Record 17,000 rally against 'Islamisation' in Germany

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SARCASTIC SLOW CLAP

A record 17,000 anti-Islamic protesters rallied for their tenth demonstration in as many weeks Monday in eastern Germany, celebrating the rise of their far-right populist movement by singing Christmas carols.

Germany has for weeks grappled with the emergence of the "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" or PEGIDA, whose ranks in the city of Dresden have swelled rapidly from just a few hundred in October.

Most PEGIDA followers insist they are not Nazis but patriots who worry about the "watering down" of their Christian-rooted culture and traditions.

The Protestant bishop of Saxony state, Jochen Bohl, said the PEGIDA followers, by singing Christmas carols, were seeking "to exploit a Christian symbol and a Christian tradition" for political purposes, German news agency DPA reported.

About 4,500 counter-demonstrators marched through the city under the slogan "Dresden Nazi-free", warning that there was no space for racism and xenophobia in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.

The biggest anti-PEGIDA march was held in the southern city of Munich, where at least 12,000 rallied under the banner "Make space -- Refugees are welcome".

"We have space for people of different skin colour, ethnic origin and mother tongue," city mayor Dieter Reiter told the crowd.

"We have space for all religions and believers: for those who go to the mosque on Fridays, who go to the synagogue on Saturdays, or to church on Sundays, but also for those who prefer to just stay home."