German Study Finds Muslims Considerably More Likely to Be Antisemitic Than Average Citizen

Analysis of research by the major German think tank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation has found Muslims can be over four times as likely to agree with antisemitic statements than the general population.

An investigation into the prevalence of antisemitic opinions in Germany has found, in general, that such views are vanishingly rare in the country, but that they are held to a much greater degree among some groups. Research conducted in 2022 and published this week which interviewed 5,511 people including 500 Muslims asked members of the public by telephone whether they agreed with some harmful tropes.

It found just four per cent agreed with the statement “Jews are sneaky”, and that six per cent agreed with “rich Jews are the actual rulers of the world”. Israel also enjoyed overwhelming majority support, with four per cent saying it should not exist as a state.

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Several demographic differentiators including where in Germany the respondent lived, their age, and gender made “almost no systematic difference” to the results, it was said.

Yet some factors, including holding hard left and hard right political opinions, low levels of education, and having a migration background increased the likelihood of holding antisemitic views, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation ‘Anti-Semitic Attitudes in Germany’ report found. Yet according to the paper, one factor was more influential than the others: holding the Islamic faith.

The report found “on average, people of Muslim faith show significantly higher agreement values [with antisemitic tropes] than Christians and non-denominational people”. Three times as many Muslims would agree that Jewish people are “sneaky”, it said its research discovered, and four times as many said Israel should not be a state.

The greatest differentiation was on the question of whether “rich Jews are the actual rulers of the world”, where over four times as many agreed among the Muslim cohort, taking the figure to 26 per cent — over a quarter — saying they believed the antisemitic claim. These findings were in line with other similar studies, the report asserted.

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As for why Muslims might hold these views, the paper was more circumspect, saying the reasons “can be complex” and as “diverse as the groups themselves”. The conclusion suggested the views may be indicative of higher levels of antisemitic views in “their countries of origin” and that further research, taking into account “socialisation, life experience… and region of origin could contribute”.

The findings of this report underlines how, after decades of aggressively stamping out antisemitic ideas after the Second World War, Germany appears to be importing antisemitic ideas from abroad. These new figures will go some way to support the real-life experience of those living in Germany who say they see antisemitism rising.

It was reported in 2019 that two-thirds of Germans in a survey said they felt antisemitic attitudes were increasing, and that such sentiments were bleeding through from the fringes into the mainstream.