The president of the Frankfurt Jewish community, Salomon Korn, said he feared newly arrived Muslim migrants from the war-torn countries of the Middle East were bringing with them inculcated anti-Semitism and the value of spreading Islam.
Salomon Korn was reportedly responding to comments made by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who had told the community in Frankfurt that the government was more concerned about homegrown Islamic extremism than extremists slipping into Germany with the influx of migrants, the pan-Europe news website The Local reported on Monday.
Korn said most new immigrants — mainly fleeing the violence of the Syrian civil war — were not bringing with them what he called an “enlightened” version Islam, like the Turkish community in Germany.
The Jewish leader said he was most concerned about the rise of the far-Right in Germany, a nationalist trend that has emerged across Europe over the last few years.
A German intelligence document revealed last October by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag warned that many of the migrants fleeing the eastern Mediterranean countries for Europe were liable to be bringing with them “Islamic extremism” and “Arab anti-Semitism,” which the document said the German authorities would not have the power to combat.
Germans, meanwhile, have been growing more uneasy with the historic influx of migrants from Middle Eastern countries. A poll released by public broadcaster ZDF last Friday found that 60% of Germans believed their country could not cope with the more than a million refugees who have resettled in Germany.
By: The Algemeiner