Each new year’s morning, Berlin resembles a war zone. Without fail, the streets of the German capital – usually relatively tidy – are strewn with the remains of a citywide party the night before.
Remainders of fireworks protrude from empty sparkling wine bottles, empty banger cases blow down streets where crows pick through overflowing bins and discarded fast-food cartons.
As if the rubbish wasn’t bad enough, it can take at least a week for city cleaners to tackle the mess.
That gave Scharjil Khalid an idea. The young imam at an eastern Berlin mosque is part of a nationwide Muslim youth network and, all going well, at least 10,000 young people will turn out in 240 towns and cities early on January 1st. After prayers and breakfast, they will don gloves, grab brushes and fill bin bags.
RM Block
The initiative is not just about restoring Germans’ beloved order, it is about shifting perceptions about Muslims. They make up around 7 per cent of the German population but, according to Khalid, “are only perceived as a problem group in this society”.
He was born in the western state of Hesse and is part of the first generation to study Islamic theology in Germany. Khalid and his helpers know that this year’s clean-up comes at a time of growing tensions in Germany.
More than two years after the October 7th attacks, they complain that official denunciation of growing anti-Semitism has not been matched by audible concern over a surge in anti-Muslim sentiment.
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For two years a leading German media group has denounced all critics of Israel, particularly Muslim groups, as “Jew haters”. Even chancellor Friedrich Merz has been accused of stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain last October with his claim of a visible problem in German “cityscapes”.
Many Muslims and non-white Germans saw that remark as a calculated dog-whistle to voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose platform includes deportation of nonethnic German citizens.
After weeks of protest, Merz said he was referring to failed asylum seekers, in particular those with criminal records, loitering in public places. “Perhaps,” he added, “I should have said sooner what I meant.”
Rather than get angry with Merz, the young Muslims involved in the new year’s clean-up group want to get even.
“If you see us as a problem in the cityscape, then watch as we clean up on New Year’s Day, where the cityscape is at its worst,” he says.
Experts in the field say that the history of anti-Muslim feeling in Germany is as old as the first communities, dating from the 18th century. However, extreme acts of terrorism by Islamist extremists – from September 11th, 2001, to October 7th, 2023 – have triggered spikes in generalised anti-Muslim feeling.
Official German state statistics noted 1,848 Islamophobic crimes and misdemeanours in 2024 and 79 attacks on mosques – a 24 per cent rise in a year.
A separate study by the VBRG organisation, which documents far-right violence, noted 236 anti-Muslim attacks last year – up 50 per cent on 2023.
The same VBRG survey noted that 68 per cent of Muslims questioned experienced discrimination in Germany – and that the true numbers are likely much higher.
On the front line is Claim, a German alliance against anti-Muslim discrimination. Its 2024 report documents a 60 per cent year-on-year rise in such incidents: young Muslim schoolchildren harassed to take a stance on Hamas; women’s’ headscarves torn off; two homocides; three attempted homicides; and 198 physical attacks.
For Claim’s director, Rima Hanano, Germany’s Holocaust history, and resulting sense of obligation to Israel and its Jewish population, only complicates an already difficult situation.
Her country is obsessed with victim hierarchies, she believes, and refuses to see anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism as two sides of the same coin. A rise in one is usually matched by a rise in the other.
Fanning the flames, alongside remarks by politicians, are media outlets that only report on Islam in the contexts of terrorism, radicalisation and hijab “repression”.
“Such discussion leads to Muslims being viewed only as a security problem,” added Rima Hanano, Claim project director, “and not as a gain [for society]”.
A 2023 state-financed study defined anti-Muslim sentiment as the attribution of sweeping, largely unchangeable, backward and threatening characteristics to Muslims and those perceived as Muslim.
This results – consciously or unconsciously – in a sense of “otherness” that can lead to hostility and social exclusion at individual and institutional level – even violence.
Its representative survey, conducted in 2022, found that a majority of respondents – 55 per cent – feel “Islam does not fit into German society”.
Three years on, many German Muslims say they face a new level of hostility in post-October 7th Germany. Above all their social media feeds are overflowing with what Gaza supporters – many Palestinian – call state-sanctioned police violence against them.
After a Gaza solidarity march in May, for instance, Berlin police denounced violence against a young officer that had left him injured. Days later, video footage indicated the officer had broken his fist through repeated punching.
Berlin’s state government has taken a first step to make amends. March 15th will mark the city’s first official day against Islamophobia.
