But when you only speak using generalizations, you run the danger of denying the specific. In recent decades, millions of people have come to us from cultural groups within which women have absolutely no rights. They do not have a voice of their own and they are totally dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands. That applies to North Africa and that applies to large parts of the Middle East. It isn't always linked to Islam.
Alice SchwarzerMastery of the German language and the acceptance of our legal system has to become part of the criteria for naturalization.
Alice SchwarzerI can't just go up to people standing in the snow at the German-Austrian border and ask them: "Are you an Islamist?" When people flee to us from war zones, we first have to help. But we also have to be quick to look very closely at who it is that is coming.
Alice SchwarzerPeople aren't stupid. They saw what was happening at the Cologne central station. A lawless space was created in the middle of a city of over a million. That has to be addressed and it has to be done so in a sober-minded way.
Alice SchwarzerHuman rights are universally valid and indivisible, regardless of culture and religion.
Alice SchwarzerOf course we in Europe also have epidemic, structural sexual violence. Violence is always the dark core of dominance. The men who are now coming to us from Islamic cultural circles are, of course, shaped by conditions there, which are still much more antiquated than here. That's a problem that we have ignored for far too long. In the name of a false tolerance, we have accepted that women are kept at home like prisoners and are forcibly married.
Alice Schwarzer