Islam is killing Germany

OPINION:

In Germany, the party usually described as far-right — Alternative for Germany (AfD) — doubled its share of the vote in the recent elections, from 9% in 2021 to 20.2%. It’s now the nation’s second-largest party.

The ruling socialist party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz came in third with just 16%, its worst showing since the end of World War II.

The centrist-conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had a plurality with 28.8%. Its leader, Friedrich Mertz, has announced he will form a coalition with the socialists rather than AfD, which shows how much Europe’s conservative parties really care about policy.

Germany’s principal problems are immigration and Islam. The tragedy was set into motion by Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2015, Ms. Merkel took in 1.2 million refugees from Syria to satisfy a misguided humanitarian impulse and bolster an economy short of workers.

Today, Germany accepts half of all European asylum-seekers — 300,000 in 2023. Last year, the number of migrants seeking government benefits increased by 169%.

Although they didn’t aid Germany’s sagging economy, migrants have made jihad a part of daily life in the Federal Republic.

The past few months have brought high-profile migrant attacks in Munich, Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg. A December car-ramming at a Christmas market in Magdeburg left 10 dead and 34 injured. (The assailant probably couldn’t find a Hanukkah market.)

This brought to mind the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, where a jihadi drove a truck into a crowd, killing 86 and injuring 434.

America can relate. In New Orleans on New Year’s Day, a man driving while Quran-impaired killed 14 and injured 35.

Knife attacks have become daily occurrences in Germany, with 14,000 reported from 2021 through 2023.

Though they represent 2.5% of the population, migrants committed 13.1% of all sexual assaults in 2021.

As author Douglas Murray pointed out in “The Strange Death of Europe,” the continent is committing suicide by a combination of unchecked immigration and abandonment of its Judeo-Christian heritage.

The 2004 European Union Constitution does not mention Christianity for a continent known as Christendom for more than 1,000 years.

Nature abhors a vacuum, whether political or religious. Every two weeks, another church closes in France and another mosque opens. There are now more than 2,500 mosques in Charles Martel’s land.

Mr. Murray notes that from 2001 to 2011, the number of Britons identifying as Christians fell from 72% to 59%.

The official number of Muslims in England and Wales rose from 1.5 million to 2.7 million in that period. Illegal immigration puts the number much higher, and London has had a Muslim mayor since 2016.

If immigration isn’t enough, Europe is committing demographic suicide. The German fertility rate is 1.35 children per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1. It’s 1.2 in Italy and 1.62 in France. In 2017, the fertility rate for Muslim women in Britain and France was 2.9. The cradle is as much a symbol of jihad as the sword.

In a 2024 article for the Jewish News Syndicate, Joseph Puder charges: “The streets of major Western European cities are occupied territories” run by “radical Muslim gangs who harbor a hatred for Western culture and believe Islam is the answer for all and bear a visceral and violent hatred for Israel and Jews.”

The type of antisemitic outrages symbolized by Kristallnacht during the Third Reich are now regular occurrences from London to Berlin. This summer, thousands of Muslims marched through London shouting, “Jews, the Army of Muhammed is coming to kill you too.” The British government, which arrests Christians for witnessing in public, ignored this.

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, who is also called far right, has said: “Above all, we need to recover awareness of who we are. As Western people, we have a duty to keep this promise and seek the answer to the problems of the future by having faith in our values: a synthesis born out of the meeting of Greek philosophy, Roman law and Christian humanism.”

Europe’s “far-right” parties should take Ms. Meloni’s advice.

Alternative for Germany has some dubious support, but at least it’s sounding the alarm.

Sometimes, you have to take your allies where you find them. As Winston Churchill said during World War II, “If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.