Category Archives: Germany

Germany weighs ban on Salafists after clashes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

German police and Salafists

Germany is considering a legal ban on ultra-conservative Salafist Muslim groups, its interior minister said on Wednesday after violent clashes with the police.

Last weekend, Salafists turned on police protecting far-right anti-Islam protesters during a regional election rally in the western German city of Bonn, injuring 29 officers, two of them seriously. Police arrested 109 people. The far-right protesters had infuriated the Salafists by waving banners showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

There have been similar clashes in other German towns in the past week, including in Cologne, where around 1,000 police were mobilized on Tuesday to keep Salafists and far-right activists far apart.

Continue reading →

Anti-Islam group provokes German violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Interior Minister of Germany’s western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has blamed a far-right group that displayed lampooning cartoons of Prophet Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him) outside mosques for a recent cycle of violence in the European country.

The actions of the extremist anti-Islam group, “Pro NRW”, in Bonn on Saturday had been a “deliberate provocation” that had triggered reprisals by Salafists, Ralf Jäger, the NRW Interior Minister, was quoted as saying by Deutsche Welle on Monday, May 7.

Gathering outside the Saudi Fahd Academy in Bonn’s suburb of Mehlem, “Pro-NRW” supporters showed caricatures depicting a man said to be the prophet.

Hundreds of Salafi Muslims gathered in response to protest the rightist rally, which developed into clashes that left 29 policemen injured. More than 100 Salafist protesters were briefly arrested.

OnIslam, 7 May 2012

See also Spiegel Online, 7 May 2012

German far-right party plans to demonstrate outside mosques – Hans-Peter Friedrich scaremongers over Salafist violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro NRW postersA far-right party on the campaign trial in Germany’s most populous state is threatening to put caricatures of Mohammed outside mosques in a string of cities.

The “Pro NRW” party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia has already shown anti-Islamic caricatures in Essen and Gelsenkirchen, though the police prevented demonstrations taking place directly outside mosques. Police have also banned “Pro NRW”, which is campaigning on an Islamophobic platform, from using the Danish cartoons that caused massive protests in the Islamic world in 2005.

But “Pro NRW” intends to send activists to 25 mosques throughout the state in the run-up to the election on May 13, staging protests in Cologne, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Wuppertal and Solingen. A report in Die Welt newspaper on Sunday said the far-right party intended to post around 100 what it called “Islam-critical” drawings outside the mosques.

Continue reading →

German interior ministry caught in Muslim study leak lie

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Neukölln graffiti
‘Integrate!’ Anti-Muslim graffiti in Neukölln

Germany’s Interior Minister was forced to admit on Friday that his ministry had leaked a controversial study on young Muslims in the country to populist Bildnewspaper – despite initial denials.

Hans-Peter Friedrich and the tabloid newspaper both presented the study as showing that young Muslims were not integrating into German society – infuriating the authors who said their presentation was a gross distortion of what they actually said.

The study, released at the end of February, was led by Wolfgang Frindte of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, who spoke of his team’s “despair” at the way the complex 760-page study was spun by the government and Bild.

Islam scholar Armina Omerika on Wednesday resigned from the Islam conference currently taking place in Berlin over host Friedrich’s handling of the study.

Friday’s revelation, in a Süddeutsche Zeitung report, suggests there was some collusion between the ministry and the paper over the timing of the study’s release.

Continue reading →

Berlin’s largest mosque targeted in hate crime attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bischof Dröge besucht Sehitlik-Moschee

Berlin’s largest mosque has been targeted in an Islamophobic attack in the German capital’s predominantly migrant district of Neukölln.

Unknown assailants threw several paint bombs at the Sehitlik mosque Saturday night. They also placed an insulting anti-Islam picture at the entrance to the building. Berlin police said that a threatening letter had been sent to the mosque recently.

Continue reading →

Interior minister under attack over leaking and misrepresention of German Muslims study

Posted on by Bob Pitt

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has come under attack from the key author of “The Daily Life of Muslims in Germany” study, published by the Bild newspaper on Thursday. Some editorial writers have also questioned why Bild was able to obtain the study and release it first.

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung published Saturday, the study’s main author Wolfgang Frindte said, “After the publication in a tabloid newspaper there was a lot of outrage and even despair in our team.” He said the findings were published in such a way that the Muslims who were interviewed for the study “could have felt misused, and that’s sad.”

Continue reading →

German Interior Ministry accuses Muslims of refusing to integrate, advocating violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lebenswelten junger MuslimeNearly every fourth non-German Muslim rejects integration, questions western values and tends to accept violence, according to a study commissioned by the German Interior Ministry and released late Thursday morning.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said the study’s results were worrying, according to an interview published on Thursday. “Germany respects the background and cultural identity of its immigrants. But we don’t accept the importation of authoritarian, anti-democratic and religiously fanatical points of view,” Friedrich told the Bild newspaper. Whoever fights against freedom and democracy will not have a future here, said the minister – a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union’s sister party, the Christian Social Union.

Continue reading →

OSCE Personal Representative urges participating States to take hate crimes against Muslims seriously

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In view of the Oslo massacre last summer and the spate of neo-Nazi serial killings in Germany, the OSCE Chairperson’s Personal Representative on Combating Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims Ambassador Adil Akhmetov expressed concerns over the feeling of insecurity among Muslim communities across the OSCE region.

“Although the efforts of the Norwegian and German authorities to bring to justice those responsible for such heinous crimes are commendable, there remain serious concerns about the effectiveness of measures to combat manifestations of intolerance, in particular hate crimes, and discrimination against Muslims,” Akhmetov said.

Akhmetov warned about the risk of  “falling into the error of categorizing such deplorable crimes as isolated acts of certain marginal personalities”, and urged OSCE participating States to look into the broader context and address the root causes of racism, xenophobia and intolerance.

Continue reading →

German Social Democrat politician denounced over Sharia comments

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The justice minister in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate has sparked outrage after proposing that Germany could permit Sharia courts, which operate according to Islamic law, to preside over some civil cases in the country.

Jochen Hartloff, a member of the centre-left Social Democrat Party (SPD), told the BZ newspaper that he was open to allowing civil suits to be brought before Sharia arbitration courts if both parties agreed.

Continue reading →