Germany's Angela Merkel Stands Up Against Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments

German central banker Thilo Sarrazin has stirred international controversy with his new book Germany Does Away With Itself: How We are Risking the Future of our Nation, which contains what many believe are anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiments.

CSM's Robert Marquand has the back story ("German banker comments raise concerns about new 'intellectual racism'"):

The book critiques immigration policy in Germany, a hot topic around Europe, and makes genetic arguments about intelligence linked to ethnicity, suggesting that immigrants are not as gifted as Germans and that the country is losing its identity, becoming "smaller and stupider."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in yesterday saying the remarks were "utterly unacceptable" and that Mr. Sarrazin is likely to come before the Bundesbank board – though previous attempts to remove the banker from what is an independent body have failed. Last fall Sarrazin said the birthrate of Muslims threatened Germany's future and that he wished that it was "Eastern European Jews" that were reproducing quickly since "their IQs are 15 percent higher than that of the German people."

The controversy comes amid a gradual mainstreaming of anti-Islamic feeling in Europe, including inflammatory depictions and often exaggerated projections about a continent on the verge of becoming a "Eurabia," as the genre is often called, say analysts.

Kenin Kolat, head of the German Turkish Federation described Sarrazin as representing "the climax of a new intellectual racism that damages Germany's reputation abroad." Jewish leaders said Sarrazin's views were a reprise of Nazi racial ideology, and that "Whoever tries to define Jews by their genetic makeup, even when it is superficially positive in tone, is in the grip of a race mania that Jews do not share," according to Stephan Kramer, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.