German Muslims call AfD Nazis

BERLIN: A leader of German Muslims on Monday likened the attitude of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party toward his community to that of Hitler’s Nazis toward Jews.
The AfD entered three state parliaments last month by luring voters angry with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome mainly Muslim refugees fleeing war in Syria, and says Islam is incompatible with Germany’s constitution.
“It is the first time since Hitler’s Germany that a whole religious community is discredited and existentially threatened,” Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, told German television.
He was responding to AfD plans, announced at the weekend, to press for bans on minarets and burqas at its congress in two weeks’ time.
“The AfD is riding a wave of Islamophobia,” Mazyek said. “This is not an anti-Islam path, it is an anti-democratic path.” AfD leaders say the influx of more than one million migrants last year, mainly Muslims fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, makes the “Islamization of Germany” a real threat.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, accused the AfD of using language similar to that of Hitler’s Nazis.