What I can hear is that the Muslim lady (the one with the head scarf) speaks much better English than the German man. She most probably speaks fluent German and so you can guess that this is only about islamophobia. Germans hear about the bad Muslims every single day Lies as usual. I wish all of the foreigners could just go back home and leave the poor Germans alone. Just leave them alone with no excuse to face their crumbling society.

The use of the words "Discrimination", "Germany" and "Multiculturalism" always stimulate complex, difficult, ambiguous and changing concepts through time. Why is German-phobia worse than islamo-phobia??? Since Germany is a "Christian" country that recognises "jesus as a prophet." Since "islam/muslims" also recognises "jesus as a prophet"(before "mohammed" the last prophet). Why is "Germany" perceived by some unenlightened individuals as the enemy of the prophets "abraham", "moses", "jesus" and "mohammed(the abrahamic religions)"??? Do religious individuals have any problem integrating with the BMW and the Welfare State??? Did God greate the Welfare state and employment????? When driving a BMW on the motorway, does a qualified motorist obeys the traffic laws of Germany OR the holy texts of the koran and PRAY?????

While I don’t claim specialised knowledge of the circumstances of Islamic immigrants in Germany, I do notice a major gap in RT’s article. It states, “Immigrants in Germany accused of failing to integrate into society say all their efforts to do so are thwarted by discrimination. The message German society sends to new immigrants is clear: learn the language of Goethe and accept our values, or you do not have a place here.” Precisely what are “all the efforts” which those immigrants make? Do they take language classes? Do they adopt German dress, German social and civic values, do they integrate within the community or instead do they choose to gravitate to self-imposed social ghettos that resist integration into the fabric of their apparently preferred country of residence? Precisely what DO “all their efforts” to integrate consist of? The article doesn’t say. What it does say is that according to them, their nameless efforts are “thwarted by discrimination”. How, where, discrimination in what? This also isn't clarified. Is a host country’s expectation that foreigners who choose to live there should learn its language an example of discrimination? Or is the immigrants’ refusal to do so rather an example of arrogance and ingratitude? When a German person cannot make himself understood in the language of the land within his own country, why is this not an instance of discrimination against Germans? This disturbing phenomenon isn't confined only to Germany.

Merkel is outright wrong - and it is hoped that media outlets like RT would check out demographic and statical FACTS before engaging in xenophobia and Islamophobia. Go and check research by Pew, Gallop, Open Society - which demonstrates that especially second-generation immigrants are very much at home in Germany and other EU countries!!! What is outrageous is that the mentality here is that ALL Arab and Muslim immigrants are a problem - this is outrageous and wrong. Merkel owes an apology to Germans of the Islamic faith! The argument presented by Merkel and CDU/CSU politicians is outrageous and read between the line: To be "assimilated" Arab and Muslim immigrants must stop practicing Islam, give up traditional dress, give up eating traditional foods. This mentality should be view as unacceptable in a free society where all people have the right to their religion, manner of dress and culture. What Europeans need to get use to is that FACT that if you are going to live in a free society - you must put up with the FACT that others have the right to their religious beliefs, manner of dress, and culture. The signs of mosques, women in headscarves, shops with Arabic writing - is a sign of living in a society based in freedom and liberty. It's those who banter Islamophobia in the form of "assimilation" arguments against exclusively Arab and Muslim that are a threat to free society!

@ MARZIPAN - You say “Immigrants in Germany accused of failing to integrate into society say all their efforts to do so are thwarted by discrimination." And it's backed up with clear information as to how. It says it in the article - there are inititives such as community centres and schools aimed at teaching children from a young age the language but there are NO biligual schools for Arabic and Turkish people. Clear discrimintation when Germany has a multitude of biligual schools - for English, French, Greek - stange when the Turkish immigrant population is the largest in Germany. Any efforts to attempt to integrate in the same way as other nationalities are obviously thwarted at that very early stage.

Germans are making up for the fact that they cannot criticize jews and israel anymore hence they be locked up for inciting anti-semitism. So they lash out at Muslims. Pretty cowardly attitude. They think they are tough? Then question the holohoax. Let's see how far they get. And by the way, where are the jewish groups that always come to the defense of the downtrodden minorities? Oh, these are muslims, so it's OK to discriminate.

Paul I do not know if this is what is going but I am deeply shocked that a country with Germany's history, present industrial power and future ambitions would act foolishly and backwardly- in public to condemn multi-culturalism- which is a direct attack on significant segment of the German society- is something the world must pay attention to. Germany has never fully overcame its deeply held xenophobia and today in Germany xenophobia has received its highest level endorsement from the lips of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. When exclusionary practices receive authorities endorsement- as in the case of Angela Merkel declarative statement that Multi-culturalism is dead in Germany- what was individual prejudices now become state policy. German anti-Semitism had similar historical genealogy--- first it was personal prejudices, than it became an official public policy of the state.. Today anti-Muslim prejudices in Germany is a state policy.. This is a point that media has not yet addressed.

Why German should be multiculturalized? Leave Germans alone! There is no low to multiculturalise local population. May be, they want to be just Germans. What is wrong with it? It is their will and rights to be a Germans. They have their human rights to be just Germans. It is OK to mixed marriage but multicultization for the purpose of multcultization is just crazy.

Khalid Perhaps you do need to pay little attention that not so long ago, in 1939, Hitler and the Third Reich launched a program of “purification” of the German ‘racial blood’ from the ‘contamination’ of the ‘Other’: the Jews, the Slavs and other non Aryan presence. By 1945, 50 Million people paid their lives with this powerful racial ideology. Today, of course, Angela Merkel cannot invoke the need to defend the “purity of the German blood” Instead, she invokes the need to “conserve” the “Purity” of the German language and culture from this imagined impurity of Muslim- the immigrant--It is funny how quickly we forget the past.. even terrible events of not so long ago.. Germany brought these non German immigrants to Germany to rebuild the ruination of WWII—but now these people are seen as “burden”, foreign other, alien which cannot be assimilated to the “pure” German self. Of course, this is an impossible thesis- a fantasy similar to that of the imaged “pure” German racial blood.. but of course- today, we cannot speak in the language of biology anymore so Angela Merkel speaks about “multi-cultural other”—who is almost always a “racialised” Muslim..

PR101 Yes, may be are right.

Sophie wrote: “It says it in the article - there are initiatives such as community centres and schools aimed at teaching children from a young age the language but there are NO bilingual schools for Arabic and Turkish people.” The article says no such thing, Sophie. Rather, it says, “But with few bilingual Arabic or Turkish schools, families like Anissa's are sending their children to private schools where her children do not yet learn German.” While I readily admit I’m not an expert in German education, I can read, and so can you. We both know that “few” does not mean “NO”. Also, that statement seems to apply to state schools, because it is immediately contrasted with an immigrant saying that immigrant families take children to private schools where teaching is not only in their homeland languages, but where no German is taught at all! In other words, private schools which many immigrant children attend are apparently are not even bi-lingual and German is not taught at all. In my view this is both an insult to the country where the immigrants have chosen to live and also a gross disservice to the children themselves, hindering their assimilation into the community. Later they and their families will blame the community because they are not assimilated. I am an Estonian refugee to an English-speaking country. When I started at the local state school, I could not speak a word of English. But I soon learned, and I attended an Estonian Saturday school to learn my own culture. I did not feel the least bit discriminated against by the community, nor did I feel insulted that the community expected me to fit in with it rather than it having to fit in with me. I am seriously unimpressed by immigrants either to Germany or to anywhere else who think that they and their culture ought to be the centre of the universe, and who seriously expect the host country to think the same.

PR101, yes, given Germany’s Nazi era history, one cannot be totally sure that underlying feelings of ethnic superiority and all that this may potentially imply to foreigners in Germany has been exorcised. No one can ever be absolutely sure of anything in regard to predicting human behaviour anywhere. However, Germany has a pretty impressive track record of cleansing itself of the stain of Nazism, of educating its people about Nazi crimes, of commemorating Nazi victims and of bringing perpetrators of Nazi crimes against humanity to answer for their actions in courts of law. This gives much confidence to the world at large, including those have been victims of Nazism, that Germany has changed. All these pointers are spectacularly absent in Russia. Russia has never faced the reality of its Soviet past, it continues to embrace some of Stalin’s most offensive lies as official Kremlin positions, with one or two exceptions (mostly the result of non-government initiatives) Russia does not commemorate the victims of the Soviet state, it has not apologised to many neighbouring countries that Russians savaged in the service of the Soviet state, and it has brought not even one, single, solitary person who committed crimes against humanity under the Soviet flag to answer for their actions in court. It has not even investigated any. Not surprisingly, hate crimes and manifestations of xenophobia proliferate in Russia in an abundance which is not replicated in Germany.