Review
In 2010 Thilo Sarrazin, former board member of the German federal bank and finance senator in the Berlin Senate from 2002 to 2009, published a controversial book that has since sold 1.3 million copies. In the book, Sarrazin describes Germany’s current social and economical situation. Using this as a backdrop, he forecasts a very dark future for Germany and heavily criticizes Muslim immigrants. Sarrazin’s thesis was hotly debated in the German public sphere and beyond, putting integration back on the agenda.
Sarrazin’s book creates an image of the Muslims living in Germany as poorly educated, criminal and lazy, described by Lippmann (1922) as ‘the pictures in our heads’. Sarrazin goes on to predict that in the next few generations, Germany will be overtaken by its Muslim population because of their high fertility rate. As a consequence, he describes how Germany could lose its global economic competitiveness. Sarrazin omits positive dynamics and data on Muslims in Germany and selectively uses statistics to simplify the issue, which allows him to conclude that Muslim culture is an ‘integration-retarding mechanism’. Although Sarrazin works in a demonstrably non-scientific way and uses statistical sources incorrectly, his thesis met with great approval inside and outside Germany.
Sarrazin begins by labelling migrants from predominantly Muslim countries and their descendants born in Germany generally as ‘Muslim immigrants’ (261). However, the microcensus data on which his statistics are based does not include information on religious background. Therefore, he defines all citizens from Turkey or Bosnia-Herzegovina or with Middle Eastern and African heritage as Muslim immigrants, although the country of origin is only tangentially related to religious affiliation. The only representative study about Muslims in Germany shows that 20 percent of Turkish immigrants and 50 percent of Iranian immigrants are not Muslim (Haug et al. 2009). Sarrazin’s claim that the whole of the African continent is Muslim is also questionable. Finally, he excludes Muslims from South and Southeastern Asia completely. In short, Sarrazin’s definition of the category ‘Muslim’ is deeply flawed.
Once he has established his false definition, Sarrazin uses it to claim a certain characterisation of ‘Muslims’ (or ethnic subgroups of this category). For example, he misquotes a Berlin newspaper article as follows: ‘82,000 citizens live there, half of them of Turkish and Arabian heritage. The violence recorded in one year, including 104 attacks against policemen, comes almost exclusively from the group of migrants’[1] (Sarrazin 2010: 298; author’s translation). However, the original source says: ‘At least half of the 82,114 people living in the district are from immigrant families. There were 104 attacks against policemen just in Söhring’s area last year’[2] (Behrendt & Ganze 2009: 1; author’s translation). This is just one example in which Sarrazin fabricates a link between ‘people with Turkish and Arabian heritage’ and ‘violence including attacks against policemen’.
Sarrazin sets forth various explanations for the observed social disparities between Muslims and non-Muslims. On page 287, he writes, ‘It is interesting to observe the differences between several migrant groups of the former English colony of India in Great Britain. Indian pupils are twice as successful in school as Pakistani pupils. […] But there are no differences between Indians and Pakistanis except that Pakistanis have an Islamic cultural heritage’ (author’s translation). Here, Sarrazin fails to use any other explanatory variables. Instead, he constructs a spurious correlation between Muslim culture and success in school. By contrast, Strand (2007) describes educational disparities in Great Britain as follows: ‘The […] analyses indicate that faith group is relatively unimportant in explaining differences in educational attainment within ethnic groups. Where large differences in attainment between faith groups exist, they are usually proxies for other factors’ (76). Such other factors include family background (social class, parents’ education, etc.), parental attitudes and behaviour, student risk and protective factors (e.g., time spent doing homework, future plans, etc.), school and neighbourhood context (Strand 2011).
Sarrazin’s book is filled with stereotypes based on non-scientific, subjective and arbitrary data and analysis and thus are objectively insupportable. Nevertheless, his book has found a broad approval. The question is, why?
One answer seems to be at hand: that people need stereotypes as ‘energy-saving devices’ (Macrae et al. 1994). Accordingly, once you develop a picture in your mind (e.g., through socialisation, the media, personal experience, anxiety, etc.), it is very difficult to change, even if it is proven untrue (Allport 1954; Brown & Hewstone 2005; Snyder & Swann 1978).
A 10-year representative longitudinal study of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (2011) indicates that there were relative stable Islamophobic attitudes in Germany long before Sarrazin published his book. In 2003, 26 percent of the respondents said that the immigration of Muslims should be forbidden; this percentage didn’t change in 2010. In 2003, 31 percent of the respondents reported that they sometimes feel themselves as strangers in their own country due to the Muslim population; this value increased to 39 percent in 2010. Another representative study of five European countries indicates similar tendencies throughout Europe. For example 60 percent of the respondents in West Germany, 67 percent in East Germany, 56 percent in Denmark, 21 percent in France, 67 percent in the Netherlands and 39 percent in Portugal associate the term ‘Islam’ with ‘readiness to use violence’ (Pollack et al. 2010: 57). Except for France, these are relative high values. Perhaps this is one reason why Sarrazin’s book, which cloaks itself in science, reached so many people. It fell on fertile soil.
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Foroutan, N. (ed.), Schäfer, K., Canan, C. Schwarze, B. (2011), Sarrazins Thesen auf dem Prüfstand – Ein empirischer Gegenentwurf zu Thilo Sarrazins Thesen zu Muslimen in Deutschland [Sarrazin`s theses put to test – An empirical alternative draft of Thilo Sarrazin`s theses on muslims in Germany], W-Serie der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, 2011. <http://www.heymat.hu-berlin.de/>, accessed 2 July 2011.
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Deutschland. [Muslim life in Germany], research report 6, Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Nürnberg.
Institut für interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung [Institut for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence] (2011). Das Projekt – Gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit in Deutschland. Eine 10-Jährige Langzeituntersuchung mit einer jährlichen Bevölkerungsumfrage zur Abwertung und Ausgrenzung von schwachen Gruppen. [The project- Group focused enmity in Germany. A ten year longitudinal study with a yearly population survey on devaluation and exclusion of weak groups], <http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/ikg/zick/GMF%20Projekt_Skizze_2011.pdf>, accessed 3 June 2011.
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Strand, S. (2007), Minority ethnic pupils in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. DCSF Research Report RR-002, Department for Children, Schools and Families, London. <http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/DCSF-RR002.pdf>, accessed 2 June 2011.
Strand, S. (2011), ‘The limits of social class in explaining ethnic gaps in educational attainment’, British Educational Research Journal 37 (2): 197 – 229.
[1] 82.000 Menschen leben dort, die Hälfte mit türkischem und arabischem Migrationshintergrund. Die Gewalt, darunter 104 Übergriffe auf Polizisten in einem Jahr, kommt fast ausschließlich aus der Gruppe der Migranten.’
[2] Von den 82.114 Menschen in dem Bezirk hat mindestens jeder Zweite einen Migrationshintergrund. Im vorigen Jahr gab es 104 Übergriffe gegen Polizisten, allein in Söhrings Revier.
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