Antisemitic attitudes among Migrants and Muslims in Germany 2021-2023: Challenges for the democratic state?

Abstract

Since October 7, 2023 antisemitism in Germany has received considerably increased attention by politician, the general public and science as well. Particularly antisemitic attitudes among Muslims living in Germany are a very sensitive issue. In this presentation results of three representative, nationwide surveys on the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes since 2021 will be presented. The results show slight, non-significant increases in anti-Semitic attitudes between 2021 and 2023 for the German population as a whole. However, important differences between subgroups can be observed: Muslims not only show significantly higher rates of anti-Semitic attitudes compared to all other social groups. Furthermore, there are also significant increases between 2021 and 2023 only for Muslims. Even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics like age, education and other social and economic predictors, like social marginalisation experiences and conspiratorial thinking, there is still a significant higher level of antisemitic attitudes among Muslims to be observed. Furthermore, comparative multivariate analyses for both Christians and Muslims show that there are no effects of the intensity of personal faith and the centrality of religion in everyday life on antisemitism. Religious fundamentalism significantly increases antisemitic resentment in both groups. However effects are stronger for Muslims. Only among Muslims the intensity of collective religious practice, measured by the frequency of attending mosques, is associated with elevated levels of antisemitic prejudice, even after multivariate controlling for the intensity and rigidity of faith and all other social predictors. Furthermore recent descriptive results of the 4th wave of the MiD Study, conducted from April to July 2024, on the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes will be presented as well. These show additional marked increases of antisemitism in particular among Muslim Migrants living in Germany.

Political implications of these results for the prevention of antisemitism in a modern democratic society like Germany, characterized by a high share of Muslim migrants, will be discussed. In particular implications of the results with respect to the critical groups that should be reached by preventive interventions will be sketched out.