German Chancellor: Multikulti does not work
Merkel: Multi-cultural Germany has failed, start learning German
BERLIN – An attempt to create a multi-cultural society in Germany has failed entirely, so the country's immigrants should adopt Christian values and learn German, Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
AFP reports that Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.
"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."
German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.
According to AFP, the immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.
While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.
While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.
The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.
The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.
"Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.
Comments
Interesting, I guess France will be next.
Sad, very Sad. I am French and I have grown up in a very multicultural environment and I see multi-cultural as a luck for Europe to Unite with other culture and be stronger than close minded culture like Japan, china and other....
France and Germany, with the crisis put the blame on immigrants that are very hard workers and many time part of the dynamism of the economy by creating many small business and taking the job that French and Germans will never want to do anyway! The problem is not the muslim is how government have tried to integrate those populations! Building Ghetto, making sure Muslim and Arabic are consider as under valuated citizen, not building Mosque, making fin of their accent, their closes, putting them all together at school! SO in one hand we reject them and when they get together we say, ohh you do not want to integrate! Very easy and not honest!
I think that the day European and Muslim will eat together, play together, go to the market together, exchange their traditions and simply be open to differences and curious it will help! Problem is that after 40 years of very poor integration conditions, extremism have grown on both side! But me personally I do not want to leave in a society that says to be integrated you need to adhere to our christian values! I do not care, my friends are Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, agnostic and all I want is that they adhere to the republican values and common sense politeness and respect values. All the rest for me, Ms Merkel and Mr Sakozy speech are for me helping people to hate each other instead of pushing them to talk together and sit down together. Me I would oblige families to invite each-other for Christmas, Ramadan, Kipour....this is what I did when I was young and today I respect and don't fear any culture because I know my neighbors. Not knowing his neighbor and dreaming about them leaving your country in counterproductive for the world! When I was young I was thinking that theses ideas will dye because they make no sense, but it looks like they are progressing! France and Germany (I am french) are the leader of the European Community, at some point France lead the construction of Europe, the Human rights, democratie....now we lead enforcement of a politically correct racisme...cleaner than what was argued in the past but with very similar results. Be like us or leave...
Sad sad sad
Eric
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