"In the name of the government and the chancellor I can say quite clearly that there is no place in Germany for religious hatred, no matter which religion people belong to," said the chancellor's spokeswoman, Christiane Wirtz.
"There is no place for Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or any form of xenophobia or racism," she said of the growing Monday evening marches in Dresden under the motto PEGIDA, standing for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West".
Public expressions of anti-immigrant sentiment are largely taboo in mainstream German politics because of the Nazis' mass-murder of Jews and other groups in the Holocaust. Merkel argues that Germany needs immigrants to avoid demographic crisis. » | Reuters | Friday, December 12, 2014
