When Thilo Sarrazin, a German banker previously mentioned on Un:dhimmi here, commented about the status of immigrant groups in Germany, he drew a lot of criticism and started a firestorm of debate.  On the one hand, his proclamation that Jews have a “Jewish gene” hearkens back to the dark days of Nazism, and the response was understandably negative.  I am not a biologist, but I doubt that this “gene” exists. If he meant to say that the Jewish people are genetically linked to one another, then that would at least make sense.  It’s possible that his phraseology was just a little off.

Mr. Sarrazin also commented about the resistance of Muslims to integrate into German society and their propensity towards violence, and in those two things he was right on the money.  The BBC News quotes him as saying  “most of the cultural and economic problems are concentrated in a group of the five to six million immigrants from Muslim countries.”  I would like to find statistics on that, but have not been able to nail them down as yet.

From the New York Times:

Though Condemned, German Author Opens Debate

BERLIN — When a German banker and former government official spoke publicly about a unique “Jewish gene,” when he attacked Islam as a source of violence and stunted development, when he espoused genetic theories that evoked the fright of the Nazi past, the political leadership here quickly condemned him as racist and called for him to be fired.

But Thilo Sarrazin, an executive with the central bank, or Bundesbank, and former senator of finance from Berlin, has not emerged as the marginalized hate-monger the initial condemnation foreshadowed. His book, “Germany Does Away With Itself,” which laments the growing number of Muslim immigrants, arguing they are “dumbing down” society, was released Monday and is already in its fourth printing, with sales expected to exceed 150,000 copies, according to his publisher.

Mr. Sarrazin has sparked a painful public discussion here that has highlighted one of the nation’s most vexing challenges: How to overcome what is widely seen as a failed immigration policy that over decades did little to support and help integrate the nearly 20 percent of the population who have an immigrant background and that has stoked anti-Islamic sentiment and hostility.

The surprisingly warm reception of Mr. Sarrazin’s book and his unrepentant posture have also provoked something less tangible, but perhaps more troublesome for policy makers here eager to keep the radical right from gaining a foothold as they have in other parts of Europe: Under cover of speaking truth to power, Mr. Sarrazin tried to legitimize hate speech, said his critics.

One of the most telling signs of the growing disconnect between the communities, officials here said, is the observation that the grandchildren of immigrants are less likely to integrate in society and less likely to even apply for citizenship than previous generations, creating an ethnic underclass in education and employment. Residents from immigrant families are twice as likely as ethnic Germans to be unemployed.

“This issue is now more important for Germany than the economy,” said Wolfgang Nowak, former senior adviser to the previous chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the head of Deutsche Bank’s International Forum who argues that Mr. Sarrazin has done his country a favor by forcing the topic to the top of the political agenda and crashing through the barriers of political correctness.

“The condemnation of his book is an automatic reflex of a generation raised after Hitler,” he said.

Even some who found his approach offensive said that Mr. Sarrazin had “addressed a problem that will remain long after the waves of outrage have subsided: the enormous integration deficit of the Muslim minority in Germany, or at least of disturbingly large parts of it,” read an article in the center-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In a newspaper interview published the day before the book was released, Mr. Sarrazin also spoke of a Jewish gene, a reference to recent studies showing Jews share many genes inherited from the ancestral population that lived in the Middle East long ago. He was criticized by everyone, including the chancellor, Angela Merkel.

His party wants to kick him out and the bank is considering firing him. On Thursday the board of the bank voted to ask Germany’s president to dismiss Mr. Sarrazin from the board, and Chancellor Merkel applauded the decision.Mr. Sarrazin’s stance, and the traction it has gained, has alarmed many in part because he is not a member of the extreme right, but is a longtime member of the center-left Social Democrats and the former top financial official for the city of Berlin, one of the centers of the immigrant community.

“If he were an extremist, no one would pay attention,” said Hatice Akyün, a writer who has debated Mr. Sarrazin and condemned his theories of innate inferiority in immigrants. “He is a Social Democrat. You cannot do what he is doing, not in this country. You cannot give this kind of thinking a democratic base.”

Ms. Akyün, whose father came to Germany from Turkey in 1961, said that the debate often comes down to the difference between integration, which she said immigrants and their families accept, even desire, and assimilation, which they reject.

“The only chance for acceptance in German society is total assimilation, don’t hold onto our traditions,” said Maxim Biller, whose own family moved to Germany from Prague when he was a child.

Mr. Sarrazin, who sports small round glasses and has a stern face topped by a shock of mostly white hair, said that he wanted to highlight what he described as the drain on Germany of its immigrant class.

In his book, he criticized Islam and blamed Muslim immigrants for refusing to integrate. He also blamed Germany for being too generous with its social benefits, which he said attracted immigrants looking for handouts. “No other religion in Europe is so demanding and no other migration group depends so much on the social welfare state and is so much connected to criminality,” he wrote in one passage.

Germany has had a difficult time coming to terms with its immigrant population. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the guest worker program that brought large numbers of migrants, mostly Turks. Originally the plan was for the workers to return, though that idea evaporated in the 1970s when Germany allowed workers’ families to move here, said Gunter Piening, commissioner in the Senate office of integration and migration for the city of Berlin.

“The German philosophy was, ‘We are not a migration country,’ ” he said. “There were migrants, but there was no migrant policy.”

It was only in 2005 that Germany acknowledged that it had become a destination country, a shift that was not accompanied by a practical plan, Mr. Piening said. That has slowly begun to change, he said.

This month, for example, Berlin revamped its secondary education system because it recognized that children of immigrants were “getting an education which was good for nothing, a dead end.” Steps have been taken to also allow Muslims to be buried without coffins — the custom for Muslims is to be wrapped in a shroud — a small measure if ultimately adopted, but one that would nonetheless help make Muslims feel more welcomed, he said.

It is not, however, entirely benevolent as German officials recognize they will need immigrants in coming years. According to a recent survey by the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce there will be six million fewer Germans of working age by 2030.

It seems that Mr. Sarrazin is correct in at least some of his conclusions as he calls a spade a spade and speaks the truth about the failure of Muslims to integrate into German society.  If the Muslim population refuses to integrate into the general German society, and if refusal to integrate (by any group) leads to problems within German society as a whole, then it is certainly a debate worth having!

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