'We are all Germany', president tells Muslim rally

(L-R) German President Joachim Gauck, the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany Aiman Mazyek, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and other political and religious leaders stand together as they attend a Muslim community rally to condemn the Paris jihadist attacks. AFP Photo

German President Joachim Gauck told the country's Muslim community Tuesday that "we are all Germany" at a rally to condemn the Paris jihadist attacks and take a stand against rising Islamophobia.
      
About 10,000 citizens, religious leaders and politicians, among them Chancellor Angela Merkel, joined the event, which started with a wreath-laying ceremony at the French embassy and an imam reciting Koranic verses condemning the taking of life.
      
Gauck used his speech to send a message of reassurance to Germany's four-million-strong Muslim community, a day after a record 25,000 people joined a protest march by a populist anti-Islamic movement.
      
"We are all Germany," he said.
      
"We, democrats with our different political, cultural and religious backgrounds; we, who respect and need each other; we, who want to live life... in unity, justice and freedom," Gauck said in his speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.        

"The vast majority of Muslims feel they belong to our open society... Germany has become more diverse through immigration -- religiously, culturally and mentally."       

"Our answer to the fundamentalism of the Islamist perpetrators of violence is democracy, respect for the law, respect for each other, respect for human dignity. This is our way of life!"     
 
People at the rally applauded his message of inter-faith unity that came a day after the 12th rally by Germany's new right-wing movement the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident", or PEGIDA, which has spawned smaller clone groups across Germany and as far as Norway.
      
Merkel -- who this week stressed that "Islam is part of Germany" -- said earlier Tuesday that "hatred, racism and...

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