Strong crowds showed up for anti-Islam rallies in the German cities of Dresden, Leipzig, and Duisburg throughout the month as part of weekly rallies organized by a group called Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA.
Protesters have been wearing black ribbons to show their solidarity with the victims last week's terror attacks in Paris.
Rebecca Cruise, a comparative politics expert at the University of Oklahoma's College of International Studies and regular panelist on World Views, says these protests stem not just from the situation in France, but also the number of refugees that have entered Germany.
"Many of those that are coming over the Mediterranean Sea have been welcomed into Germany, although 'welcomed' perhaps is not the right word, as they're often put up in sub-par housing," Cruise says.
Cruise has spent time in Leipzig, a historically important city that spawned the demonstrations that brought down communism in the region in 1989.
"They are not a usual feature of East Germany life, as you didn't see a lot of immigrants into that part of Germany until in the last 15 or so years," Cruise says.
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