by Giulio Meotti
What has emerged in recent days from the Goethe University of Frankfurt shows us that Europe is no longer a real democracy, but an ideological oligarchy. The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tells us that Professor Susanne Schröter, director of the Frankfurt Research Center and professor at the Institute of Ethnology, reported that a young researcher’s political stance on Islam now plays an important role in his future career. If he speaks well of Islam, he will make a career, otherwise he will not.
Schröter denounced the “cancel culture” which seeks to ban politically or morally unpleasant positions from universities. She referred to graduate students whose dissertations were not accepted because they dealt with “wrong” topics. For example, “honor killings” in Islam. “If an anthropologist deals with Islam, his career is over,” said Schröter.
Political scientist and publicist Hamed Abdel-Samad, under guard for death threats from Islamists, reported that the universities of Augsburg and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich did not allow him to hold an event on political Islam and to present the results of his research on the Koran. Hamed Abdel-Samad said: “The University of Augsburg, which once honored me with an award as a model Muslim, now refuses to allow me to critically discuss the Qur’an. The University of Munich, which once entrusted me with teaching Islamic history to German and foreign students, now refuses to let me discuss the results of my research on the Koran in an open dialogue with students and citizens.” Hamed Abdel-Samad he also sees a worrying development in freedom of expression in Germany: “Universities, intellectuals, officials of Islam and politicians of the central parties refuse to face an honest and open debate on Islam”.
“Critics of Islam must fear for their lives: death threats and attacks,” says Tichy magazine. “Anyone who criticizes Islamism must expect to be violently attacked in this country and without anyone being offended,” said journalist Jan Aleksander Karon. “In Germany it is increasingly dangerous to criticize Islam.”
Two years ago, the University of Frankfurt was at the center of controversy for a conference on the Islamic veil. The students accused the university of promoting “Islamophobia”, demanding the dismissal of the anthropologist Schröter, organizer of the conference. Of the ten speakers, four were escorted by bodyguards. “Because they are on the list of all radicals,” Schröter revealed. Then another lecture by Professor Schröter on “Political Islam” in the Marburg University Library was at the center of a boycott campaign.
The University of Mainz revoked the university status of the think tank for humanism and the Enlightenment because it invited Hamed-Abdel Samad to a lecture. And when the Egyptian sociologist received the Josef Neuberger medal, the Antifa attacked him at the University of Munich. One tried to punch him and called him a “fascist”, because Samad had written a book criticizing Mohammed.
Law scholar Reinhard Merkel spoke of a “latent threat of an informal sanction”. Anyone like him who expresses critical positions towards Islam or immigration is now dismissed as a “racist” without any further justification. “This is a very serious emotional threat. You are canceled as a moral person. You can be afraid of that, ”Merkel said. Historian Andreas Rödder has emphasized the subtle methods of exclusion. “It may consist in the refusal of publications or funding for research on topics that are no longer part of the accepted ‘moral corridor”.
-Former central banker Thilo Sarrazin was expelled from the SPD for criticizing Islam in two best sellers.
-Necla Kelek, an important personality of Turkish origin residing in Germany, who has written articles on arranged marriages and honor killings, can only speak in public under the protection of the police.
-Roger Koppel, director of the German newspaper Die Welt in 2006, escaped an attack by a Pakistani student, armed with a knife, who tried to break into his office. Koppel’s “crime” was that he republished the Danish cartoons about Mohammed.
-Gabrielle Brinkman is a famous and acclaimed German novelist, but she too suddenly ran out of publishing. In her novel Wem ehre Geburt (To whom the honor is due) there were some passages that, according to the lawyers of the Droste publishing house, could have irritated the Islamic community and exposed the publisher to lawsuits and intimidation. So the writer was asked to censor and correct the most delicate passages. Brinkman refused and was left without a publisher.
We are in the country which, of itself, claims to have overcome all taboos. Except one, which with demographics and religion will impose all the others on that country again.