A Muslim woman who sits in the German parliament has been given a police bodyguard after she received death threats over her public appeal for other Muslims to abandon headscarves. Turkish-born Ekin Deligoz, 35, has occupied a Greens party seat since 1998, the year after she was naturalized as a German, but she only gained national attention last month when she assailed the scarf as a symbol of backwardness and submission to male dominance.
That has turned her life upside down. After anonymous hate calls by phone, Berlin assigned two federal policemen to protect Deligoz at all times, even when she goes out for walks with her husband and child or to do the shopping. 'It's the little things that have changed,' she said wistfully this week.
Recalling the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamist, German authorities believe they cannot be too careful. But Muslims in Germany worry that they are once again being portrayed in the media as violent and incapable of debate. |