Islam considered 'a threat' to national identity by French and Germans

PanARMENIAN.Net - Islam is considered by millions of French and Germans as a ‘threat’ to their national identity.

Le Monde ran the results under a headline which brands efforts to get different religious communities to live side by side as a ‘failure’, dailymail.co.uk reported.

France, with seven million, and Germany, 4.3 million, have the largest Muslim communities in Europe. There are 2.4million in Britain.

According to the Le Monde poll, carried out with marketing firm IFOP, 68 % of French and 75 % of Germans believe Muslims are ‘not well integrated into society’.

Just as crucially, 42 per cent of French and 40 per cent of Germans consider the presence of Islamic communities ‘a threat’ to their national identities.

An editorial in Le Monde adds: ‘As Islam becomes a permanent and increasingly conspicuous fixture of European societies, public opinion is clearly tensing up, though disparities do appear between young and old and between Left and Right wing.’

Jerome Fourquet, of IFOP, said the results ‘go beyond linking immigration with security or immigration with unemployment, to linking Islam with a threat to identity’.