Germany's new anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement plans to rally again on Monday, when analysts expect its ranks to swell by thousands following this week's bloody jihadist violence in France.
Leaders of the so-called "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" have asked marchers to wear black armbands and observe a minute's silence for "the victims of terrorism in Paris".
Many observers of the rise of the far-right populist movement in the eastern city of Dresden now expect it to seek to make political capital from the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and its bloody aftermath.
Fears over the events probably "will buoy currents of the vague xenophobia that exist in this country", Everhard Holtmann of Halle-Wittenberg University told the Handelsblatt business daily.
"The Islamophobia syndrome, on the crest of which PEGIDA rides, could in fact gain strength."
PEGIDA has voiced a wide range of grievances and railed against diverse enemies, not just Islam and asylum-seekers, but also the media and a political elite whom they accuse of diluting Germany's Christian-based culture with multi-culturalism.
Launched in October with a march of just 500 people, it has since swelled rapidly, stirring anguished debate in a country whose dark history makes expressions of xenophobia especially worrisome.
Chancellor Angela Merkel deplored the rise of PEGIDA in a New Year's address, saying its leaders have "prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts".
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told a news conference in Berlin that mainstream media in the country should not tie the acts of violence similar to the attack in Paris to Muslims, adding that the “extremists” behind such terror assaults “have nothing to do with Islam.”
“This was an attack against Islam. The vast majority of Muslims in Germany consider it a betrayal of their beliefs and they are saying so loudly and publicly,” said the senior German official, adding, “Extremists exist in every society.”
He criticized some German groups for attempting to use the Paris shooting for their own purposes, warning against blaming the religion of Islam for the deadly Charlie Hebdo attack.
The comments came a day after gunmen attacked the Paris office of the French magazine, killing nearly a dozen people and wounding about eight others.
The attack took place at a time of heightened fears in France and other European capitals over the fallout from the ongoing ISIL militancy in Iraq and Syria.
Hundreds of European citizens have joined the ranks of the Takfiri militants fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Some reports say the ISIL Takfiri group, which has been waging wars in Syria and Iraq, had earlier threatened to attack France.
Just minutes before the Wednesday attack, the magazine had tweeted a satirical cartoon of the ISIL leader, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abubakr al-Baghdadi.
