Navid Kermani: Peace Prize winner for more action against Syria War – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The German-Iranian author and orientalist Navid Kermani received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt on Sunday. In a haunting question of 47-year-old appealed to the international community to end the war in Syria and Iraq.

“Can a peace prize winners call for war?” he asked rhetorically in the nearly one thousand visitors of St. Paul Church. And made it clear he did not call for war, but requires a far more resolute diplomatic and civil society action, possibly including military steps were necessary.

“It is only when our societies accept the madness no longer Also, governments will move,” Kermani, who was born as a son of Iranian immigrants in Siegen and now lives in Cologne said. The war could only be ended by the powers that stand behind the warring armies and militias. These included Iran, Turkey, the Gulf States, Russia and the West.

The terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS) with its maximum of 30,000 fighters could be defeated, Kermani said, even if it mistakes were made , “But the biggest mistake we commit, if we continue to do nothing or as little against the mass murder against our European doorstep.” Responsible he made both the IS and the Assad regime.

Kermani called it gratifying that so many people inserting especially in Germany for refugees. Then he called at the same time a debate on the causes of terrorism and the movement of refugees. This also included the question of how the policy has promoted in Germany the catastrophe “close to our borders.”

“Why is calculated Saudi Arabia closest partner?”

“We do not ask why our closest partner in the Middle East is just Saudi Arabia” criticized Kermani, who accused the country of terror financing. The West should not draw the conclusion, stay out better at genocide of the disastrous wars in Iraq or Libya.

In addition, the Orientalist complained in his speech that the tolerant in the Middle Ages multicultural Islamic culture was wiped out in the Muslim countries. All peoples of the East have experienced by colonialism and secular dictatorships “a brutal top-down modernization”. The fundamentalists were destroying the tradition continued.

The Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman ​​Mazyek, Kermani congratulated for the price. “Dialogue is good. Dialogue is exhausting. Dialogue is strength” Mazyek said. Kermani had “treated this way to the tireless efforts of reconciliation between religions and cultures literarily and intellectually in his work”. The award of the prize to him was also an expression of a “new Germany of diversity”.

With the Peace Prize honors the German book trade since 1950 personalities, who work for international understanding and humanity. Endowed with 25,000 award is considered one of the most important awards in Germany.

Kermani is one of the most important voices in today’s society, when it comes to the peaceful coexistence of people of different national and religious backgrounds, it said in the statement of reasons for the award. Last year, the US Internet critic Jaron Lanier had received the award. 2013 the prize went to the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievitch who scored the Nobel Prize a few days ago.