The president of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, has called on Muslims in Germany to take a critical look at the connection between religious belief and violence in Islam.
“As a state which guarantees religious freedom and human rights, we in Germany have the right to and must demand – as forcefully as we can – that Muslims take a critical look at the fatal connection between religious belief and fanatical violence in their religion,” Lammert said at an hour of remembrance in the Bundestag on 19 January for the victims of the Islamist terror attack on a Berlin Christmas market one month previously.
The Berlin attacker, Anis Amri, had regarded himself both as a Muslim and a member of the Islamic State terrorist organisation, Lammert recalled. He had also claimed to be a refugee. “We cannot ignore these claims for the very reason that we are committed to religious diversity, to being an open society and to our humanitarian obligations”, he emphasised. At the same time, he warned against all forms of collective punishment. Amri was killed in a shootout with police in Milan four days after the attack.
It was crucial to combat all forms of Islamist ideology – “including that in political altercations – with all the necessary legal severity that we have at our disposal”, Lammert said. “Terror is never religious, terror is political and the response to it must be political. We are not fighting against Islam but against fanaticism, not against religion but against fundamentalism.” Terror aimed to shake the very foundations of democratic societies, to cripple and destabilise them, he pointed out, but the terrorists had not achieved their aim in Germany as the population had reacted with “remarkable levelheadedness”.
Lammert is a committed Catholic and the most prominent Catholic parliamentarian in Germany. An admirer of Pope Emeritus Benedict, he often quotes from the latter’s Introduction to Christianity, especially the passages on the problem posed by the fact that many Catholics today are sceptical about the Church.
The position of Bundestag President is similar to that of the Speaker of Parliament in Britain but more prestigious. It is ranked after the President but before the Chancellor.
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