Angela Merkel’s European border opening festival of love back in 2015 was just a temporary, humanitarian, emergency-type measure, Germans were told. All of those Syrian refugee doctors, lawyers, engineers etc. streaming into Germany (the minority of the refugees who came to Germany actually came from Syria, by the way) would be going back to Syria just as soon as they were able.

Well, who would have expected this? It turned out differently than she said. It’s almost as if she wasn’t telling the truth or something.

A large portion of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015 are planning to stay in the country for good.

Syrians now represent the largest Muslim minority in Germany after Turks. Since 2010, their numbers in the country have risen from around 30,000 to almost 800,000. Most arrived as refugees after the outbreak of the civil war, and they are reshaping the country, much like Turkish migrants did for decades.

Between 2015 and 2018, Syrian women in Germany gave birth to over 65,000 babies. But the Syrian community will continue to grow in the country for other reasons as well. In the past year, around 40,000 Syrians applied for asylum, a small number compared to 2015, when the large wave of refugees came to Germany.

“We Muslims are a part of this society. It is becoming more and more normal. But for that, we have to become more visible.”