GERMANY. Dresden, Saxony. 2015. PEGIDA protester marching through the streets of Dresden.
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (German: Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), abbreviated PEGIDA or Pegida, is a German anti-Islamic political movement founded in Dresden in October 2014. It organizes weekly demonstrations since October 2014 against what it considers the Islamisation of the Western world, calling for more restrictive immigration rules, particularly for Muslims who refuse to integrate.
The movement grew from only a handful of protesters at the beginning of 2014 and grew to around 10 000 participants by the end of the year. The result of the growing nationalist sentiment in Germany.