DHAKA: German chancellor Angela Merkel is set to join a Muslim community rally on Tuesday to promote tolerance, condemn the militant attacks in Paris and send a rebuke to Germany’s growing anti-Islamic movement.

President Joachim Gauck will address the vigil starting at 5:00pm GMT at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, organised by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany under the banner ‘Let’s be there for each other. Terror: not in our name!, reports The Straits Times’

Dr 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.

BDST: 1216 HRS, JAN 13, 2015