Excerpt:
The ideas are crudely formulated: Muslim immigrants have contributed nothing to German prosperity; the high fertility rates among the country's Muslim community have resulted in the reduction of Germany's collective IQ; Muslim immigrants would prefer to be on welfare than to work; Jews share a specific gene.
Such are the claims promulgated this week and last by Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the board at the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, and a former finance minister with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the Berlin city-state government. The outrage was immediate. Politicians of all stripes, from center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel on down, have condemned Sarrazin and the SPD has begun an effort to banish him from the party. Even the central bank has decided to hand him a pink slip.