Free Republic

When the leader of Germany’s Jews spoke out against the flow of Muslim migrants to Europe, a rabbinical student denounced his views as racist — and ignited a debate over whether Jews are right to fear unprecedented levels of immigration from Muslim lands traditionally hostile to Israel. The student, Armin Langer, was kicked out of the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam after he wrote that the leader of Germany’s Central Council of Jews was wrong to seek a cap on Muslim immigration. Langer, a founder of an inter-faith group called Salaam-Shalom committed to fostering dialogue between Muslims and Jews, said...

The development comes as a new opinion poll finds that large pluralities of respondents in both France (47 percent) and Germany (43 percent) view Islam as a threat – an increase of five and three percent respectively since 2010. The survey (in French), conducted by the IFOP polling company for the French daily Le Figaro, also found that 63 percent of respondents in France and 48 percent in Germany regard Islam as too visible and too influential in their societies. Fifty-two percent of French and 49 percent of Germans respondents said they opposed the building of mosques, and opposition to...