A prominent official has caused an outcry with a new book in which he predicts Germany's demise. He blames the growing Muslim minority unwilling to integrate and "stupid" immigration poilicies. 

The person at te epicenter is Thilo Sarrazin, 65, a board member of the country’s Bundesbank, or central bank, who previously made headlines for remarks his critics call racist.

The new book titled, Deutschland schafft sich ab - Germany is doing away with itself - is being serialized in the tabloid Bild starting this Sunday.

The book details, often in satirical terms, what Sarrazin claims will lead to Germany's demise. Immigration and higher birth rates mean the country is effectively “turning Muslim," he contents.

Sarrazin, who joined the Bundesbank in May 2009 after seven years as
Berlin’s finance minister, came under a storm of criticism last October
for an interview he gave in the journal Lettre International in which he said that most immigrant Turks and Arabs “keep producing more little girls in headscarves.”  

And he said that Berlin’s Arab and Turkish immigrants had no useful function apart from the fruit and vegetable
trade. 

The leader of the Green Party, Renate Künast said not only do his comments damage the image of the Bundesbank, they also incite racial hatred.

He was threatened with expulsion from the social democrat SPD and stripped of some duties by the Bundesbank. What happens this time remains to be seen.

In the book, Sarrazin says Germany's Muslim community had profited from social welfare payments far more than they contributed, and that higher birth-rates could lead to the Muslim population overtaking the "indigenous" one in terms of numbers.

Sarrazin's solution

Sarrazin also proposes solutions to the growing cultural gap, including extending school hours to keep children away from television, greater supervion by parents and cuts in the Kindergeld if pupils cut classes unexcused. Kindergeld are government subsidies to poor families to help them educate their children.

In June, the 65-year-old Sarrazin was reported as saying that Germany was "becoming on average more stupid" because immigrants were poorly educated.

In a lengthy recent interview with weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Sarrazin defended himself against the charge he was encouraging racism.

"I am not a racist. The book addresses cultural divisions, not ethnic ones," he told the newspaper.

Sarrazin wrote in an extract published in Der Spiegel magazine last week, “I don’t want the country of my grandchildren and forefathers to be in broad swathes Muslim, where Turkish and Arabic is widely spoken, where women wear headscarves and where the daily rhythm of life is set by the call of the muezzins.”

‘Private Affair’

The book is Sarrazin’s “private affair” and the opinions he expresses are unrelated to his work at the Bundesbank, Susanne Kreutzer, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt-based central bank, told Deutsche Welle in an e-mailed statement.

Last year, Sarrazin caused a storm by claiming that most of Berlin's
Arab and Turkish immigrants had no useful function "apart from fruit and vegetable trading." As a result, the central bank stripped Sarrazin of some of his duties. 

Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday that many people would find the remarks "offensive" and "defamatory," adding that the chancellor was concerned.

Members of the SPD have distanced themselves from Sarrazin's comments, while Germany's Green and Left parties have called for his removal from the central bank's board.

Blanket generalizations

Germany's first female Muslim minister said the comments lacked respect Lower Saxony's minister of social affairs, Ayguel Oezkan, Germany's first-ever female Muslim minister, accused Sarrazin of doing damage to the Muslim community with blanket generalizations.