German populist AfD adopts anti-Islam manifesto

The German right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has adopted an explicitly anti-Islam platform, saying Islam is not a part of Germany.

The document adopted on on Sunday (1 May) calls for a ban on the full body Islamic veil for women, and a ban on minarets and the Muslim call to prayer as “Islamic symbols of power” in Germany.

AfD, which has representatives in eight of 16 state assemblies, has gained popularity with its tough stance against chancellor Angela Merkel i’s welcoming refugee policy.

The party was founded in 2013 to oppose the use of German taxpayers' money to bail out other eurozone countries. After much infighting, it has increasingly shifted to the right, harnessing German concerns over some one million asylum seekers who have arrived to the country since last year.

“Courage, truth, Germany” were the main themes of the two-day party congress attended by over 2,000 delegates in Stuttgart.

The 1,700-page party document also called for an exit from the euro, reaffirmed traditional family values, proposed to reinstate military service for young men and better border control, and rejected the “ideology of multiculturalism”.

The party also took a position the presence of nuclear weapons in Germany and deployment of German soldiers overseas.

“Our party program is the road to a different Germany,” party co-leader Joerg Meuthen told the congress.

Delegates who called for a more moderate wording, spelling out a need for dialogue with Islam, were booed at the conference.

Meanwhile the party, trying to fend off criticism of extremism, disbanded its group in Saarland after it emerged they had ties to neo-Nazi groups.

The start of the conference on Saturday was interrupted by at least 1,000 leftist protestors, some 400 of them were detained by police who used pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators.

It came as hackers revealed the addresses of some 2,000 AfD party members on a leftist website.

AfD is now the third largest party in Germany, according to recent poll by the Emnid Institute for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, surpassing the environmentalist Greens, and are hoping for a strong show at next year’s general election.

Merkel has said before that “Islam is part of Germany”, and critics of AfD point out that the German constitution defends freedom of religion. The country is home to some four million Muslims.