Thousands march against militant Islam

The regular Monday evening marches through Dresden organised by the “Association of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of Western Christianity”, or Pegida, reached a new peak of 15,000 demonstrators on 15 December. Pegida has held marches every Monday in Dresden for several weeks and the numbers have shot up from an initial 200. Its spokesman says Pegida is not against Islam but against militant Islamists.

“While we remain firmly committed to the basic right of asylum for refugees from war areas and victims of political persecution, we must ask ourselves what drives such a large number of people on to the streets every Monday and not tar them all with the same brush by a priori labelling them right-wingers,” the Catholic Bishop of Dresden, Heiner Koch, told katholische-sonntagszeitung.de.

Society had a duty to name and discuss problem issues openly, Bishop Koch said. The demonstrators were obviously worried and afraid and had a legitimate right to take to the streets. “Finger-pointing and [name-calling] are no solution,” he underlined.

Meanwhile German bishops condemned  “violence and hatred against foreigners” after hostels reserved for refugees were set on fire.

Reacting to the arson attacks on buildings that had been especially renovated to house 80 asylum seekers from Syria in a Nuremberg suburb on 12 December, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich said “this horrific deed” had shocked him deeply and called on all Germans to “rise against all acts of violence and hatred”.

Cardinal Woelki of Cologne cautioned against equating religious excesses with religion. “Religion has at times been perverted both in the history of Islam and of Christianity ... but militant Salafists have no place in a state of law,”  he told katholische.de.