By IRNA,
Berlin : Turkish President Abdullah Gul expressed major concern over the growing anti-Islamic mood in Germany and other European countries.
Talking to Saturday’s edition of the Munich-based daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Gul called on German and other European politicians and intellectuals to combat Islamophobia and xenophobia in their relevant countries.
He branded Islamophobia, racism and anti-Semitism ‘a disease which erupts from time to time.’
There are around 4.3 million Muslims living in Germany of which 2.5 million are Turks.
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger admitted last month that Islamophobia has become a serious problem in the country as a result of deepening popular anti-Muslim sentiments.
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said there was a growing tendency among the public to view ‘Muslims and their religion as a threat.’
This was the first time that the German government had openly acknowledged the existence of Islamophobia.
German Muslim leaders have repeatedly urged the center-right government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to take the problem of Islamophobia seriously.
The German government must face up to the fact that Islamophobia does exist in the country, German-Turkish Muslim activist Pinar Cetin told IRNA in a recent interview.
German Muslims have voiced mounting concern over an Islamophobic wave stirred by Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
‘The mood in the German Muslim community is filled with fear because Islamophobia has reached the middle of German society,’ according to a local Berlin Muslim community leader, Faical Salhi.