Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to join a Muslim community rally Tuesday to promote tolerance, condemn the terrorist attacks in Paris last week and send a rebuke to Germany’s growing anti-Islamic movement.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to join a Muslim community rally Tuesday to promote tolerance, condemn the terrorist attacks in Paris last week and send a rebuke to Germany's growing anti-Islamic movement.

President Joachim Gauck will address the vigil starting at 1700 GMT at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate, organized by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany under the banner "Let's be there for each other. Terror: not in our name!"

Merkel, to be joined by most of her cabinet at the event, has spoken out against the right-wing populist "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident", or PEGIDA, and stressed on Monday that "Islam belongs to Germany".

PEGIDA on Monday drew a record 25,000 marchers to its 12th weekly rally in Dresden, located in the former communist east Germany, its flag-waving members holding a minute's silence for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week.


Merkel on Monday thanked leaders of Germany's four-million-strong Muslim community for quickly and clearly condemning the violence committed in the name of their faith in last week's bloody attacks in Paris.

"Germany wants peaceful coexistence of Muslims and members of other religions" and Tuesday's vigil would send "a very strong message", she said at a joint press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.