Framing Islam and Constructing Cultural Identities
in the Debate on
Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab
Table of Contents
1. Introduction………3
1.1 Immigration and Integration in Germany ……….4
1.2 Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab………...6
1.3 The Research Topic……….9
2. Methodology……….11
2.1 Cultural Identities………12
2.3 Agenda-Setting Theory………..16
3. Analysis……….18
3.1 Setting the Agenda: How the Media Shaped the Debate…….19
3.2 Framing Islam………..31
3.3 Constructing Cultural Identities………....44
4. Conclusion: The Results and their Effects………...60
Appendix I. Works Cited………65
1. Introduction
“Long Dormant, German Pride Blinks and Stirs” proclaimed The New York
Times in their eponymous September 2010 article (Kulish 1). The reason for the
German nation “flexing its muscles and reasserting a long-repressed national pride” (1) was a heated debate on integration that emerged in late summer 2010. At the center of the public discourse stood the publication of a book called Deutschland
schafft sich ab by Thilo Sarrazin, a social democrat and at that time member of the
executive board of Germany’s Central Bank. The public debate following the publication soon centered on one main concern: the assumed problems of Muslim immigrants integrating into German society. The discourse surrounding the book’s arguments was initiated and carried out by the German mass media. As the international New York Times observed the debate, it seemed to concern not only issues of integration but also addressed feelings of national pride and identity. In short: Sarrazin’s ideas about Muslim immigrants revealed a great deal about what it means to be German in today’s world. The correlation between Muslim immigration and German national identity is subject of this thesis. This concerns in particular the question how cultural identities are being constructed in relation to each other. As the news media played a crucial role in the debate a qualitative analysis of a media sample is the ideal way to approach the research question. In order to introduce the research topic beforehand the debate’s context will be elaborated in further detail.
1.1 Immigration and Integration in Germany
The European nationstates share a long history of emigration. Between 1821 and 1924 approximately 55 million Europeans emigrated, the vast majority of them to the United States (Ryskamp 68). Following this, emigration to Ireland, Italy, England, and Germany was on the top of the list of departing citizens. This tendency underwent a significant shift after World War II when immigration to the European countries started to gain importance. Since 1945 Germany experienced immigration of large numbers and from various groups (Green 333). Following the End of World War II about 12 million refugees arrived from the country’s former eastern territories. In the 1950s an additional 4 million ethnic Germans of the former Soviet Union immigrated to Germany. From 1955 on labor immigration started. Due to the flourishing German economy guest workers were recruited until in 1973, when the government under Willy Brandt announced the Anwerbestop. From 1987 on asylum appeared on the agenda as a new significant source of immigration (334). Almost as old as Germany’s history of immigration is the debate on whether the country should be considered a country of immigration. Until the late 1990s the German government held the position that
Germany was not a country of immigration. Even in the 1960s when large amounts of guest workers came to Germany, this immigration was primarily considered as
temporary. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt announced in 1981 the infamous sentence “the Federal Republic should not and will not be a country of immigration” (qdt. in Williams 57) that afterwards has been adapted by many other politicians. For instance by Helmut Kohl who referred to Schmidt’s expression ten years later in stating that “the Federal Republic of Germany is not a country of immigration” (qtd. in Williams 57). As
Helen Williams points out the exact phrase “Germany is not a country of immigration”1
appears in more than 6.400 books and various parliamentary debates (57). Certainly the political elite’s refusal to regard Germany as a country of
immigration strongly influenced public discourses on immigration until the late 1990s. It was finally in 1998 the SPD–Green coalition under Gerhard Schröder that broke with the policy and established immigration on the political agenda (Green 334). Among European countries Germany today has the largest foreign population in absolute terms. In 2010 6.7 million immigrants have been registered in the country whereby the two largest foreign nationalities are Turkish and Italian. From 1990 to 2010 an average number of 900,000 immigrants per year arrived in Germany from various countries of origin (336). Most of these immigrants reside in the country for a long time: The average period of residence is 18.9 years. Simon Green describes the German non-national population as “large, well-settled and diverse” (338). Considering the statistics it cannot be doubted that Germany has in fact become a country of immigration. Howsoever recent debates prove that society and politics still struggle with this reality. Integration is a topic of various political discussions and almost continually present in the news media. Angela Merkel’s famous statement that “multiculturalism has
absolutely failed” from 16 October 2010 is exemplary for a general sense of
dissatisfaction concerning integration (qtd. in Williams 65). Just recently in 2007 the German government announced the first official definition of integration describing the goal as “integration into the social, economic, intellectual, cultural and legal fabric of the host country without giving up one’s own cultural identity” (68).
1.2 Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab
In 2010, Thilo Sarrazin, a Social Democratic politician and at that time member of the Executive Board of Germany’s Central Bank published a book entitled
Deutschland schafft sich ab. In his work Sarrazin warned that ethnic Germans were
soon going to be outnumbered by immigrants because of their low birth rates. He furthermore accused Muslim immigrants of refusing assimilation and undermining German society. Sarrazin’s argumentation centers on the idea of the society’s decline through a combination of falling birth rates, immigration and a growing lower class. According to the author this “decomposition inside society”2
(Sarrazin 7) will rapidly ruin the nation economically and culturally. Sarrazin believes that intelligence,
mentality and tradition are genetically determined (32). He supports a eugenic model that suggests that a certain genetic composition of a population is less favorable than another. The idea of eugenics reaches back to the 1880s and had its peak of
popularity in the 1920s (Levine 1). It is rooted essentially in Darwinian Theory that emerged shortly before in the 1850s. The aim of most eugenic movements is to affect reproductive practice through the application of theories of heredity. According to the eugenic logic some human life is of more value to the state, the nation, the race and future generations than other human life. The inventor of eugenic theory, Francis Galton, saw eugenic selection as a preferable alternative to natural selection among humans (1).
Sarrazin does not mention the term eugenic in his book but he explicitly refers to Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. According to Sarrazin the fertility of the less intelligent influences the average level of intelligence within the population. He
concludes that “the inborn intellectual potential of the population continuously dilutes” 3
2 “Fäulnisprozesse im Inneren der Gesellschaft”
3 „Deshalb bedeutet ein schichtabhängig unterschiedliches generatives Verhalten leider auch, dass
(Sarrazin 92). According to Sarrazin different cultures and ethnicitieshave different genetic abilities and levels of intelligence. He states that for instance Jews developed an above average intelligence because they had to face high selection pressure caused by persecution4 (95). Sarrazin goes on bystating that certain nation states
and cultures are limited in their possibilities for development through their genetic dispositions5 (34). Departing from this idea Sarrazin identifies certain groups of
immigrants as potentially problematic for the composition of the German society because of their genetic difference. Those are in particular migrants from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa (261). According to Sarrazin they share one important trait: they are all Muslims. The way in which the Germans differ from the Italians, writes Sarrazin, seems minimalistic compared to the way they differ from Muslims6 (290).
Problems of integration – and here the author leaves no doubts – are closely connected to the immigrant’s religious beliefs. Sarrazin defines the specific problems with Muslim immigrants as lower success on the labor market and in the education system, a general high dependence on governmental support and above-average potential for violent crime (262). He sums up “prejudices against Muslims exist throughout Europe out of good reasons” (292). In addition he puts them in charge of having absolutely no interest in German society and culture. In his opinion Muslim migrants come to Germany for mainly one reason: to receive social security benefits7
(150). The journalist Patrick Bahners sees Sarrazin in the tradition of eugenic pessimists that fear the moral and intellectual collapse and decline of the Occident
4 „Erklärt wird die durchschnittlich höhere Intelligenz der Juden mit dem außerordentlichen
Selektionsdruck“
5 „Es zeigt sich aber, dass Staaten und Gesellschaften nur sehr unterschiedlich in der Lage sind,
die von der Industrialisierung und Technisierung ausgehenden Entwicklungschancen zu nutzen“
6 „Die Deutschen […] haben bis heute kaum erkannt, wie sehr sie sich selbst etwa von den
Italienern unterscheiden und wie nachhaltig selbst diese, im Vergleich zu den Muslimen minimalen Unterschiede fortwirken.“
7 “Insbesondere unter den Arabern in Deutschland ist die Neigung weit verbreitet, Kinder zu
zeugen, um mehr Sozialtransfers zu bekommen, und die in der Familie oft eingesperrten Frauen haben im Grunde ja kaum etwas anderes zu tun”
(Bahners 25). Ethnic purity in Sarrazin’s sense can only be achieved through
bureaucratic politics. Accordingly the author demonstrates on 408 pages a catalogue of measures. The most important are the restriction of immigration, the short cutting of social benefits and increased governmental control for those who refuse to work or to contribute to society.
On August 23 - one week before the official publishing of Deutschland schafft
sich ab – the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel and the daily tabloid Bild printed
selected parts of the book and thereby managed to start one of the most heated debates in post-war Germany. The public discussion that seemed to divide the nation into proponents and opponents of Sarrazin’s arguments lasted for months. Even before the book’s actual publication in August 2010 the first printing of 25.000 copies was entirely sold out (Krieger 2012). To date more than 1.5 million hardcopies of
Deutschland schafft sich ab have been sold. Thilo Sarrazin has earned millions with
his controversial thesis but it has also led to severe consequences in his professional life. Facing the possibility of an official exclusion Sarrazin decided to resign from his position at the Central Bank in October 2010. Furthermore the SPD discussed his suspension from the party but closed the proceeding in April 2011.
1.3 Research Topic
In 2012, 20% of the German population had an immigrant background - around 4% of them are Muslims (Statistisches Bundesamt). In August 2010 Thilo Sarrazin declared these minorities as essentially threatening to the German society. The public debate following the book’s publication has been one of the most controversial ones in post-war Germany. Although the core discussion took place from August 2010 until October 2010, the effects last until today. The role of the mass media in the debate is significant. The news media did not only kick off the debate, they furthermore heated it up to an extent that critics have described as public hysteria. Immigration is a socially relevant topic. It touches on the way native and non-native citizens live together and it leads to the question of minorities’ places in the wider construct of the nation. The debate on Deutschland schafft sich ab did not only show how the German public perceives immigrants it moreover revealed how Germans perceived themselves. The very idea that immigration might work to transform German society implies that
something as a German core identity existed beforehand. But how can one define this national identity? The following analysis should lead closer to an understanding of cultural identities in modern Germany. The debate on Sarrazin’s book will be the object of examination because it revealed ongoing public discourses on national identity, immigration and not at least uncovered deep public anxieties. The focus in this work will be set on the particular role of the mass media in the debate on Sarrazin’s book.
Media discourses reflect social, cultural and political interests. Therefore they allow us to draw conclusions on wider public concerns. The media does not only mirror certain ideas and ideologies but additionally actively produces, structures and shapes knowledge and thus holds a powerful position in democracy. The question to be examined in this discursive analysis is how the German news media produced
representations of Muslim immigrants in the debate on Deutschland schafft sich ab and how these representations interact with discourses of German national identity. The outcome of this investigation will ideally provide new information about media produced processes of cultural identity formation. Finally, it will also after all pose questions of the media’s responsibility in the public realm. The dataset used for this study includes news magazines, cover stories and articles on Thilo Sarrazin’s book
Deutschland schafft sich ab in German print media. The sample is gathered in an
exploratory, qualitative and open fashion dating from August 2010 to October 2010. In order to develop a representative sample, the selected papers cover a large portion of the political spectrum from right and left wings to more centrist sources.
2. Methodology
The opening chapter heretofore placed the debate on Deutschland schafft sich
ab in the context of Germany’s struggle with its status as a country of immigration. It
indicated the far-reaching consequences and social relevance of the debate on
Sarrazin’s book and the media’s role in the discussion. The succeeding chapter serves to define the terminology and to provide a framework for the discursive analysis. The methodological frame for the following analysis covers two main subjects: cultural identities and the news media. The analysis will essentially rely on the notion of discursive practices as articulated by Michel Foucault. According to Foucault discursive formations consist of groups of statements that distribute knowledge
concerning a certain object (Foucault 22). In analyzing objects it has to be kept in mind that those objects are constructed “only on the basis of a complex field of discourse” (23). It is hence the aim of the analysis to identify the underlying discourses that the examined articles and texts participate in and to “search for unities that form within” (27). The question is how groups of statements establish correlations with each other and what other groups of statements are excluded. (28). This work’s aim is to examine constructions of cultural identities. Accordingly the focus will be set on concepts and discourses concerning two main topics: German national identity and the Muslim immigrant’s identity.
2.1 Cultural Identities
Stuart Hall understands identity in the tradition of Foucault’s discourse theory as embedded in discursive practices. He thereby rejects naturalistic concepts of identity as a unified subjective thing but rather suggests that it is constructed within discursive practices, a process that he describes as identification (Hall 2).
“Identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group” writes Hall. It is a “construction, a process never completed” (2). In the case of cultural or national identities the shared characteristic belongs to a cultural or ethnic category. The term ‘national identity’is being often used in political debates but rarely defined. This inaccuracy in language is partly due to a general uneasiness in dealing with national feelings and partly to uncertainty what the concept includes at all. A solid starting point when talking about nationhood is Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as a “imagined political community” (Anderson 6). Anderson writes that this community is “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their
fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (6). Although Anderson’s definition of a nation might be rather broad it nevertheless directs the attention towards one important aspect: The general constructiveness of what is considered a nation. Anderson sharps this point by quoting Ernest Geller that nationalism “is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness” but that it “invents nations where they do not exist” (qtd. in Anderson 6).
Adopting the idea of a nation as a construct of imaginary force it becomes possible to examine national identity as a “cultural artefact” (4). It has to be considered as Anderson writes how the concept has come “into historical being”, in what ways its “meanings has changed over time” and why it commands “such profound emotional legacy” (4). The issue of German national identity – often also referred to as the
‘German question’ – has widely been addressed by intellectuals but rarely formulated as the German author Hans Magnus Enzensberger criticizes (qtd. in Langguth 9). Germany’s recent history of National Socialism and its post-war division into two states have certainly strained the discussion on a national identity. The horrors of the authoritarian state and the misuse of national attributes turned the formulation of a coherent national identity into a hard undertaking. But in fact German national identity has been an ambiguous issue long before the Third Reich. In comparison to other nations the Germans always struggled with the idea and reality of the national construct (Alter 33). The popular expression of Germany as a “late nation” calls attention to the delayed foundation of the German state in 1871 (33). Nevertheless an awakening German national consciousness can be traced back to around 1800. Facing the danger of Napoleonic France and the inner particularism of single states as Preußen, Bayern and Sachsen, a new desire for unity emerged among the German population (39).
In order to understand what distinguishes this German national consciousness from other nation states it is helpful to consider Friedrich Meinecke’s theory of
Staatsnation and Kulturnation. Meinecke, a German historian provided in 1907 a
widely used distinction into Staatsnation and Kulturnation. The Staatsnation is founded on the idea of voluntary individual and collective self-determination as a member of the nation state (35). In this sense the Staatsnation is a mutually supportive group whose members define themselves through their nationality. France and Great Britain but also the United States are classic Staatsnationen. In those countries the nation was founded as a political community of willed citizens (36). “Late nations” such as
Germany, Italy and Poland are considered to be Kulturnationen. The Kulturnation is in contrast to the Staatsnation not founded on the idea of a state but rather more on assumed objective parameters. Those parameters are for instance ethnicity,
language, religion, tradition, territory and shared history (36). Thus the Kulturnation relies on an ethnic definition of belonging that existed already before the foundation of a state. The perception of Germany as a Kulturnation helps us to understand that national affiliation existed already before the actual foundation of a German nation state. And this affiliation was built – different than for instance in France or Great Britain – on an ethnic understanding of belonging. While members of a Staatsnation actively choose to be citizens, members of a Kulturnation are born into a certain nationality. Consequently the concept Kulturnation carries a racist component: who is not born as a German cannot become one.
Of course Meinecke’s distinction is rather schematic, but it nevertheless mirrors a German tradition of understanding national identity as a form of ethnic belonging. Concepts of belonging always imply exclusion. As Peter Alter suggests Germany has a long practice of thinking of national identity in terms of the exclusion of others (50). To further investigate these processes it is helpful to return to Stuart Hall’s idea of identity. Hall’s understanding of identity is deeply rooted in the discourse process. He suggests that identities arise from “narrativization” within the discourse, that they are “constituted within representation” (Hall 4). Processes of identity formation are essentially processes of articulation as Hall points out. This articulation “entails discursive work, the binding and marking of symbolic boundaries”. Those boundaries produce what Hall describes as “frontier-effects” (3). In order to construct identity, according to Hall, it “requires what is left outside, its constitutive outside, to consolidate the process” (3). His understanding of identity is radical in the sense that he is
convinced that it is “the making of difference and exclusion” that constitutes it rather than a feeling of unity (4). The concept of constituting identity against the backdrop of an “Other” in combination with the traditional perception of Germany as a Kulturnation
provides us with a framework to examine German national identity in relation to the Muslim immigrant’s identity.
Initially it has to be said that the term “Muslim identity” is primarily a
generalization. Muslims are of various nationalities with numerous ways ofcultural and religious practices. Nevertheless immigrants of Muslim religion are often reduced to their status as religious subjects and treated as one collective subject one can refer to. Participants of public discourses frequently miss the fact that the category of the Muslim immigrant includes people with complex economic, social and political backgrounds and opinions. They fail to recognize Islam as a “heterogeneous set of cultural systems” as Peter Morey writes (Morey 2). The one-dimensional and dogmatic view of Islam has a long tradition in Western cultures. Edward Said’s book Orientalism is probably the most important work on the Western perception of Islam. Said
describes Orientalism as a “style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’” (Said,
Orientalism 2). He refers to Michel Foucault by understanding Orientalism as a
discourse. European culture manages and produces representations of the Orient within this discourse (3). Said draws the attention towards the fact that what the discourse treats as Islam is in fact “part fiction, part ideological label, part minimal designation of a religion called Islam” (Said, Covering Islam Preface x). The tendency is to “reduce Islam to a handful of rules, stereotypes, and generalizations” as Said writes and to usually associate it with “violence, primitiveness, atavism, threatening qualities” (xvi). In the aftermath of 9/11 the association of Islam with fundamentalism and terrorism became even more powerful. These pictures of Islam that circulate among Western discourses go along with sets of feelings, values and attitudes (47).
Orientalism is closely connected to two other concepts that should be introduced briefly: colonialism and racism. As Jamal Malik suggests contemporary
Islam cannot be understood “without the colonial experience in mind” (Malik 496). The fact that after the end of the First World War “approximately half of the mainland of the earth consisted of colonies” and “about two-fifths of the world’s population lived as ‘subjects’ under colonial rule” structures and influences Islamic cultures until today (496). The concept of European hegemony continues to define the relationship between Orient and Occident. Racism is hard to define as such becausethe term includes a “multitude of concepts” as Ghassan Hage points out (Hage 29). Hage offers a practical definition for the purpose of this analysis as he focuses on the racism’s aspects of identity and its connection to nationalism. He regards racism as a “system of beliefs, a mode of classification, a way of thinking about the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’” that maintains the superiority of certain groups or ethnics (29). The “privileged relationship” of one race or ethnicity and a territory binds nationalist practices and racist practices together (32). According to Hage, thus one cannot think racism without considering nationalism as well.
2.3 Agenda-Setting Theory
In Covering Islam Edward Said particularly discusses the role of the mass media in discourses on Islam. He suggests that the media occupies an essential role in constituting public views on Muslims. For most Americans and Europeans pictures of Islam are solely delivered through the mass media. This position gives the media a key role in shaping public attitudes towards Muslim immigrants. To elaborate this relationship further theory on mass media shall be consulted. Theory on mass media is available on a large scale and with diverse orientations. One of the widely adapted approaches is Maxwell McComb’s theory of agenda-setting. In the case of this research McCombs concept is a promising tool, because it focuses on the media’s powerful position in the formation of public opinion. Agenda-setting theory is based on the idea that our perception of the world is structured by the media. As individuals our
direct personal experience is limited – most of the issues that catch our attention are beyond our personal reach. The mass media provides us with information that is outside the limits of our personal knowledge. McCombs calls the picture that the media provides “second-hand reality” (McCombs 1).
Journalists structure, organize and provide information for the public. But the daily capacity available for news is limited. Consequently they focus on a handful of issues. They choose what is most noticeable and thereby set the media’s agenda. Empirical investigations on agenda-setting have clearly shown that news provided by the media comes to be regarded over time as important by the public (5). The media’s agenda hence at least partly sets the public’s agenda. The news media provides people with pictures and information that they “incorporate into their images and attitudes about a variety of objects” (45). Moreover these surveys revealed that educated individuals are more likely to attend to the mass media’s agenda because they have a greater need for information and orientation as McCombs suggests (57). One other practice is essential in the context of agenda-setting: the concept of
framing. Framing describes the media’s “central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection,
emphasis, exclusion and elaboration” (87). The concept of framing is especially important when it comes to the representation of certain groups or minorities in the media. Later on in this analysis the term will be used to describe how the media portrays Islam and Muslim immigrants and which perspectives are dominant in these frames.
3. Analysis
For the media discourse analysis a sample of six articles has been created. These should serve to cover the whole political spectrum from left to right winged. The focus is set on the mainstream media; extremist sources are not going to be
considered. All articles have been published between August and October 2010 and therefore during the core phase of the debate. The following articles will be considered in the analysis:
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung: Frank Schirrmacher „Ein fataler Irrweg“, 29 August 2010
Bild: Nikolaus Blome, „Warum fallen alle über Sarrazin her?“ 31 August 2010 die tageszeitung: Ulrike Herrmann / Alke Wierth, „Die Gene sind schuld“, 30
August 2010
Hamburger Abendblatt: Armgard Seegers „Was darf man heute sagen und was lieber nicht? , 1 September 2010
Frankfurter Rundschau: Stephan Hebel „Der Ruf des Rattenfängers“ , 02 September 2010
Die Welt: Ralph Giordano „Wider die Kreidefresser“, 4. September 2010 Der Spiegel: Henryk M. Broder „Thilo und die Gene“, 06 September 2010 Süddeutsche Zeitung: Heribert Prantl „Ende gut, gar nichts gut“, 11 September
2010
Bild (2.4 million sold copies)8 and Die Welt (220,000sold copies)9 cover the right-wing conservative part of the spectrum. The Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonntagszeitung (316,000 sold copies)2 and Hamburger Abendblatt (190,000 sold
8
(ma 2013)
9
copies)2 can be described as conservative, center-right. Der Spiegel (900,000 sold
copies)2 - the only news magazine in the sample – is centrist. The Süddeutsche
Zeitung (418,000 sold copies)10 is considered liberal and center-left. The Frankfurter
Rundschau (87,000 sold copies)11 and die tageszeitung (56,000 sold copies)4 cover the left-wing part of German news media, while the former is less radical but rather social-liberal. The chosen articles on Deutschland schafft sich ab will be examined in a qualitative analysis. Simultaneously underlying discourses shall be revealed and analyzed. As Thilo Sarrazin’s book is the debate’s central issue the book itself will be included in the sample. The question to be solved in the media analysis is the
interconnection of discourses on Muslim immigration and German national identity. In order to solve this question it is necessary to narrow the scope of the media analysis. Consequently the focus will be set on three main issues that penetrate the research topic. The first is the setting of the media’s agenda and the shaping of the debate. Secondly it shall be examined which frames of Islam the media produced. Thirdly representations of cultural identities will be analyzed in order to reveal how Muslim and German identity constructions inform each other.
3.1 Setting the Agenda: How the Media Shaped the Debate
“Finally someone dares to speak the truth”12
announces Nikolaus Blome in Bild on 31 August 2010. Germany’s biggest daily news paper, with more than 2.4 Million sold copies and a range of 12.5 Million readers (ma 2013), established a special relationship with Thilo Sarrazin from the very beginning of the debate. Along withDer Spiegel the tabloid published selected parts of Deutschland schafft sich ab in an
exclusive advance publication. In the months following the book’s publication Bild covered the issue extensively. In doing so the paper focused mainly on the book’s
10
(IVW II/2013)
11
(IVW I/2013)
parts on immigration and in particular discussed the “problem” of Muslim immigrants. The idea of being “the people’s voice”13 is an essential part of Bild’s self-image.
Blome’s article associated Sarrazin with that perception and established him as a mirror of German public feelings and opinions. According to Blome a huge majority of Germans share Sarrazin’s anger about immigration (Blome 1). Blome moreover sharply contrasts Sarrazin against the political elite. He states that politicians of all political parties attack him and suggests “it is very rare that politicians are so one-minded and at the same time so far away from the opinion and mood of a huge majority of Germans who say: Sarrazin is right!”14
(1). Blome constructs Sarrazin as a rebel against the political class. If he should really loose his position and membership in the SPD then he will finally be a “martyr” according to the Bild author (1). At the same time he reports that Sarrazin’s ideas are rarely new - that Sarrazin is mainly being celebrated for announcing that “the emperor is naked”15
(2). He thereby evokes the notion that Sarrazin simply articulates what is visible to everyone but has been ignored by the political class.
Along with Bild the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel participated in the advance publication of selected sections from the book. Similarly to the tabloid the selection focused on the topic immigration and the assumed failure of integration. According to chief editor Mathias Müller von Blumencron the magazine thereby intended to open the floor for a debate on integration (Grimberg 16). With nearly 900,000 weekly sold copies (IVW I/2014) Der Spiegel is the biggest and most
influential German news magazine. The advance publication in combination with the nation’s biggest newspaper Bild thereby placed Deutschland schafft sich ab on the top of the agenda and established the idea that the book would be of huge social
13 ”Die Stimme des Volkes”
14 „Ganz selten nur ist die Politk so einmündig – und zugleich so weit entfernt von Meinung und
Stimmung einer ganz großen Mehrheit der Deutschen. Sie sagt: Sarrazin hat recht!“
significance. “This text is sadly a reflection of the way large parts on this country discuss integration” claimed van Blumencron in an interview (Grimberg 18). By that he portrays the advance publication as a way to transport an already existing discourse to the society’s surface. Likewiese Henryk Broder writes in his article in Der Spiegel that Sarrazin obviously “hit a nerve“ with his statements (Broder 119). Comparable to Blome (Bild) Broder sees Sarrazin in the position of a rebel. He uses similar imagery as Blome’s martyr figure when he states that the political elite is “calling for Sarrazin’s head”16
and just likethe Bild author he assumes that Sarrazin is “probably right in most points” (117). Both articles ascribe to Sarrazin what McCombs has described as the “status conferral”. A person of status conferral is someone who “receives intensive media attention” (McCombs 86). Additionally Bild and Der Spiegel strongly shaped the debate’s opening phase through their focus on certain parts of Deutschland schafft
sich ab. In the process of agenda-setting journalists choose from the “entire range of
properties and traits that characterize an object” in order to picture it (70). Bild and Der
Spiegel selected those parts of the book that focused on integration and immigration
but excluded for instance the highly controversial eugenic theory Sarrazin’s argument is built on. However the eugenic model became part of the agenda shortly later on after Frank Schirrmacher (FAS) mentioned it in an article.
In his agenda-setting theory Maxwell McCombs points out the relevance of interactions between different media sources. McCombs writes “in the process of intermedia agenda-setting, high status news organizations […] set the agendas of other news organizations (McCombs 117). Consequently the book’s importance, suggested through the advance publication in two influential papers, led to an
increased interest in the issue among the rest of the German media landscape. Frank Schirrmacher, co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung devoted himself to
the topic and published a variety of articles on it. With around 316,000 daily sold copies (IVW I/ 2014) the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and its Sunday edition
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung are both well established conservative
newspapers. Schirrmacher’s position in the debate was of outstanding importance as he brought the eugenic aspects of Sarrazin’s book to the table. In an article in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung Schirrmacher describes the eugenic model
as a “fatal error” (Schirrmacher 22). Despite this criticism he nonetheless mainly supports Sarrazin’s ideas on integration. For Schirrmacher Sarrazin is mainly stating facts that are “absolutely correct” (23). He furthermore agrees with Blome (Bild) and Broder (Der Spiegel) that “the number of people agreeing openly or secretly with Sarrazin is considerable”17 (22). Schirrmacher shares Blome’s (Bild) vocabulary of
Sarrazin as a man of plain language and blunt announcer of truth. The expression that some people only agree secretly even suggests that a hidden approval exists within German society. Schirrmacher obviously assumes to be in knowledge of public opinions that have not even been articulated. He declares that Sarrazin is “merely a ghostwriter” of an anxious public18 (22). By picturing Sarrazin as a “ghostwriter”
Schirrmacher discharges him of personal responsibility and reinforces the idea that the book is first and foremost a mirror of public concerns.
As a conservative intellectual authority Schirrmacher placed his seal of quality on the book. Other conservative papers shared his approval. Ralph Giordano praises in Die Welt that Sarrazin depicts “reality the way it is” (Giordano 95). “Thilo Sarrazin does not only ask the right questions, he also offers the right answers” writes Giordano (93). Similar to the other journalists he suggests that the public opinion and the
17 „Die Zahl der Menschen, die ihm hinter vorgehaltener oder nicht vorgehaltener Hand recht
geben, ist beträchtlich“
18
political class’ opinion have “rarely been so diametrically separated”19
(93). According to the journalist it is Sarrazin’s achievement that the issue has been “catapulted to a new level of national consciousness”20
(94). Giordano hereby proposes that the “problem” of Muslim immigration is a subject of national significance. The expression “new level”raises the debate above all previous discussions on integration and
creates the notion of a historic climax. Giordano clearly positions Sarrazin’s book as a benefit for German society. Sarrazin himself is in Giordano’s eyes an “expert on immigration and integration” (93) and he describes Deutschland schafft sich ab as the “encyclopedia of migration and integration” (95). An encyclopedia is commonly
providing information and knowledge on a strictly factual basis. Giordano’s comparison underlines the assumed objectivity of the book and refines its qualities. It moreover suggests that Sarrazin’s book is the one and only reading one needs to consult on the issue of immigration and integration.
Armgard Seegers’ article in the Hamburger Abendblatt differs from the rest of the sample as she approaches the topic on the microrather than on the macro level of society. Seegers regards Sarrazin’s convictions in accordance with the “people’s everyday experiences” (Seegers 59). Thereby she does not only assume that he mirrors public opinions but furthermore that these opinions are congruent with the average German’s experiences. Seegers adopts the viewpoint of the simple citizen and claims to know the people’s very personal affairs. As much as Schirrmacher (FAS) assumes that he knows what is going on in the people’s minds, Seegers claims to know what goes on in the their everyday life. She implies that the “problem” of Muslim immigrants as described by Sarrazin is something the average German is confronted with personally. Perceived through agenda setting theory her proceeding
19 „Wobei die öffentliche Meinung und die der politischen Klasse selten so diamentral auseinander
gelegen haben“
20 „Das Thema […] das Sarrazins Buch auf eine neue Ebene des nationalen Bewusstseins
argument reveals a paradox: Most of the issues covered in the media are not available to readersas personal experiences. Large parts of the German population have none or only very little personal experiences with Muslim immigrants. The ideas they have in mind of their Muslim co-citizens are strongly based on what journalist create and provide in their agenda. When Seegers reports people’s everyday experiences she blurs the dualism of reality and “second-hand reality” created by media.
Also Seegers shares the view of Sarrazin as the people’s voice and the announcer of “uncomfortable truths” (57). According to Seegers, Sarrazin is breaking taboos by speaking openly about “facts that have been well-known for a long time” (58). Just as Broder (Der Spiegel) she suggests that the discourse already existed before the book’s publication. But she emphasizes even stronger the idea that it has been kept silenced by authorities. Germany is “firmly in the hand of the discourse guards”21 announces Seegers (59). The discourse guards are in Seeger’s eyes
idealists and overambitious democrats22. As an example she names Stephan Kramer
a member of the German Jewish Central Committee who in the course of the debate advised Sarrazin to join the extremist NPD. Seegers regards the attempt to place Sarrazin in the right-wing corner as a complete knockout argument23. Thereby she
evokes the notion that the clear statement that Sarrazin’s arguments are racist and extremist is simply putting an end to the dialogue. This in fact brandsa critical
approach towards Deutschland schafft sich ab as useless for the debate and blackens those who would call Sarrazin a racist as inadequate participants. As the journalist Patrick Bahners points out Sarrazin’s arguments were validated through establishing the “legend of him being a victim of critique” (Bahners 14). This legend is directly linked to another legend: the idea that problems of integration have been kept secret
21 Denn das, was man sagen und nicht sagen darf, ist fest in der Hand der Diskurswächter“ 22 „Gutmenschen oder ‚Erregunsdemokraten‘“
by the political elite. According to Bahners critics of Islam unite against the political elite under the term “political incorrect”. He suggest that the “so-called enemies of political correctness regard the political system and its institutions as a conspiracy of the elite” (35).
The tendency to establish Sarrazin as a rebel against “political correctness” and the assumed “cartel of silence”24
can be evidently traced in large parts of the sample. For Giordano (Die Welt) his book is a “thrust into the heart of German political
correctness”25
(Giordano 93). According to Giordano the image of integration has been forged for years by “professional chalk eaters”26
as he calls them (95). Anybody who does not share the pessimistic view on integration is disqualified by Giordano as idealistic, romantic, weak and unrealistic27. Anybody who calls Sarrazin a racist has
either not read the book properly (93) or uses the most contemptible argument available (95). This practice does not only prevent a discussion about racists and nationalists tendencies in the book but furthermore raises a fundamental mistrust in the political system and its information policy. If the German public cannot trust in the information given by politicians then they have to rely even heavier on the information provided by the media. Large parts of the conservative media aligned themselves with Sarrazin against the political elite. Blome (Bild) for instance even uses revolutionary vocabulary when he suggests that Sarrazin’s arguments might “set the trench between voters and politicians on fire”28
(Blome 1). But these journalists do not only form an alliance with Sarrazin, they moreover include the German public in it. They set up the debate as an essentially unfair conflict between a majority with little influence
(Sarrazin, media, German public) and an influential minority (the political elite).
24
Schweigekartell
25 „Ein Stoß mitten ins Herz der bundesdeutschen Politcal Correctness“ 26 „Professionelle Kreidefresser“
27 „Vereinte Riege der Berufsempörer, Sozialromantiker und Beschwichtigungsapostel“ 28 „Sarrazins Thesen und die Reaktionen darauf sind wie ein Brennglas: Gut möglich, dass der
The tendency to describe Sarrazin as the messenger of public opinions is present among all right winged, conservative or centrist media of the sample. At the time the articles were published the debate was still young therefore no statistical material was available to prove that large parts of the public agreed with Sarrazin. The high sales of the book might have given a hint to the public’s interest in the topic but could not confirm their approval. The case is rather that journalists assumed these public opinions and contributed them to the discourse. “Media discourse is shaped both by itself and by what becomes a norm of practice in a given social contest” writes Anne O’Keeffe in Investigating Media Discourse (O’Keeffe 28). Obviously the idea of a wide public approval of Sarrazin’s arguments became a norm in the context of the debate. Still the articles differ in the way they define the public. While for instance Blome (Bild) sees Sarrazin rather broadly the voice of the whole German public, Schirrmacher (FAS) characterizes him as a classical educated middle class citizen29
(Schirrmacher 24). Schirrmacher furthermore proclaimed that his belonging to the educated middle class explains Sarrazin’s particular concern with the decline of culture (24). This view is certainly concurrent with Sarrazin’s self-perception who himself claims that his convictions correspond with the values of a middle class30
(Sarrazin 391). The author misses no opportunity to express his level of education and cultivation. This includes frequent quotations of Goethe as well as a whole chapter dedicated to his close relationship to literature31 (192). Besides Sarrazin’s pejorative convictions about the lower class and his concern about the level of intelligence within German society are clearly addressed to middle class readers. Also Heribert Prantl from the Süddeutsche Zeitung sees the middle class as particularlyconcerned with
29 “Bildungsbürger”
30 „Die […] zum Ausdruck kommende Werthaltung einer bürgerlichen Mitte“ 31 „Der Bildungskanon als hierarchische Struktur oder Wie ich lesen lernte“
the book’s issue. He suggests that Sarrazin activates “fears of losing social status”32
specifically among the bourgeoisie (Prantl165).
Indeed a poll from January 2011 proved that Deutschland schafft sich ab particularly interested the German middle class. According to the survey the book’s typical reader is male (62%), either between 20 and 29 or over 60 years old with an above average income and educational qualifications. Furthermore the average reader is a frequent user of news media. The most popular news papers consulted by
Sarrazin’s readership are Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung followed by Welt
am Sonntag, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit and Welt (Kniebe 2011). All of
these papers belong to the high quality conservative media section. The survey’s results indeed suggest that the people who decided to buy Sarrazin’s book belong to the readership of precisely those papers that were suggesting that it mirrored their concerns. Consequently it has to be questioned what existed first: The middle class’s interest in the issue or the media’s creation of the interest. “The greater an individual’s need for orientation in the realm of public affairs is the more likely they are to attend to the agenda of the mass media” writes Maxwell McCombs in Setting the Agenda (McCombs 57). McCombs refers to a connection between education and media use. An increased education is according to numerous surveys correlated to a higher need for orientation (57). The better educated parts of society are “frequent users of
newspapers, television and news magazines for political information” so McCombs (57). Considering this relationship it seems likely that the media’s placement of the Sarrazin’s issues in a middle class context empowered if not created the middle class’s interest in the topic.
As it has turned out so far the conservative media did not only place Sarrazin’s book on the top of the agenda but furthermore aligned themselves with the author’s
convictions. Moreover all papers examined announced public opinions and anxieties at a very early stage of the debate and established the idea of a wide public approval for Sarrazin’s ideas. Meanwhile the progressive media remained rather reserved and less homogeneous. The left-wing and liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung initially struggled with a clear position towards Sarrazin. Early articles from August 2010 called his ideas “absurd” but also suggested that he expressed what many people were thinking33
(Van Bullion 14). It was not until beginning of September 2010 that the newspaper attended the topic in a firm manner. At this time the debate was already beyond its peak.
Heribert Prantl’s article is largely a review of the debate itself that he regards as a spectacle of huge public attention (Prantl 160). Prantl points out the interdependent relationship between Sarrazin and the media by suggesting that Sarrazin has “used the media and the media has used him” (161). According to Prantl both did so in order to increase their sales (161). By revealing the economic aspects of the debate he promotes a critical view of the process of agenda-setting. He deconstructs the
impression of reliability as conveyed by the other articles in the sample and draws the attention towards the fact that scandals and catastrophes are especially rentable under economic aspects (165). Moreover he dismantles the image of Sarrazin as victim of critique. “Sarrazin is no martyr of freedom of speech” writes Prantl “he is primarily its profiteer”34 (161). Prantl’s conclusion is pessimistic: German journalism
has promoted Sarrazin’s provocative arguments but has extinguished a reasonable discussion of integration (162).
The left wing and social Frankfurter Rundschau fought Sarrazin’s ideas very explicitly from the very beginning. Still the paper joined the general media consent of wide public approval for the book. Stephan Hebel claims in his article that Sarrazin’s arguments “fall on fertile ground” (Hebel 69) and thereby supports the idea that the
33 „Sarrazin mag vielen aus der Seele sprechen“
discourse already existed within society. Hebel portraits Sarrazin as a “rat-catcher”35
who activated deeply rooted public anxieties (70). This imagery places Sarrazin in a powerful position of the evil seducer. It additionally conveys an impression of a dependent readership that is unable to resist his argumentation. Just like Prantl (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Hebel refuses the legend of Sarrazin as a victim of critique. The often conjured “cartel of silence”36 fails as an explanation for the book’s huge
success according to Hebel (70). On the contrary, he believes that “rat-catchers” as Sarrazin activate social anxieties that established politics and media have been not able to ease37 (70). Even though Hebel does mark the idea of a conspiracy of the
“political correct” elite as the conservative’s favorite argument he does not deconstruct it explicitly. His remark that politicians have failed to ease the German’s anxieties also emphasizes the idea of a general misunderstanding between political elite and public. Additionally Hebel’s perception of the media is rather uncritical. In contrast to the conservative sources he aligns the media with the politics instead of Sarrazin or the common people. He suggests that the people do not want to listen to “politicians and the media” because Sarrazin and the other “rat-catchers” offer easier solutions to the “Muslim problem” (70). For Hebel politicians and the media obviously embody the rational side of the debate while Sarrazin stands for the irrational but seductive side. Hebel though fails to recognize the close relationship between Sarrazin and large parts of the German media. By caricaturing Sarrazin as the evil force and
underestimating the German public’s critical capacity he gives a rather one-dimensional image of the debate.
The very left wing of the sample, die tageszeitung stands out from all the other articles in their treatment of the issue. Ulrike Herrmann and Alke Wierth tear the work
35 „Rattenfänger“
36 „Schweigekartell“
37 „Und doch entdecken die Rattenfänger einen Resonanzraum in Teilen der Bevölkerung, den
into pieces on a textual level but completely spare out the social context and mention no assumptions about public opinions. Out of all texts their short article is the one that most closely resembles a traditional book review. What might seem unusual for the otherwise pugnacious paper could indeed be connected to the taz’s policy not to allow polemics like Sarrazin too much space for their argumentation (Grimberg 17). Already in earlier articles die tageszeitung discribed Deutschland schafft sich ab as “radical racist populism” and criticized the Spiegel for providing Sarrazin a “prominent stage” for his racist arguments38 (Grimberg 16). Thereupon die tageszeitung refused to allow
the issue as much attention. The consequence out of this policy was however that the
taz’s voice within the debate remained of rather minor significance and allowed the
conservative media even more space to establish their perception of the topic. Considering this imbalance it has to be questioned whether the policy of ignorance does indeed function as a clear statement or is rather equal to a declaration of surrender.
To sum up, the first part of the analysis clearly revealed certain trends. Firstly the discourse on Deutschland schafft sich ab was introduced and placed on top of the agenda through an advance publication by two leading sources – Bild and Der
Spiegel. Secondly the rest of the media adapted the topic whereby the sovereignty of
interpretation was clearly taken over by the conservative media. The conservative media established an image of Sarrazin as a rebel against an assumed political conspiracy and formed an alliance with the author. Thirdly not only the conservative media but also the progressive sources in the sample portrayed Thilo Sarrazin as the voice of an anxious and concerned public and gave the impression that his thesis found wide approval of the German public. Nearly all articles in the sample suggested that the author referred to already existing discourses within society. Fourthly the
38 „Der Spiegel hat Sarrazins rassistischen Thesen zum Thema Integration eine promintente
“problematic” topic of integration was marked as an important and social relevant issue by nearly all papers. How exactly the media took up the “problem” of Muslim immigrants suggested by Sarrazin will be the topic of the following chapter.
3.2 Framing Islam
A frame is according to agenda-setting theory a “central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration” (McCombs 87). The expression “framing Islam” thus refers to the media’s practice of constructing an image of Islam. To examine frames it is necessary to consider their construction. This includes the “choice and ordering of material, the privileging of one voice or account rather than another, the tone of a story, and the juxtaposition of aural and visual elements” (Morey 63). In the following chapter it will be analyzed how the sources in the sample frame Islam. Sarrazin’s own perception of the religion will serve as a starting point. The following quote is exemplary: “Muslim immigration and the growing influence of Islam confront the Western Occident with authoritarian, pre-modern, and also antidemocratic tendencies that do not only challenge our self-image but also directly threaten our lifestyle“39
(Sarrazin 266). In just a few sentences Sarrazin conveys his readers an impression of his view of Islam. For him Islam is an authoritarian, backward and antidemocratic system. He solely defines it through negative terms and in contrast to the assumed democratic and modern Western culture.
For Sarrazin Islam and fundamentalism cannot be separated. He writes that Islam’s moderate, radical or even violent tendencies are side by side40
. He does not
39 „Das westliche Abendland sieht sich durch die muslimische Immigration und den wachsenden
Einfluss islamistischer Glaubensrichtungen mit autoritären, vormodernen, auch antidemokratischen Tendenzen konfrontiert , die nicht nur das eigene Selbstverständnis herausfordern, sondern auch eine direkte Bedrohung unseres Lebensstils darstellen“
40 „Dabei stehen gemäßigte und radikale, ja gewalttätige Auffassungen immer wieder unvermittelt
rule out that secular forms of Islam exist but “the western gaze cannot distinguish between what kind of Islam the 15 to 17 Million Muslims in Europe belong to”41
(270). Sarrazin worries that “hardly anybody knows what they preach in their mosques”42
(270). He colors a picture of Islam as a mystic and alien force. Westerns are unable to understand and control it43. This practice raises a fundamental mistrust in Muslim
citizens by suggesting that any of them could be a potential threat. This threat is strongly associated with terrorism. Islam cannot be thought without Islamism and Terrorism claims the author. He goes on “Even though 95 percent of the Muslims are peaceful the outlines are too blurred, the ideologies too strong and the density of violent and terroristic events too big”44
(277). Apparently Sarrazin believes that the five percent non peaceful Muslims are reason enough to suspect all of them.
According to Sarrazin Islam is a secluded religion and culture. Even though they live in Germany, Muslims are suspected to disconnect from German society by forming so-called parallel societies45. The term parallel societies presupposes that
migrant communities “establish their own societies and lead their lives without ever interacting with the host culture” (Özcan 431). As Esra Özcan points out it suggests a problematic “division of society among ethnic lines” (431). Likewise Sarrazin declares that Muslim immigrants remain “subjects of foreign cultural and religious external influences that we can neither overview nor control”46
(277). Islam is in his eyes an almost anarchistic force that threatens the stability of German society. The word control implies a need to restrict and supervise Islam while the assumed inability to
41 „Der westliche Blick kann nicht unterscheiden, welchem Islam welcher Teil der 15 bis 17
Millionen Muslime in Europa anhängt“
42 „Kaum jemand weiß, was in den Moscheen gepredigt wird“
43 „Die Muslime in Deutschland und im übrigen Europa unterliegen einem fremden kulturellen und
religiösen Einfluss, den wir nicht überblicken und schon gar nicht steuern können“
44 „Die Übergänge sind zu verschwommen, die Ideologien zu stark und die Dichte gewalttätiger und
terroristischer Ereignisse ist zu groß“
45
Parallelgesellschaften
46 „Die Muslime in Deutschland und im übrigen Europa unterliegen einem fremden kulturellen und
understand works to estrange the native and foreign populations. If ethnic Germans are unable to understand Muslims, than any kind of dialogue is determined to fail. The Muslim, this is Sarrazin’s message, is nothing less than the enemy from within. He threatens German society on a demographic level as well as under cultural, social and security aspects.
Edward Said whose work on Orientalism has been already mentioned before is one of the first theorists who revealed the conceptual framework surrounding Islam in public discourses (Morey 2). The perception of Islam as a threat has in fact a long history as Edward Said points out. “After Mohammed’s death in 632, the military and later the cultural and religious hegemony of Islam grew enormously” writes Said. He follows “yet where Islam was concerned, European fear, if not always respect, was in order” and Islam “cameto symbolize terror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians”. According to Said for Europe Islam “was a lasting trauma” (Said,
Orientalism 59). Sarrazin explicitly refers to historic references but he offers his own
interpretation. He suggests that Islam has a tradition of waging a “holy war” against the West (Sarrazin 271) and states “the link between violence and Islam has been obvious since its birth”47 (280). His continues “up to today the Islam has a strained
relationship to occidental modernity”48
(280). Interestingly Sarrazin clearly locates hard feelings on the Muslim’s side - “they” have problems with “us” not the other way round. According to Sarrazin the reason lies in Islam’s “narcissistic insult” of falling back behind the West’s economic and cultural development49 (280). Sarrazin’s message to
his readers is: Islam as an ideology has a deep resentment towards Western culture and hence will likely continue its “holy war” against European civilization.
47 „Dabei ist der Zusammenhang zwischen Gewalt und Islam seit dessen Geburtsstunde völlig
offenkundig“
48 „Im Grunde hat der Islam bis heute ein belastetes Verhältnis zur abendländischen Moderne“ 49 “Das wirtschaftliche und zivilisatorische Zurückfallen der islamischen Welt […] hat zu einer
Sarrazin’s argumentation originates from a point of deep fear and despair. His fear is that the “occidental Europe will not survive in its cultural essence”50
(258) if Muslim migrants “take over state and society” (259). The scenario he imagines is dramatic, the language used apocalyptic. Islam critique as articulated by Sarrazin and others always shows a high level of aggression as Patrick Bahners points out in his publication Die Panik-Macher (Bahners 25). The conflict between Islam and the West is seen as one between good and evil. At stake is nothing less than the whole Western culture’s survival. This essential fear legitimizes “escalation out of self-defense” writes Bahners (26). Islam critics use radical, urgent, and apocalyptic vocabulary because their ultimate goal is to mobilize the population against the threat. “The style of thought is paranoid” according to Bahners and resembles to that of American right wing
politics such as the Tea Party (83). The conflict with Islam is imagined as a concern of the immediate future. Sarrazin for instance raises the fear that Germans might be outnumbered by Muslim immigrants within only 100 years. He describes this scenario in a fictional chapter of his book called “a nightmare”. The growing number of
immigrants will lead to the nation’s “death” according to the author (Sarrazin 393). In order to underline the urgency of the conflict he draws a comparison to climate change. He wonders why Germans should be interested in the climate in 500 years if the nation will have abolished itself by then51. While climate change is a very abstract
threat in Sarrazin’s opinion Islam is an immediate one.
Nikolaus Blome (Bild) clearly adopts Sarrazin’s image ofthe Islam as socially destabilizing. He quotes different statistics mentioned in Deutschland schafft sich ab and states that “Muslim immigrants show an above average participation in crime,
50
„Das abendländische Europa würde, alternd und schrumpfend, wie es ist, in seiner kulturellen Substanz auch gar nicht überleben“
51 „Warum sollte uns das Klima in 500 Jahren interessieren, wenn das deutsche
school dropouts, unemployment”52
(Blome 2). Blome suggests that the German citizens are furious because for them everything is at stake53 (2). He thereby supports
the perception of Islam as essentially antagonistic towards German society. The expression that everything is at stake gives the conflict an existential dimension. Additionally his expression that this raises anger in the citizens marks the issue as highly emotional and reinforces the perception of Muslims as enemies. Also Frank Schirrmacher (FAS) joins this canon. He suggests that Deutschland schafft sich ab is helpful to understand what is “really at stake“54. Schirrmacher goes on “a failed
immigration policy has imported a Middle Age to Germany that might question the society’s stability”55
(Schirrmacher 26).The expression that immigrants have been imported to Germany associates them along with goods and does not picture them as human individuals. It shows an economic understanding of migration that qualifies migrants solely according to their economic value.
Schirrmacher’s argument can be seen as part of the “economic-utility
perspective” that has been present in German immigration discourse since World-War II as Harald Bauder suggests (Bauder, “Neoliberalism” 56). Bauder distinguishes between two extreme economic representations of immigrants: the positive one depicts immigrants as a source of “fresh labor, innovation and creativity”, the negative one as “irritants or threats” (57). In thelater case the immigrant is either perceived as an unwelcome competitor for workplaces or as a burden for the social security system. Sarrazin as well as Schirrmacher obviously share the later perception. The recruitment of guest workers is from today’s perspective a “giant mistake”56
declares Sarrazin (259). In his opinion this especially applies for Muslim immigrants. He claims that
52
Zuwanderer mit muslimischem Hintergrund sind überproportional in der Kriminal-Statistik vertreten, bei den Schulabbrechern, bei den Hartz-IV-Empfängern“
53 „Für die Bürger geht es ums Ganze – nämlich um sie selbst“ 54 „Es ist hilfreich, um wirklich zu verstehen, was auf dem Spiel steht“
55 „Und er hat recht damit, dass eine verfehlte Einwanderungspolitik Deutschland gleichsam ein
Mittelalter importierte, das die Stabilität des Gemeinwesens infrage stellen kann“
Muslim immigrants have neither contributed anything to German affluence in the past nor will be expected to do so in the future (260). He concludes “there is no economic need for Muslim migration in Europe”57
(267). On the contrary Sarrazin is convinced that Muslim immigrants rather slow down the country’s development through their small workforce and high dependence on social security benefits58 (267). Likewise in
Schirrmacher’s article Muslim immigrants are portrayed as unproductive. He
articulates the hope for “impulses that might wake up Muslim milieus” (Schirrmacher 28). The image that Muslim citizens are asleep suggests passivism, unproductiveness and denies their social value. Additionally the term milieu segregates them from the German society and reinscribes their status as a minority.
Schirrmacher’s language is that of exclusion and discrimination. It relies on concepts of Orientalism and cultural stereotyping. This is particular evident in his comparison of Islam and the European Middle Age (“imported a Middle Age to Germany” (26)). The Middle Age comparison is a popular one among Islam critics because it serves two purposes: It marks Islamic cultures as backward and
underdeveloped and demonstrates European superiority while it simultaneously incorporates Islam as a part of Western history. “The Western style of dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient” is a clear demonstration of power as Edward Said points out (Said, Orientalism 2). Western culture is thereby imagined as the hegemonic culture that structures and shapes discourses on Islamic cultures. According to the Middle Age comparison modern Islam is centuries behind Europe’s development. The Middle Age is commonly imagined as a dark period with stagnating cultural development and brutal religious violence as the crusades or burnings of witches. Sarrazin writes “also Christianity had its fundamental phase of religious wars
57 „Wirtschaftlich brauchen wir die muslimische Migration in Europa nicht“
58 „In jedem Land kosten die muslimischen Migranten aufgrund ihrer niedrigen Erwerbsbeteiligung
und hohen Inanspruchnahme von Sozialleistungen die Staatskasse mehr, als sie an wirtschaftlichem Mehrwert einbringen“
