Top German official calls Islam alien

BERLIN, March 4 (UPI) -- Two days after taking office, Germany's interior minister set off a political storm Friday by saying Islam does not belong in the country.

At his first news conference, Hans-Peter Friedrich was asked about Wednesday's attack on U.S. soldiers at the Frankfurt airport, for which a Muslim immigrant and suspected jihadist from Kosovo was arrested.

Friedrich said Muslims should be allowed in the country, but "to say that Islam belongs in Germany is not a fact supported by history," The Guardian reported.

Chancellor Angela Merkel promoted Friedrich Wednesday in a Cabinet reshuffle forced by the ouster of Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who quit in a plagiarism scandal.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, from the Free Democrat partners in the coalition, immediately responded, "Of course Islam belongs in Germany. I assume that the new minister will … take his responsibility for integration policy seriously and campaign for cohesion rather than exclusion."

Aiman Mazyek, chairman of Germany's Central Council of Muslims, invoked President Christian Wulff's comments in October that Germans should recognize Islam as part of Germany.

Central banker Thilo Sarrazin and Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer also have provoked controversy by calling for limiting Muslim immigration.