Translation:
Essen’s mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU) reacts with horror to a demonstration in his city on Friday evening. 3,000 people, including many Islamists, marched through the Ruhr metropolis.
Essen’s mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU) reacted with outrage and incomprehension to an anti-Israel demonstration that marched through the Ruhr metropolis on Friday evening. Several of the approximately 3,000 participants chanted slogans and held up posters calling for a “Khilafah” (caliphate) in Germany. The three-hour procession on the edge of the city center was accompanied by 450 police officers and observed by state security.
According to the Essen police, the demonstration was registered by a private individual. However, the main organizer was apparently the “Generation Islam” group, which security experts consider to be part of the pan-Islamist movement “Hizb ut-Tahrir” (HuT) . HuT has been banned in Germany since 2003. The main speaker at the final rally in Essen was the activist Ahmad Tamim, the head of “Generation Islam.” The Islamic scholar Ahmad Omeirate told WAZ that Tamim was “using the Middle East conflict for mobilization and radicalization.”
Mayor Kufen regretted on Saturday morning that “Islamists, anti-democrats and Jew-haters” were allowed to parade through Essen protected by the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Basic Law: “That is difficult to bear.” The CDU politician, who was the North Rhine-Westphalia state government’s integration officer from 2005 to 2010, called for consequences: “The Office for the Protection of the Constitution must take a closer look at Hizb ut-Tahrir’s splinter and successor groups. Bans must be an option.”
The demonstrators shouted slogans in Arabic and German on Friday evening. Posters condemned the Israeli military operation in Gaza (“Stop the genocide”) after the terrorist attack by the Palestinian Hamas, and one sign read: “German raison d’état calls for the killing of children.” The organizers initially used loudspeakers to remind people of the police requirement that no participant should question Israel’s right to exist. The tip-off was met with loud boos from the crowd.
At the beginning of the march, participants were also asked over loudspeakers to separate men and women. So it happened that most of the female demonstrators marched through the city behind the male participants. They repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and held up signs calling for the unity of all Muslim believers and the establishment of a caliphate in Germany. Individual demonstrators stuck their right index fingers in the air; This gesture is intended to symbolize belief in the “one God”, but is also seen as a symbol of the terrorist organization “Islamic State”. The design of several black and white banners and flags also resembled depictions of IS.
The Essen police announced on Saturday that they would subsequently analyze the Friday demonstration and examine its “criminal relevance”. It turned out that the motive for a pro-Palestine meeting was only a pretext. Instead, the organizers held a religious event.
Where to? Many of these people are born Germans. Do you believe the countries of their parents or grandparents are interested in taking in these nutjobs?
This is a German problem and we must solve it ourselves. More money for political education institutions and programs is sorely needed.
We need to stop providing populist and outside powers direkt and targeted access to citizens. Was kind of important thing through out history - we just kind of forgot it.
This.
Religious studies is a mandatory subject in school, so I’m baffled that there’s still such an egregious gap in Islam lessons taught by state-approved, scientifically educated Islam teachers sworn to the German constitution. Because, for reference, that’s what Catholic and Protestant religion teachers are.
Why let Ditib Imams or otherwise potentially radicalized preachers spoil the Muslim youth? Germany needs to define and proliferate a modern, moderate and peaceful Islam.
I am german and never had mandatory religious studies in school
The Germans had a solution for that kind of question in the past. They looked at the grandparents. I don’t recommend.
Yeah, but a quite a few were stupid enough to not take German citizenship. We don’t have have a full ius soli after all. Hence a lot of them will have home countries which are legally obliged to take them in. Of course getting these countries to adhere to the law is a different question, and it might need the threat of sanctions to get it working, but in this case I’m open for pretty much any solution. I wouldn’t do that to someone who merely exploited asylum rights to live a better life, but if we have to deport someone because they want to overthrow our democracy, I’m perfectly fine with putting them in a dinghy 12 nautical miles outside of their home country (i.e. the maritime border) and telling them to row.
Making the problem smaller would make the - indeed necessary - solution that you propose easier to implement. Plus it would create a lot of room and political will to help people who actually need Europe as a save haven.
This translates to “eine Menge Raum”, btw.
Ship them to Gaza. Easy solution. They can build their dream society there.
Well, we’d have to be reasonably certain Israel doesn’t just immediately kills them upon arrival - even deluded zealots have human rights and in Europe they can be controlled without deadly force - but apart from that: Yeah, they’d fit in. So when the war is over a gain and when the Palestinian Authority want aid again, we will have to include taking these people in as part of the any agreement.
Provided of course they’re not citizens. Otherwise we’ll have to de-radicalize them ourselves and there are some approaches that might work. E.g. I remember an interview with a prison imam who was paid by the German government. Part of his job was to explain the extremists in that prison that their version of Islam would entail half of them losing body parts and the other half being killed. I imagine that’s quite a good selling point for an enlightened version of that religion.