THEY DESERVE THE FRENCH:

Merkel to Steer Germany Back Toward U.S.: 'Let the battles of the past rest,' the new chancellor says of ties with the United States, which were strained under her predecessor. (Jeffrey Fleishman, December 3, 2005, LA Times)

New German Chancellor Angela Merkel is moving quickly to improve relations with the United States that were damaged over the Iraq war and by Berlin's increasingly independent and sometimes erratic voice in world affairs.

Merkel has been in office less than two weeks, but she has sent strong signals to Washington that she values transatlantic ties more than her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, did. She will not give President Bush what he wants most — German troops in Iraq — but Merkel is not inclined toward the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis honed by Schroeder's Social Democratic government. [...]

Raised in communist East Germany, Merkel appreciates the U.S. role in building democracy in this once-divided nation.

But won't, in turn, help build them in the Middle East? Who needs such "allies"?

MORE:
In Germany, Muslims grow apart (Peter Schneider, DECEMBER 2, 2005, The New York Times)

There is a new wall rising in Berlin. Looking over that wall, one sees the parallel world of the Islamic suburbs. It's a world in which women, unlike some Muslim women in Europe who have risen to expansive lives, are still subject to arranged marriages and the control of their families.

To cross this wall you have to go to the city's central and northern districts, to Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Wedding, and you will find yourself in a world unknown to most Berliners.

Until recently, most held to the illusion that living together with some 300,000 Muslim immigrants and children of immigrants was basically working.

Take Neukölln. The district is proud of the fact that it houses citizens of 165 nations. Some 40 percent of these, by far the largest group, are Turks and Kurds; the second-largest group consists of Arabs.

Racially motivated attacks occur regularly in Brandenburg, the former East German state that surrounds Berlin, where foreigners are few, accounting for only about 2 percent of the population. But such attacks hardly ever happen in Neukölln.

Stefanie Vogelsang, a councilwoman from Neukölln, says that residents talk about "our Turks" in an unmistakably friendly way, although they are less friendly when it comes to Arabs, who arrived after the Turks, often illegally.

But tolerance of Muslim immigrants began to change in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Parallel to the declarations of "unconditional solidarity" with Americans by the German majority, rallies of another sort were taking place in Neukölln and Kreuzberg.

Bottle rockets were set off from building courtyards, a poor man's fireworks: two rockets here, three rockets there.

Altogether, hundreds of rockets were shooting skyward in celebration, just as most Berliners were searching for words to express their horror.

For many German residents in Neukölln and Kreuzberg, Vogelsang recalls, that was the first time they stopped to wonder who their neighbors really were.

When a broader German public began concerning itself with the parallel Muslim world arising in its midst, it was primarily thanks to three female authors, three rebellious Muslims: Ates, the author of "The Great Journey Into the Fire"; Kelek, who wrote "The Foreign Bride"; and Serap Cileli, who penned "We're Your Daughters, Not Your Honor."

About the same age, all three grew up in Germany; they speak German better than many Germans and are educated and successful. But each had to risk much for her freedom.

Kelek was threatened by her father with a hatchet when she refused to greet him in a respectful manner.

Ates survived a shooting attack on the women's shelter that she founded in Kreuzberg.

Cileli, at 13, tried to kill herself to escape her first forced marriage. Later, she was taken to Turkey and married against her will, then she returned to Germany with two children from that marriage and took refuge in a women's shelter to escape her father's violence.

Taking off from their own experiences, the three women describe the grim lives and sadness of Muslim women in Germany.

Their books report almost unbelievable details that most Germans did not care to know. They describe an everyday life of oppression, isolation, imprisonment and brutal corporal punishment for Muslim women and girls in Germany.

Not that they can liberalize their own.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 3, 2005 8:30 AM