SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: German central banker Thilo Sarrazin is being pilloried over his polemic chastising of Muslims, but there are a few things his critics clearly fail to understand. You can't cast away what the man embodies: The anger of a German people who are tired of being cursed at when they offer to help foreigners to integrate.
Nothing is as it used to be. In this season of public outrage, the case of Thilo Sarrazin has grown far bigger than Sarrazin. It's much bigger than the man or the Islam-critical book he wrote.
The Sarrazin case is also a Merkel case, a case for his party, the center-left Social Democrats, and for the German political and media establishment. Sarrazin has become code for the outrage over how the politically correct branch of Germany's consensus-based society have dispatched their stewards to escort this unsettling heckler to the door. On their way, they seem to be trying to teach him a lesson, as well: "We will beat tolerance into you."
Sarrazin isn't telegenic and he often gets tangled up in statistics. When it comes to styling, he's at a loss -- he is unkempt when he appears on the myriad talkshows that keep our entertainment society going. He slips on one banana peel of political correctness after another, opening himself to attack with his statements about genetics. But his findings on the failed integration of Turkish and Arab immigrants are beyond any doubt.
Sarrazin has been forced out of the Bundesbank. The SPD wants to kick him out of the party, too. Invitations previously extended to Sarrazin are being withdrawn. The culture page editors at the German weekly Die Zeit are crying foul and the editors at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung are damning Sarrazin for passages he didn't even write.
Technicians of Exclusion
But what all these technicians of exclusion fail to see is that you cannot cast away the very thing that Sarrazin embodies: the anger of people who are sick and tired -- after putting a long and arduous process of Enlightenment behind them -- of being confronted with pre-Enlightenment elements that are returning to the center of our society. They are sick of being cursed or laughed at when they offer assistance with integration. And they are tired about reading about Islamist associations that have one degree of separation from terrorism, of honor killings, of death threats against cartoonists and filmmakers. They are horrified that "you Christian" has now become an insult on some school playgrounds. And they are angry that Western leaders are now being forced to fight for a woman in an Islamic country because she has been accused of adultery and is being threatened with stoning.
Strangely enough, a good number of our fellow Turkish citizens are more outraged by Sarrazin's book than they are about those things. >>> A Commentary by Matthias Matussek | Friday, September 10, 2010
Ich habe den folgenden Kommentar letzte Woche geschrieben über den Fall Sarrazins in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung:
Sarrazin hat einen hohen Preis bezahlt für seine Ehrlichkeit!Den Kommentar können Sie hier finden.
In Thilo Sarrazin hat Deutschland einen mutigen Mann. Er ist bereit zu sagen und schreiben, was gesagt und geschrieben sein sollte. Leider muß er für seine Ehrlichkeit einen sehr hohen Preis bezahlen. Angela Merkel, als Aufgewachsene in der ehemaligen DDR, hätte schon besser wissen sollen, wie wichtig die Redefreiheit ist. Diese Geschichte ist nicht gut für ihr Image, auch nicht für das Bild von Christian Wulff. Beide sehen schwach aus.
Als Engländer, verstehe ich schon, daß die Deutschen in Fragen der Rasse sensibel sind. In Betracht der Geschicht, müssen sie auch so sein. Aber aufgepaßt! Die Wahrheit sollte nicht unter den Teppich gekehrt werden. Fakt ist: Durch ihre Religion, dürfen Muslime nicht integrieren. Prophet Muhammad sagte das laut und klar. Ein echter Muslim sollte sich nicht kleiden wie ein Ungläubiger, er sollte nicht mit den Ungläubigen kehren, und zudem sollte er nicht einen Freund machen aus einem Ungläubigen.
Ist das nicht was Thilo Sarrazin geschrieben hat? – © Mark
Quote Gallery: Thilo Sarrazin's Urge to Provoke >>>
