between anti-migrants South African protesters and foreign nationals.

Some South Africans demanded that illegal immigrants be deported immediately. They blamed foreigners for crime, especially the illegal drug trade. They also accused migrants of taking jobs that could be held by South Africans.

“The foreigners who are operating businesses, we need to regulate them so that when they are operating their businesses, their employees must be South Africans strictly,” said a male protester.

The foreign nationals refused to be intimidated.

“We worked so hard for South Africa to be independent. We’re not to be treated like dogs. They’re fighting us. We married their sisters; our sisters are married to them,” said a representative of foreign nationals.

“We just want peace and stability in this country. We are all Africans. We don’t have any grudge for anyone,” said another representative.

Police dispersed the crowds of protesters, expressing worries that the scenes of xenophobic attacks in 2008 might resurface.

Later in the day, protesters handed a memorandum of their grievances to authorities. They maintained that those responsible for the chaos were not part of their group.

“We are not xenophobic. We don’t want any person to be attacked, any foreign national or any person. That’s why we said that the march is to the relevant department, institutions within South Africa that are set up to deal with this way. But the idea is we are in the sense, we South Africans are frustrated, South Africans are angry,” said Makgoka Lekganyane, a Mamelodi resident.

The government has pledged to take action against anyone who commits violent acts. The presidency has also released a statement calling for restraint.

“We also caution those engaging in violent and unlawful acts that the law enforcement agencies of this country will not tolerate such conduct and will act within the confines of the law,” said Khomotso Phahlane, acting Police Commissioner of South Africa.

We have been notified of a Facebook page called ‘Poland – Birmingham‘ which highlights an area of growing concern for us.

Over the last 4 years, we have not highlighted this issue since we have believed that a migrant community that has also suffered a great deal of prejudice and bigotry deserves support and no further pressures or stigmatising. Indeed, we are aware of many organisations that have been tackling racism and prejudice, who have actively advocated against anti-Polish rhetoric and the xenophobic bigotry that this community suffered after the accession of Poland into the European Union. Many of these organisations were led by members of Black and Minority Ethnic communities who felt that this community was being unfairly treated.

However, we have to say that we are concerned by the anti-Muslim cases that we have received that have involved perpetrators who have migrated from Poland and from other Eastern European Accession States. Much of the anti-Muslim prejudice has been triggered because of alcohol, though the responses on the ‘Poland – Birmingham’ page are appalling. They show a need for some Poles to tone down their bigotry and their rhetoric and to realise that inclusion, integration and cohesion are fundamental planks of our country. This means that racism and prejudice should have no quarter in our country.

What is also of real concern is that these comments come from members of a community that suffered press headlines that were xenophobic and prejudiced when the accession of Poland took place and when a large number of Poles migrated to the United Kingdom for the purposes of work.

We are thereore highlighting this issue now so that it sparks debate and we hope, introspection by some members of the settled Polish community in our country. Anti-Muslim bigotry is just as bad as the anti-Polish rhetoric that many suffered. We need to collectively tackle prejudice, racism and bigotry, instead of turning against one another as communities.

The post ‘Poland – Birmingham’ Facebook Page Shows that Some Poles Need to Curb Their Prejudice appeared first on TELL MAMA.

A footnote to Europe’s ongoing crisis is the rising use of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, defended the erecting of a razor-wire fence on its southern border through the language of cultural and religious difference.

Orbán stated that “most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” and that “Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?”

Antal Rogan, the parliament caucus leader of Orbán’s Fidesz party, said on Tuesday that “the very existence of Christian Europe” was at stake.

Rogan also told the pro-government newspaper Magyar Idok “Would we like our grandchildren to grow up in a United European Caliphate? My answer to that is no”.

Ivan Metik, a spokesperson for Slovakia’s interior ministry spokesman said last month: “We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?”

In July, Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, argued that Christians would cause less tension. He added that terrorists might attempt to mingle among Muslim refugees.

Slovakia’s Muslim population totals just 0.2 per cent in a country that is two-thirds Roman Catholic. Immigration remains a priority for many ordinary Slovaks. With that in mind, cultural anxieties are easier to manipulate. Hence why an ‘anti-Islamisation’ rally in Bratislava attracted thousands in July.

In the Czech Republic, a petition against Muslim migrants received 145,000 signatures. Milos Zeman, the Czech president, made a cultural argument against taking refugees fleeing Libya.

“Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Repulic,” he was quoted as saying by a spokesperson.

Those considered ‘culturally closer’ Eastern European Slavs and Christians from Syria.

The decision by Czech police to write numbers of the hands of mainly Syrian refugees drew comparisons to Nazi Germany.

Poland agreed to accept 50 Christian families fleeing the Syrian civil war. But it outsourced that initiative to a private firm called Estera.

Miriam Shahed, who heads Estera, told the FT that ‘non-Christian’ refugees threaten Poland. She insisted that ISIS would not murder other Muslims because they ‘share’ identical beliefs. Shahed claimed that Islam represented a ‘totalitarian system’ and many Muslims are ‘criminals’.

This past April, Ukip leader Nigel Farage told BBC Breakfast “[If] we have to give some Christians refugee status given that with Iraq and Libya there’s almost nowhere for them to go then fine but Europe can’t send the message that everyone who comes will be accepted“. A position he took in 2013.

In light of Aylan Kurdi’s death, alongside members of his family, Farage sought to shift the debate by tweeting: “We must also establish who is a genuine refugee and to make sure they are not an extremist from Isis or other jihadi institutions”.

We must also establish who is a genuine refugee and to make sure they are not an extremist from Isis or other jihadi institutions.

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 3, 2015

To mythologise Europe’s Christian identity and Muslim refugees as terrorists helps the extreme right (and others) demonise religious minorities. Europe’s own legacies and traditions of antisemitism and anti-Muslim feelings continue to ebb and flow. Both incorporate ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ forms of racism. This racist tradition constructed both religious minorities as ‘foreign intruders’ in societies. Anxieties around cultural and religious difference fed the paranoia of societal change through demographics. A paranoia compounded through the nefarious and paradoxical antisemitic trope of disproportionate Jewish influence.

The specific cultural and religious anxieties tied to Muslim identity fed the conspiracy of ‘Islamisation’. A key component of this belief is ‘Dhimmitude’ a term coined by ‘pseudo-scholar’ Bat Ye’or. Ye’or contends that non-Muslims treaty for protection in ‘Muslim conquered’ lands. A notion that feeds a false narrative that Muslims receive legal and political favours in secular contexts. On the fringes, the far-right hint at a civil war that will bring ‘Islamisation’ through violence.

Anti-Muslim prejudice is also understood in the specific cultural and linguistic spaces of some European nations. In French it translates as Islamophobie, in Spanish the term translates to Islamofobia, or Islamofobi in a Scandinavian context. But how these prejudice experienced by Muslims in these countries translates from specific cultural vernaculars are not just linguistic points of difference. But link the political and social cultures of the countries in question.

The religions of Islam and Christianity are not predisposed towards prolonged conflict. Yet hostility stems from moments in history. Interested parties (and individuals) distort these events to push anti-Muslim narratives.

Not even the Crusades triggered all-out conflict between the two faiths. But often this controversial moment in history becomes a propaganda tool for extremists on both sides. Take for example the far-right appropriation of Knights Templar imagery.

Racialisation allows individuals to see Muslims as foreign bodies and non-white (even white converts are labelled p*kis and race traitors). Dehumanisation allows individuals to disassemble Muslim identity and reassemble the Muslim body in subhuman terms. In far-right circles, the terms ‘Mudscum,’ ‘Musrat/Muzrat/Muzzrat/Muzzie,’ and ‘MuSlime’ pop up in their echo chambers. Though the term ‘Mussie’ holds positive connotations in Australia.

In a broader sense, dehumisation helped Nazi Germany label Jews as the literal embodiment of vermin and disease; Hutu génocidaires labelled Tutsis as cockroaches; dehumanisation aided black enslavement in colonial times.

Outside of Europe, the Irish refugees of the Potato Famines of 1845 to 1846, and 1846 to 1847 experienced dehumisation upon entry to Canada. The elites of Toronto deemed the Irish uncivilised due to their religion, language and physical traits. In reality, this physical appearance owed to a minority of West Country Irish peasants, it fuelled the corrosive stereotypes of Irish identity. In short, to not be Protestant in this era of Toronto’s history created suspicion.

In spite of the true realities that underpin this crisis, kernels of hope do appear; but the rhetoric does echo a darker period of Europe’s history; and will not change soon.

The post Europe’s current crisis reflects its own anxieties about Muslims appeared first on Religious Reader.