Angela Merkel Announces Plan to Ban the Burqa in Germany

A few days after Donald Trump won the United States presidential election, the New York Times ran an article whose headline declared that “Angela Merkel May Be the Liberal West’s Last Defender.” Responding to the impending presidency of a decidedly illiberal autocrat, the piece began with a sour proclamation: “And then there was one.”

In retrospect, it was too optimistic.

On Tuesday, Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, announced her plan to ban the burqa—a full-body garment worn by some Muslim women—“wherever that is legally possible.” The “full veil,” she explained at a conference of her Christian Democratic Union party, “is not appropriate here. It does not belong to us. … We don’t want any parallel societies. Our law takes precedence before tribal rules, codes of honor, and sharia.” Members of her center-right party, which routinely boasts support for “human dignity” and “freedom of religion,” greeted the pronouncement with raucous applause.

Since the start of the European migrant crisis, Merkel has allowed more than one million refugees into Germany, earning her praise from many liberal quarters. Time named Merkel its Person of the Year in 2015, calling her Chancellor of the Free World. No other country addressed the crisis so generously; the United States, for instance, allowed in just 10,000 Syrian refugees.

But public support for what Merkel describes as Germany’s “humanitarian stance” is waning. The notorious mass sexual assault on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, which was committed primarily by refugees, along with several terrorist attacks by refugees, has fed into fears that Merkel’s liberal asylum policies put Germans in danger. Nationalism, too, is on the rise, as more Germans question whether Merkel’s government value refugees over citizens. The emerging strain of nationalism is tinged with Islamophobia and xenophobia, a toxic but appealing combination for disgruntled voters. In recent regional elections, the anti-Muslim, far-right AfD party drew more support than Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, spelling clear trouble for Merkel’s upcoming reelection bid.

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