Author: AFP
Publication: Expatica.com
Date: January 4, 2011
URL: http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/local_news/muslims-seen-as-threat-by-4-in-10-french-germans_121091.html
Four in 10 French and German people see Muslims
living in their country as a "threat," according to a poll published
Tuesday by French newspaper Le Monde.
Forty-two percent of French people and 40
percent of Germans questioned by pollster IFOP said they considered the presence
of a Muslim community in their country "a threat" to their national
identity, Le Monde said.
The findings of the study "go beyond
linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking
Islam with a threat to identity," said Jerome Fourquet of IFOP, quoted
by Le Monde.
Of the sample of people questioned for the
survey in early December, 68 percent in France and 75 percent in Germany said
they considered Muslims "not well integrated in society."
Out of these, 61 percent of French and 67
percent of Germans blamed this perceived failure on "refusal" by
Muslims to integrate.
Eighteen percent of those who said Muslims
were not integrated in France and 15 percent in Germany blamed it on "racism
and lack of openness by certain French and German people."
France has the largest Muslim population in
Europe, estimated at about six million, originating largely from its former
colonies in North Africa. It has passed a law banning the wearing of the face-covering
Muslim veil in public.
Germany received vast numbers of migrant workers,
most of them from Muslim Turkey, from the 1960s. German federal authorities
estimate its current Muslim population at up to 4.3 million.
