Von Schwerin claims that “it’s his [Sarrazin’s] basic thesis that appears the most questionable, in which he claims that all the Muslims’ social and economic problems can be blamed on their religion — or as the second part of his book’s title states: “How Islam Impedes Progress and Threatens Society.” Nowhere does Sarrazin make the […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Thilo Sarrazin Confounds His Critics with Common Sense (Part III)
Anyone who has ever been to Istanbul, Granada or Cairo can only be astonished to read Sarrazin’s declaration that “an independent Islamic building culture never developed.” Anyone who knows Iran’s impressive Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, can hardly agree with his statement that Muslims do not know anything “about urban […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Thilo Sarrazin Confounds His Critics with Common Sense (Part II)
Ulrich von Schwerin accuses Sarrazin of claiming that the Qur’an is “obsessive” about sexuality. Look at the many Qur’anic passages in Part I that are about sex. Isn’t that list — which is not even exhaustive — enough to convince the fair-minded that Sarrazin’s observation is true? Von Schwerin then implicitly attacks Sarrazin for claiming […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Thilo Sarrazin Confounds His Critics with Common Sense (Part I)
Here is a hostile review by one Ulrich von Schwerin, a freelance writer based in Istanbul, of Thilo Sarrazin’s just-published Feindliche Übernahmen (Hostile Takeover), which is a sequel to Sarrazin’s best-selling Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself), published in 2010. The first book’s theses on integration and immigration sparked a heated debate in Germany. […]