Germany’s stepped-up efforts to ban some Islamic groups for promoting radical views have sparked a national debate over whether the government is violating the free-speech protections of the constitution it says it is aiming to protect.

The German government’s latest move to crack down on groups that promote extremist Muslim teaching came earlier this month, as dozens of police raided homes, offices and religious schools in the western German cities of Bremen, Braunschweig and Mönchengladbach. The security forces were seeking evidence that could lead to the banning of two organizations that officials say are calling for imposing Islamic law in place of German law.

Interior ministry officials allege that the groups, called Invitation to Paradise and the Islamic Culture Center Bremen, seek to undermine Germany’s parliamentary democracy by supporting the establishment of an Islamic theocracy within the country. A security official said the groups also allegedly support a strict form of Islamic justice, such as the execution of Muslims who convert to other religions or the amputation of a hand as a punishment for theft.

Sven Lau, deputy chairman of Invitation to Paradise, rejected the allegations, saying that his group hadn’t done anything illegal and that it calls on its members living in Germany to abide by German law. He described the group as a peaceful fundamentalist organization that believes in a strict interpretation of Islamic law, but said it advises members who want to live by its more extreme forms to live in Muslim-governed countries.

The latest investigation marks a departure from previous crackdowns by German security and justice officials. German security officials are pursuing a ban of these two Islamic groups primarily because of the principles they espouse, rather than a suspicion of a link to terrorism.

Germany’s constitution, written after World War II and the fall of the Third Reich, makes allowances for restricting some forms of speech considered hostile to the country’s democratic order. German statutes, for instance, ban symbols such as Nazi swastikas as a violation of the constitution, and make Holocaust denial illegal. Until now, such laws have mainly been used to curtail neo-Nazi activism.

In announcing the raids, Germany’s Interior Ministry said “a democracy shouldn’t wait until faced with a violent form of holy war before it takes action against organizations that oppose the German constitution.”

Dieter Wiefelspütz, a member of Germany’s opposition Social Democratic Party and a parliament representative, said the Interior Ministry had the duty to investigate allegations that a group was teaching intolerance or hatred. “In Germany, the tendency is to close too few rather than too many organizations,” he said.

Wall Street Journal, 28 December 2010

German authorities hardened a crackdown on Islamic groups yesterday, raiding homes and schools that reportedly belong to adherents of fundamentalist Salafi Islam. German officials said the preemptive raids, conducted under German anti-Nazi laws of association, were aimed at uncovering unconstitutional or separatist acts and not part of an international terror hunt.

The raids targeted the Islamic Cultural Center of Bremen, on the North Sea, along with a group calling itself Invitation to Paradise in two small northwest German cities. Invitation to Paradise’s leader has called for sharia, or Islamic law, to prevail one day but has specifically opposed using violence to impose it.

While some experts say police overreacted in conducting the raids, German officials have come under great pressure from local media and citizen groups to respond to some Muslim organizations that appear to resist joining mainstream German society.

“These groups are a problem for integration, even maybe for radicalization, though not necessarily for violent jihad. They are very orthodox and like to be separate but are not preaching but usually condemning violence,” says Alexander Ritzmann, a former Berlin member of parliament now with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. “The problem is that some jihadis in Germany from before identified themselves as Salafi.”

Christian Science Monitor, 15 December 2010

See also New York Times, 14 December 2011