Germans seek to counter growing anti-Islamisation protests

The rightwing "anti-Islamisation" protests sweeping Germany have prompted a counter-attack from Bild, the country's top-selling newspaper.

Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and finance minister Wolfgang Schauble headed a list of 50 prominent Germans who on Tuesday put their names to the tabloid's front-page assault on Pegida, the organisation behind the protests.

The move came after the latest night of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations on Monday brought tens of thousands of Germans on to the streets.

In Dresden, where the protests began in October, Pegida drew record crowds of 18,000, according to the police. Opponents numbered 4,000.

But elsewhere, Pegida supporters were vastly outnumbered by their opponents. In Berlin, the police said some 5,000 counter-demonstrators blocked about 300 Pegida followers from marching to the Brandenburg Gate.

In Cologne, other buildings, including several churches and a museum, joined Cologne cathedral in switching off their lights in support of the anti-Pegida demonstrators. And in Dresden, Volkswagen kept its glass-walled manufacturing plant dark to underscore the company "stands for an open, free and democratic society".

Pegida, which stands for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, is protesting against what it sees as the growing influence of Islam in Germany and lax immigration policies.

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But since chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a forthright condemnation in her New Year message, the German establishment has become more confident about trying to marginalise Pegida.

Church leaders, for example, have attacked the organisers for using Christian crosses as identity symbols.

The Bild appeal included not only serving ministers but former chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schroder, as well as business leaders, including Airbus chief Tom Enders and Frank Appel, the head of Deutsche Post, the postal service.

However, the counter-attack on Pegida has not removed German politicians' angst about how to respond to rising public concerns about migration.

In a study published on Monday, the Migration Council, an academic body that advises the government, found significant popular concerns about Muslims and immigrants in Germany. Some 38 per cent of those polled said that women who wore headscarves could not be German. About 40 per cent said people must speak German without an accent to be considered German. And 27 per cent said Muslims were "more aggressive" than they themselves were. However, 50 per cent welcomed the growing diversity of German society.

The council called for a commission to develop the concept of Germany as an "immigration country" because "migration and integration should not be dealt with on a day-to-day basis". The message echoes widely-held concerns that while Germany deals well with the economic integration of immigrants - chiefly by providing jobs - it does not manage social integration so well. This divide stems from the traditional view of immigrants as "guest workers", developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

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