Actually, the matter is clear: right-wing populist and right-wing extremist parties in Europe see xenophobia and Islam-bashing as an effective means of getting dissatisfied voters on their side. Everywhere, migrants and the Islamic religion are seen as the fundamental evil of all of Europe’s problems.
This also applies to the German right-wing extremist AfD, which has a good chance of becoming the strongest party in three local state elections in eastern Germany. There is also speculation that this group will have strong growth in the upcoming European elections in June.
If you look at the AfD’s party program, which was adopted in 2016, the matter is clear: Islam and Muslims are mentioned there a total of 50 times, almost exclusively in a negative way. Statements from leading party representatives also suggest that Muslims are the main evil in Germany. The boundaries of anti-Muslim resentment are constantly being crossed.
Now things are slowly rumbling, at least in parts of the right-wing party. There are increasing numbers of voices calling for a new approach to Islam and Muslims, including an alliance with reactionary forces. However, such a strategy is still controversial within the party. It is based on the cultural relativist ideology of ethnopluralism propagated by the New Right, which asserts the existence of homogeneous peoples, advocates mutual respect and ultimately aims at ethnically pure societies that are in no way compatible with the German constitution. The presence of Islam in Germany is rejected, but Islamic-based oppression elsewhere is viewed uncritically. Also relevant are common enemy images that the radical right and radical Muslims share – in particular liberalism, “Westernization” and “Americanization”.
Representatives of such a school of thought can be found in the ethnic-nationalist movement, which has a decisive influence on large parts of the AfD. The AfD’s leading candidate for the upcoming European elections plays an important role: Mr. Krah presented a kind of manifesto in 2023 that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies as definitely right-wing extremist. “Politics from the right”, the title of the inflammatory pamphlet, has sparked sharp opposition in large parts of his party.
The “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” which is seen in the AfD’s party program as evidence of the incompatibility of Islamic laws with the local legal system, shows “the right path,” says Krah’s book. “It is not clear why New York should define how the balance between the individual and family, tribe, religious community should be achieved in Egypt or Indonesia.”
The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam is a declaration adopted in 1990 by member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation). This statement is an attempt to define and formulate the concepts of human rights from an Islamic perspective.
The Cairo Declaration emphasizes the importance of Sharia, Islamic law, as a basis for the interpretation and implementation of human rights in Islam. It stipulates that all rights and freedoms should be in accordance with Sharia, meaning that they must not go beyond the limits of what is considered acceptable in Islam.
Critics argue that the Cairo Declaration is inconsistent with universal human rights as set out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of the differences include the restriction of certain rights, such as freedom of expression, to ensure the maintenance of public order and morality in accordance with Sharia law.
The declaration has also received criticism regarding the interpretation and application of human rights from an Islamic perspective. Some argue that it does not provide sufficient protection for certain groups, particularly women and religious minorities.
Overall, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam represents an attempt to align the concepts of human rights with Islamic values and legal norms, although debates and controversies remain about its effectiveness and its compatibility with universal human rights.
Parts of the AfD seem to have an open sympathy for the Islamic view of human rights, as long as it does not take place in Germany. The AfD’s top candidate recently had to defend himself within the party for another statement he made. The Islam-critical writer Salman Rushdie was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in October last year. It is “remarkable how fervently the left-liberal chic crowd humiliates the Islamic world,” said Mr. Krah after the award ceremony. There is “no merit” in “mocking” the Quran. “We are against Islamic immigration, not against the Islamic world,” he said. But it goes even further: In a video he defended Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “President Erdogan is not your enemy” and Erdogan’s record is “impressive”.
In parts of the AfD, Krah’s statements are anything but celebrated. “Anyone who sees Erdogan as a role model is shaking the foundations of the AfD,” says an AfD member of the Bundestag. “Erdogan is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to radicalize Muslims worldwide. That is definitely not in our interest.” The criticism of Salman Rushdie is also “against the DNA of the AfD”.
However, experts see a pattern among right-wing populist parties in how they have recently been courting Islamists. Right-wing radical nationalists can warm to other nationalists; they share core values. They emphasize that the other parties held back for a long time when criticizing anti-Semitism or misogyny in orthodox-conservative mainstream Islam, thereby temporarily leaving the field to the xenophobes from the AfD. “If leftists or liberals took their own claims to emancipation seriously, they would have to form the vanguard in combating radical political Islam,” said a political scientist.
The deputy leader of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany, invited Huseyin Özoguz, moderator of the Islamist YouTube format “Actuarium,” to a discussion at the end of last year. “I think it is appropriate that we open ourselves up to Muslims, who are already AfD-affine,” said the right-winger in front of the camera. “Islam isn’t really the problem either,” although Islam “doesn’t belong to Germany,” but that shouldn’t be understood as criticism of Islam. This is cultural relativistic ethnopluralism in its purest form.
A book that was published by a right-wing extremist publishing house recently caused an uproar in the right-wing party, which is now classified as “partly right-wing extremist” by German security organs: “Enemy image of Islam as a dead end”. The “patriotic camp” should rethink “its image of Islam,” it says. The author advocates a “reversal of perspective in particularly ethnically heterogeneous parts of the country” that “looks for ideological-ideological intersections and potential for cooperation between ‘conservatives’ of all origins and measures ‘Islam’ not by its destructive potential, but by its constructive potential.” There is a “constructive opportunity potential in opening up to the (growing) voter pool of conservative Muslims”.
Such theses are by no means new in the New Right, to which an ever-increasing portion of AfD membership is based. Alain de Benoist, one of the key thinkers of the New Right, said as early as 1998 that “opening a fast food chain” was “certainly a greater threat to our identity than building a mosque.” Others warn the AfD against allying itself with “those defenders of ‘Western values'” through a sharp criticism of Islam, “who understand this primarily as the right to obscenity, abortion and the enforcement of gay marriage.”
In the “Theses on Islam” published in 2017, the anti-American and anti-Semitic worldview of the new right-wing journalist Thor von Waldstein even ends in a justification of Islamism. He attributes the “radicalization of Islam” to, among other things, “the US neo-colonial rule, whose excessiveness has led to growing resistance” and “the decadence of the West that is corroding the people, family and religion, whose destructive power Islam feels and is against “It is your right to defend yourself.”
The mouthpiece of the extremist AfD wing and chief ideologist Björn Höcke made his position clear in the publication “Never enter the same river twice”. There is a need for a “consistent prevention of the threatened Islamization of Germany” and a solution to the “root problem of immigration”, but “due respect for a culture that is foreign to us” and, in terms of foreign policy, an “exit from the international ‘anti-Islam coalition’” . The lack of information complained about by liberal critics of Islam is an “internal matter of the Muslim world, in which we should avoid interfering as much as possible.”
It remains to be seen to what extent the German AfD sees even more potential if they get on board with Islamists. There is certainly still enough need for discussion within the party.
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