Demonstrations on the Middle East conflict, attacks by refugees on Jews – such events often focus on the question: Is antisemitism particularly widespread among Muslims or among people with a migration background? Is there an “imported antisemitism”?
Antisemitism is widespread throughout society – there are numerous scientific studies on this. On the other hand, there are fewer research results on the question of how widespread antisemitism is among the population with a migration background. The same applies to the more than five million Muslims in Germany.
In a mediendienst-integration report, antisemitism researcher Dr. Sina Arnold presents the most important scientific findings on the topic and derives recommendations for journalists from them.
Overall, the research comes to a mixed conclusion : Depending on the manifestations of antisemitism, people with a migration background and Muslims have higher or lower antisemitic attitudes than people without a migration background and non-Muslims:
- At the classic antisemitism, the research on people with a migration background is contradictory : some studies find higher, some lower and some the same values compared to people without a migration background. The research situation is clearer among Muslims : they generally show higher approval ratings for classic antisemitism than non-Muslims.
- Secondary Antisemitism is less widespread among people with a migrant background than among people without a migrant background. There are hardly any differences between Muslims and non-Muslims.
- Israel related Antisemitism is more widespread among people with a migration background and Muslims than among people without a migration background. The same applies to Muslims compared to non-Muslims.
Research also shows that the “migration background” category is only of limited significance. An important factor for antisemitic attitudes is the length of stay: approval of antisemitic statements decreases the longer people live in Germany. According to Arnold, they learn a “social norm against antisemitism” and come into contact with the history of National Socialism at schools, which may sensitize them to the topic. Another role is played by whether people have been naturalized and from which country and region they come.
Antisemitism is not only reflected in attitudes, but also in actions, such as attacks on Jews or Jewish institutions. When recording antisemitic crimes, the police crime statistics (PKS) do not differentiate according to migration background or religious affiliation, but only according to political attitude. The police largely assume that the perpetrators are right-wing extremists – of the around 3,000 antisemitic crimes recorded in 2021, around 84.3 percent were right-wing extremist perpetrators. However, there is criticism of the classification. In 4.2 percent of the incidents, ” foreign ideology” suspected as a motive. Around 1.9 percent of the incidents are related to ” religious ideology“, which primarily refers to “Islamist-motivated terrorism/extremism”. Source
