ABSTRACT
Politicians and supporters of the Green Party in particular propagated the recognition of the 'multicultural realities' in Germany. This move sparked a fierce debate on the idea of multiculturalism among the German public. The conservative press and Christian Democrat politicians reacted by denouncing the idea of 'Multi-Kulti', as it was soon called, as extremely dangerous for 'German culture'. Conservative criticism of multiculturalism was mainly based on two principal ideas: the notion of a German Leitkultur and the conception of 'parallel societies'. A key element of the growing obsession with Islam is a shifting focus from the Ausländer towards the Muslim. The identification of immigrants as foreigners has been gradually replaced by their demarcation as the religious 'Other'. In this process the image of Turkish immigrants is increasingly 'Islamized', thereby taking up and reshaping older discourses that focused on their ethnic and cultural 'otherness' as foreigners or on the vision of a second generation 'caught between two cultures'.
