As of tomorrow, police stations, courts and government offices in the German state of Bavaria will be legally required to display a Christian-style cross, under new legislation aimed at preserving “Bavarian identity”.

The law, introduced by state premier Markus Soder, a member of the conservative CSU party, has proved controversial. Althogh opinion polls show that a majority of Bavarians support the proposal, critics have accused the state government of pandering to the far-right and undermining the principles of secular government.

Soder and his supporters say the cross “is not a sign of religion”, but instead a symbol of Bavaria’s heritage.

Christian Moser, mayor of the Bavarian town of Deggendorf, echoed Söder’s sentiment. “This is about culture, not religion,” he told The New York Times, adding that separation of church and state remained a “given”.

In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that displaying a cross in a public building was “passive” act, and not necessarily a violation of religious freedom.

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Many commentators have observed that the push for the law reflects a growing hostility to Germany’s Muslim population, recently swelled by the arrival of migrants and asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa.

Church attendance may be declining in Germany as in the rest of western Europe, “but religious symbols are making a powerful comeback as part of the simmering culture wars”, says The New York Times.

The latest evidence of a rising tide of Islamophobia can be found in a Pew Research study released on Tuesday which found that a third of Germans would not accept a Muslim into their family.

Resistance was most pronounced among Catholic Germans, more than half of whom said they would not accept a Muslim family member, compared to 16% of Protestants. Bavaria is one of two German states where the majority of residents identify as Catholic.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, much of the resistance to Bavaria’s mandatory cross law “has come from Catholic organisations and the church itself”, Deutsche Welle reports.

Hans Bauernfeind, the dean of the pastoral office at St Stephen's Cathedral in Passau, accused politicians of attempting to strip the crucifix of its inherent Christian meaning to serve their own agenda.

“The cross has its own message,” he told Deutsche Welle. “That should not be used for other purposes, be they political, social or cultural.”