Islam and muslims in Germany: An introductory exploration

Landscapes of ‘Othering’ in Postwar and ContemporaryGermany: The Limits of the ‘Culture of Contrition’ and the Poverty of the Mainstream

“…This ‘success’ may not have translated into tangible electoral gains for these parties (with the exception of sporadic and generally short‐lived spikes in local and regional elections [Kuechler :236–38]), but the securitisation of the immigration debate – particularly with regard to Muslim immigrants – has broken political and psychological taboos in a country where the ‘politics of the past’ still weigh heavily on contemporary debates on identity and multiculturalism. In the case of Germany, this discourse opened up a space of ‘exception’ with regard to migrant communities with Muslim background (combining two layers of ‘otherness’ as both immigrants and Muslims [Thielmann ]) that stood in sharp contrast not only to the liberal, pluralist foundations of postwar Europe but specifically to the official ‘contrition’ frame through which the Federal Republic sought to accommodate its traumatic recent past.…”