Germany's right-wing AfD adopt anti-Islam manifesto

Germany's right-wing populist AfD on May 1 adopted an anti-Islam policy in a manifesto that also demands curbs to immigration, as a poll showed it is now the country's third strongest party.
 
Formed only three years ago on a eurosceptic platform, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gained strength as the loudest protest voice against Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcome to refugees that brought over one million asylum seekers last year.
 
With the migrant influx sharply down in recent months, the AfD has shifted focus to the signature issue of the xenophobic Pegida street movement, whose full name is Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.
 
"Islam is not part of Germany" ran a headline in the AfD policy paper agreed in a vote by some 2,400 members at the party congress in the western city of Stuttgart.
 
The paper demanded bans on minarets on mosques, the call to prayer, full-face veils for women and female headscarves in schools.
 
A proposal for a more nuanced formulation -- to "stop Islamism but seek dialogue with Islam" -- was rejected with boos in the mostly-male gathering, which was held in a hall decorated with banners that read "Courage. Truth. Germany."  

"Islam is in itself political," retorted one speaker, while another linked the religion with "sharia, suicide bombings and forced marriages".    

More broadly, the AfD is presenting itself as a nationalistic conservative force that also questions climate change, promotes traditional gender roles and "family values", would reintroduce military conscription and take Germany out of the euro.
 
Co-leader Joerg Meuthen said the AfD stood for a "modern conservatism" and a "healthy patriotism" while it rejected ...