BERLIN: Hours before a new rally in Dresden by the Islamophobic movement PEGIDA on Sunday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the group’s anti-Muslim sentiments were harming the nation’s image abroad.

“At home we under-estimate the damage that PEGIDA’s xenophobic and racist slogans and placards have already had,” Steinmeier said in an interview with daily newspaper Bild, published shortly before the start of PEGIDA’s 13th rally in Dresden since the movement was launched there Oct. 20.

“Whether we want it or not, the world is watching Germany with great attention,” Steinmeier continued, saying that scrutiny makes “it all the more important that we say clearly and strongly that PEGIDA does not speak in Germany’s name,”

Germany’s top diplomat warned he was “incessantly being asked about” the apparent surge in anti-Muslim sentiment by his foreign peers.

He also reminded readers that mobilising crowds with facile attacks on scapegoats like immigrants and asylum seekers was “easier than by (raising) complex subjects like insufficient infrastructure or the ageing of the population.”