Fearmongers

  Selling hate and fear is a growth industry in Germany - just as it is in the US.  Thilo Sarrazin became an immediate bestselling sensation with his book Deutschland schafft sich ab, which warns that Germany is being overrun by a fast-breeding, but genetically inferior, Muslim population.   Now the arts editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Patrick Bahners, has come out with the perfect anti-Sarrazin book: Die Panikmacher: Eine Streitschrift  ("The Fearmongers: A Polemic") in which he analyzes the arguments and rhetoric of popular German Islamophobes such as Thilo Sarrazin, Henryk Broder, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Udo Ulfkotte and Necla Kelek.  Bahners is a supreme rationalist and he points out over and over again the irrationality of the popular fearmongers.  Sarrazin's book, in particular, is chock-full of footnotes and "facts", which upon closer examination are simply fabricated misinformation.  For example, Sarrazin claims tha 70% of all Turks and 90% of all Arabs living in Germany reject the German state.  Sarrazin actually boasted that these "statistics" were just made up and it is up to his critics to refute them with actual data.  That is exactly what Bahners accomplishes in Die Panikmacher. 

In this excerpt from his book which appeared in the FAZ, Bahners discusses the concept of Taqiya in Islam:

Es gibt mit Hirsi Alis Worten radikale Muslime, aber keine moderaten, nur passive, die nicht alle Regeln befolgen. „In Wirklichkeit gibt es nur einen Islam, der als Unterwerfung unter den Willen Gottes definiert ist. Er hat nichts Gemäßigtes an sich.“ Ein liberaler und aufgeklärter Islam, ja, selbst ein quietistischer und introvertierter muss dann Einbildung und Täuschung sein.  Es ist ein islamkritischer Glaubenssatz, dass der islamische Glaube die Lüge erlaubt und sogar gebietet, wenn es um seine Ausbreitung geht. Für diese fixe Idee steht das Wort Taqiya...

(For Hirsi Ali Muslims can only be radical - there are no moderate Muslims, only passive ones who don't follow all the rules. "In reality there is only one Islam, which is defined as total submission to God.  There is nothing moderate about it."  It is pure delusion and self-deception to think that a liberal, enlightened - or even a quietest and introverted - Islam is even possible. A central thesis of the critics of Islam is that Islamic belief permits and even promotes lying when it serves the interest of spreading Islam. For this obsession there is the word Taqiya...)

In reality, Taquiya is a scholarly construct which is only to be used in in rare instances of self-preservation. For the fearmonger, it represents the essence of Islamic faith. And so, in the eyes of Hirsi Ali, Broder, Sarrazin, et al. Muslims are damned if they do, damned if they don't.  If they espouse Jihad, they are living up to central tenets of their faith.  Ir, like 99.99% of all Muslims they live peacefully and practice tolerance, they are engaging in a gigantic deception. Thus the 3 million law-abiding Muslims living in Germany comprise a giant sleeper cell, waiting for the secret signal of global Jihad before rising up detonating bombs in German cities:

Niemand kann sicher sein, dass Muslime sich bei einem Versprechen innerlich nicht gerade das Gegenteil dessen vornehmen, was sie laut aussprechen; jede Wahrhaftigkeit des Verkehrs ist zerstört. Die Muslime will man sich als Fremde im elementaren Sinne vorstellen, die nicht akzeptieren, dass die Wechselseitigkeit von Gesprächen und Geschäften Pflichten begründet. Auch bei Thilo Sarrazin ist zu lesen, „die Ungläubigen“ dürften „bei Bedarf getäuscht und belogen werden“.

(No onr can be sure that when Muslims make a promise they in fact intend to do exactly the opposite of what they say: the truthfulness of evey human interaction is thus destroyed.  One thinks of Muslims as foreigners in an elematary sense since they refuse to accept the reciprocity of obligations in conversations and transactions.  One reads in Thilo Sarrazin's book that it is "permissible to deceive and lie" to "Infidels". )

You can read a debate (in English) between Patrick Bahners and Necla Kelek - one of the fearmongers Bahners takes to task in Die Panikmacher - here.  Die Panikmacher deserves a wide readership.  My fear is that the market for irrational populist hate far exceeds that for rational discourse.

 

Comments

[Strahler 70]

Deutsche Islamophobe schützen häufig eine besondere Liebe zu Israel vor, um dem Vorwurf vorzubeugen, sie wären Rassisten. Wie könnten sie Rassisten sein, wenn sie doch für die Juden einträten, so die fadenscheinige Entschuldigung... Daß sich deren Sympathie aber einzig auf die araber- und islamfeindliche Likudpropaganda bezieht und von der Mehrheit der Juden mit Empörung zurückgewiesen wird, stört sie weiter nicht.

[Zyme]

I don't think there is a witch-hunt on Muslims in Germany.

There will be a real one after a serious terror strike. But killing American soldiers on our soil is not what it takes to shake up the public.

And David, as always, you exclude the benefits of generalizations: They increase the sense of unity among the people and thus pave the way for the strong position of the leadership necessary for political reforms.

[David]

BY "generalizations" I guess you mean widespread racial prejudice.

[Zyme]

Absolutely :-)

[John in Michigan, USA]

"I[f], like 99.99% of all Muslims they live peacefully and practice tolerance..."

If, 99.99% of the time, nuclear power plants operate without radiation leaks, wouldn't you agree that any discussion of the dangers of radiation leaks represent an irrational phobia?

See how silly the 99.99% argument is?

Suddenly a German historian/journalist, whose academic career and formal credentials suggest no specialization or focus on Islam, whose "study" of Islam appears to be limited to the publication of a few popular (i.e. non-academic, non-peer-reviewed) books, is cited as an expert on the incredibly complex question of Taquiya? The wonders never cease.

"Generalizations" about a religion are examples of widespread *racial* prejudice? Do you use language the way normal people do?

[David]

The nuclear analogy is just plain dumb. What are you suggesting? Detain all Muslims because a tiny minority are violent?

Bahners is a rationalist, and is as much of an expert on Islam as Ulfkotte , Sarrazin, etc -- whose speeches and books you are unable to read and therefore are not in a position to comment on...

[John in Michigan, USA]

David,

I don't know whose comment you are responding to. It certainly isn't mine, since I did not discuss, either directly or by analogy, detaining anyone based on religion or electrical origin.

[Roy]

Isn't it just a bit disturbing to think that Ayaan Hirsi Ali will be speaking at SMCC in a couple of weeks?

[John in Michigan, USA]

I don't know why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is included in a list of "German Islamophobes".

She was first a Somali, then she became a Danish citizen. She still is a Dane, although she is now a legal resident (green card) of the USA. She spend a brief amount of time in Germany and has some family there, I don't see how that makes her German (she hasn't used this family connection to claim German citizenship).

Secondly, and more importantly, based on her personal, life experiences, it is *not* irrational for her to fear the style of Islam that she knows first-hand. Islam, as she experienced it, permitted and even blessed constant abuse, including mutilation of women, just for a start. Some Muslims, claiming to act in the name of Islam, made routine and credible death threats to her. Virtually all Muslim authorities would agree she is an apostate; I don't know of a single, prominent Muslim authority who has spoken out against the death penalty for that so-called crime.

Therefore, based on her first-person, direct, ongoing experience, it is not irrational (a phobia) for her to fear the Islam she knows.

She recognizes that there are more moderate elements in Islam; she discounts them as inauthentic. This may be a mistake, but if it is, it is an error in judgement, not a sign of irrational hate. She needs to avoid essentialism, the idea that Islam's negative traits are inherent or essential, and cannot ever change. But again, essentialism is just a conceptual mistake, it is not a sign of irrationality. Her positions in no way equate to a "phobia" (a term designed to invoke the specter of mental illness e.g. claustrophobia).

Until the more moderate Muslims regain the commanding heights of their religion, Ali's fears remain rational.

As to the others on the list, I don't know them well enough to comment.

[David]

Take it up with Patrick Bahners. BTW. I believe she is a Dutch citizen, not a Dane.

[John in Michigan, USA]

Oops she is Dutch, not Danish. Thanks for the correction.

I don't have access to Patrick Bahner's book, but let me just ask, are you certain he describes her as German in his book? That seems very odd. Is there a story there, or is he just lumping her in a category with the other "popular" "Islamophobes"