Merkel’s challenge on Islamist violence

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called on Islam’s spiritual leaders to explain whether or not the use of violence was ever justified in Islam.

She was “fully aware” that a growing number of Germans were afraid of Islam, she said in a full-page interview in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 16 January.

“People ask how it is possible to understand the often quoted explanation that murderers who invoke the ‘Prophet’ are supposed to have nothing to do with Islam. It is most important and urgent for Islam’s spiritual leaders to clarify this justified question. There is absolutely no justification to use violence in the name of religion,” she insisted.

As to the question of whether or not Islam was inherently violent, as some people were convinced, this was again a theological question that only its spiritual leaders could answer, Mrs Merkel said. Her task as German Chancellor was to fight against violence in the name of Islam and to protect the majority of Muslims in Germany from being put under general suspicion.

At the same time, she said, it was essential that Christians proclaim their Christian values more forcefully and confidently.

The president of the German bishops’ conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, called on the Islamic authorities to “go more deeply into the question of why some Muslims, especially young ones, are so susceptible to such an extremist and misanthropic understanding of their own religion”. The terrorist murders in Paris this month were without doubt a “brutal attack on the values and rule of law of a modern country”, Cardinal Marx said, and added, “We certainly will not do murderers and extremists the favour of regarding them as legitimate representatives of a religious community, endangering thereby good relations between Christians and Muslims in Europe ...

“For believers of whatever religion, violence in the name of God is the greatest blasphemy.”