Resistance to German anti-immigrant movement mounts

Business leaders, the political class and average Germans are pushing back against a growing anti-immigrant movement, saying it threatens the values and image the country fought hard to establish since the war.

At counter-demonstrations and on social media, opponents have mobilised against the far-right group which claims Germany is being overrun by Islamic extremists.        

President Joachim Gauck, who was a pro-democracy pastor in communist East Germany, devoted his annual Christmas speech to a forceful appeal for compassion and openness toward asylum seekers.

Faced with the emergence of the group "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident," or PEGIDA, which has been staging weekly marches, Gauck said he was confident the majority of Germans would resist its call.

"That we react with empathy to the plight around us, that most of us don't follow those who want to seal off Germany - that is for me a truly encouraging experience of this year," he said in the address to be broadcast Thursday.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed anti-PEGIDA protests, which have drawn thousands, saying most Germans believed those fleeing civil war or persecution should find refuge in the country.

"The Germany that sympathises and helps out is the country that is now required," he told news website Spiegel Online Dec. 23.

PEGIDA began in October in the eastern city of Dresden, capital of the state of Saxony, where just 2.2 percent of the population is of foreign origin.

In a manifesto published this month, the group calls itself a grassroots movement that aims to protect "Judeo-Christian values" and urges tolerance of "assimilated" Muslims while opposing the "misogynist and violent...