Despite attempts by left wing and anti-racist groups to disrupt the conference, the right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party of Germany has adopted its policy on removing Islamic influence from the nation. This includes bans on minarets, calls to prayer and the full face veil. As someone of Jewish origin, when one hears "right-wing party gaining in Germany" it brings back dark memories of the 1930s and 1940s. But then again, one cannot automatically dismiss such a group without at first hearing out their grievances. This is no local matter as the resurgence of right-wing groups throughout Europe have been occurring.
However, before you go out and call these people neo-Nazis, may I remind you that they have made interesting points.
Leaving out my own prejudices I feel for Islam as a religion, Muslims in Europe have not made it easy for their European hosts. Terrorist attacks, gang rapes, problems at assimilation and religious extremism have painted an ugly picture of Muslim migrants especially as their acts have gone through social media. Rather than try and rectify their image, they and their liberal colleagues turn to political correctness and blaming the media for distorting Islam.
This does NOT work.
Islam is no innocent nor peaceful a religion than Christianity and Judaism. Ignoring the crimes committed by terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, Muslims in Europe continue to import their own prejudices they learned back in the Middle East into Europe. Keeping women veiled and harassing those who aren't, discrimination and violent attacks against gays, Jews and minority groups in in France and the Netherlands, refusing to assimilate into the cultures they are entering as seen when two teenage Muslim boys in Switzerland refused to shake a woman's hand (shaking hands is considered polite to the Swiss people and not doing so is considered an insult) and of course, preaching extreme puritanical views of Islam in the social media making the Enlightened Europeans more nervous. Attempts to discourage anti-Muslim sentiment through political correctness ends in absolute disaster as real criminals who are Muslim are allowed to get away with horrible crimes as seen in the child exploitation scandal Rotherham, UK and the New Years assaults in Germany and Sweden. Silencing critics of Islam only makes them stronger.
Now for those who try to equate the situations with Muslim migrants with the Jews during the Holocaust, read a book and not what you read on Wikipedia. As a Jew, the history of antisemitism goes far deeper than one side having reservations towards another based on differences of religion. Jews were ostracized in the early years of Christianity by blaming us for betraying Jesus Christ to the Romans while additional blood libels and disturbing myths written about Jews were published by the public. Our people were confined to walled off ghettos and any Jew suspected of a crime has no friends coming to their rescue. A story about a butcher killed in Germany during the late 1800s ran segments suspecting the perpetrators to be Jews without any evidence while a disgusting myth circulated saying Jews kidnapping Christian babies and drain their blood as an ingredient for matzoh. Yeah, you can see how disturbing and hurtful such accusations and myths have made being a Jew the hardest thing in the world when there exists made up stories like that. The publishing of the conspiracy laden Protocols of the Elders of Zion only made things worse as, despite most Jews occupying middle to peasant class status in all of Europe, are suspected of plotting domination of the world. Unlike the equally insane Eurabia theory, it offered no statistics proving such cases and the stories are all made up basing them around prior prejudices. Finally, the theme of the "Stab in the back" aimed at blaming Jewish groups for Germany's failures of WWI and stories about us being an unclean race led to us being seen as part of a national and health issue to a nation seething with rage and wanting revenge in the most brutal way possible. A stark contrast with Muslims.
On the other side with Muslims, the stories written about them are published on social media with video evidence and newspaper stories that find witnesses to prove their cases. This makes writing such myths and blood libels unnecessary; they have actual proof of the crimes committed by Muslims. The Muslims' ability to acquire special privileges also makes their case to the recession hit Europeans who look to their politicians as selling them out to Muslim interests above their own. Their crimes are reported and blamed on clerics who despite pleas to ensure non-Muslim Europeans that Islam stands for peace, it does nothing to dry the angry tears of those wanting revenge. This makes the right wing groups the only alternative.
What Muslims need to do to feel accepted are these:
1. Silence and denounce with absolute prejudice extreme clerics that call for such outrageous things as Sharia in Europe
2. Urge Muslim youth to adopt non-violent manners of protest in a manner that can reassure their already frightened European neighbors of their peaceful intent (no posters that involve denouncing people insulting Muhammad)
3. Support moderate and liberal Muslim movements that aim towards Europe's stance on human rights, liberalism, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and LGBT rights.
4. Denounce and call for the arrest of members who speak for extremist ideologies even if they are of your own flesh and blood.
5. Do not protest whenever someone publishes articles about your Prophet, ignore it. Such criticisms can do no harm
I know there are some Muslims who do not agree to such ideas but I urge you to try. Europe has been done this genocidal path before. Don't let it happen again. No one should go through what we Jews went through.
