Muslims in Germany may become more radical because they are excluded from mainstream German society, a report said.
The newly released report, commissioned by Germany’s Interior Ministry, says 92 percent of Muslims in Germany reject violence in the name of Islam, calling it a sin and an insult to Allah, but the other 6 percent are cause for worry, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.
The study suggested that about 40 percent of Muslims surveyed were religious. The authors classified about 6 percent of respondents as having “violent tendencies,” and 14 percent as tending toward “anti-democratic” views
The study of 1,750 Muslims in Germany was conducted by the Institute for Criminology at the University of Hamburg. About 40 percent of those surveyed were German citizens, Der Spiegel reported.
The introduction says the survey leads to a “worrying conclusion that a serious potential for Islamist radicalization has developed in Germany,” and attributes this to the failure to integrate immigrants into German society.
More than half of those questioned said they felt excluded, and about 20 percent reported having been subjected to racism within the past year.
According to Der Spiegel, the new study appears to contradict some findings of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, which in 2006 found that about 1 percent of Germany’s Muslim population had extremist tendencies. There are about 3 million Muslims living in Germany.
