Twenty Years After 9/11. Muslim Immigration to Germany and Related Problems. A Quick Walkthrough.

  • 0

Kim Carpenter, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Historical Background

In 1996, the late political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington, published his famous book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, in which he depicted Islam as being the historical opponent of Christianity since the 7th century and foresaw Islam’s growing influence in the global conflicts which would be, in his opinion, fought on religious, and no longer, on political grounds only. [1]

And indeed, in the 21st century, the Al Qaida-terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and on the Pentagon on “9/11”, with over 3000 victims, marked the beginning of a new era of global acts of terrorism by militant Muslim groups and has overshadowed the century from its beginning. Militant Islam attempts to conquer Christian territories, spread Islam and impose the Caliphate on Western Civilization, so much hated by Jihadists. They dream of revenging all their defeats in the wars against Christians, since Karl Martell’s victory over the Caliph of Al Andalus, Abd Al-Rahman Ghafiki, in the Battle of Poitiers (or the Battle of Tours which the Arabs call Battle of the Palace of the Martyrs)[2], on October 17, 732. Their defeats against the Crusaders in the years 1096-1487 are often mentioned by radical Muslims who call for their revenge. President George W. Bush spoke twenty years ago of a “Crusade” when he opened a war against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan as a military response to the Muslim onslaught. Certainly not forgotten are the “Turkish Wars”, when Turkish troops, besieging Vienna from September 27 to October 14, 1529, were defeated for the first time, while their second attempt at Vienna led to another crushing fiasco for them and ended in the Battle of Kahlenberg on September 12, 1683, due to the assistance of the Polish King John III. Sobieski.

That defeat was the beginning of a gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire, which had thus far controlled big parts of Western Asia, South-Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Northern Africa, an empire had put an end to the Byzantine Empire by overtaking Constantinople in 1453. The Christian “Reconquista” on the Iberian Peninsula was completed under Isabella of Castilia and Ferdinand II. of Aragón on January 2, 1492, with the capitulation of the last ruler of Al-Andalus, followed by the expulsion of Jews and the “Repoblación” of the territories by Christians. The Ottoman rule over the Balkan Peninsula lasted from the conquest of Adrianople (Edirne) in 1396 until 1878, over Greece from the 15th to the 19th centuries, and ended after a victory in the Greek War of Independence (or the Greek Revolution) 1821 – 1829, when Russia, Britain and France aided the Greeks and destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of Navarino. The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Greece autonomy. But the Turks had defeated the Hungarians in 1526 and thus controlled great parts of southeast as well as central Europe until the decline of the Empire in the 17th century, after their attempts to siege Vienna failed, and European powers began to consolidate against them, forming the Holy League. According to the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, the Habsburg dynasty took Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia, and Transylvania, and in 1718 it regained Temeswar and the Banat. However, the Ottomans, despite numerous defeats, were able to hold their own against the Europeans until the second half of the 18th century. Their self-perception as the implementers of God’s (Allah’s) will on earth deteriorated on the grounds of corruption and bribery. In the 19th century as nationalism emerged, and the new nation-states were assisted by Russia on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other, Turkish influence finally diminished accordingly.

In the 20th century, the Arabs lost their grip over southern Europe, but the Ottoman Empire still kept on holding it. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France on January 3, 1916, in the middle of WW I, defined – with the consent of the Russian Empire as France’s ally in the informal Triple Entente – the ascribed spheres of influence and control of the territories thus far under the rule of the Ottomans. The signing of the armistice treaty between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies in WW1 on October 31, 1918, was the final legal act, and the British took control of Mesopotamia (Iraq), Syria and Palestine. But the Turkish resistence continued until August 10, 1920, when the British and the French, Italy and Japan as signatories had confirmed by the Treaty of Sèvres and paved the way to the final partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The British Mandate for Palestine as well as the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon were its outcome.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Turkish field marshal and the founding statesman of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President from 1923 until his death in 1938. He was a rigorous reformer in all fields, granted voting rights to women, modernized Turkey into a secular and industrialized nation. But under Atatürk, non-Turkish minorities were forced to speak Turkish in public, and he led the Turkish National Movement, opposing the partition of his country among the victorious allied powers after WW1. He promoted Turkish nationalism, which we presently witness as particularly strong under the rule of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Muslims in Germany and the Consequences

October this year marks the 60th anniversary of the agreement between the Turkish Republic and the German Federal Republic about the so-called Guest Workers, “Gastarbeiter” on October 30, 1961. At that time, Germany experienced the “economic miracle”, the “Wirtschaftswunder”, which was the declared programme of the then-Minister of Economy, Ludwig Erhard from the Christian Democratic Party (the same as Angela Merkel) in 1957. The country which was supposed to bring economic welfare to all who contributed to the gross national product, was in need of cheap labourers, especially in the growing industrial as well as in the coal-mining sector, which at the same time was in the middle of a heavy crisis. Merely ten years after the end of WW2 and the defeat of Hitler-Germany, on December 20, 1955, the first agreement about foreign guest-workers was signed with Italy. A country in the middle of an economic boom badly needed more hands to construct roads and bridges, to work in the mines, and in the fields of agriculture. In southern Italy there was unemployment just as it was the case in Spain and Greece five years later, and Turkey six years later.

In 1963, an agreement with Morocco was signed, followed by recruitment-treaties with Portugal, Tunesia, and Yugoslavia. Especially after the German Democratic Republic built the wall and closed its borders in 1961, the lack of local workers in the West became acute. In 1960, there were 280,000 foreign workers in West Germany, while their number grew to 2,6 million in 1973. The mainly male workers were supposed to stay for a limited period of two years only, but their employees needed them longer. After the treaty was amended, allowing the Turks to stay for longer than two years, their families were then also permitted to come to Germany. In 1970, 4,9% percent of the population of Germany were foreign migrants.

In the course of time, other, mainly political refugees, came to Germany, but due to the economic recession and oil-crisis in the beginning of the 1970’s, the recruitment of labourers came to a total stop in 1973. At least half of the Turkish guest-workers stayed in Germany, while others returned home. In 2015, around 2,9 million people with a Turkish background lived in Germany. 1,5 million (i.e. approx. 50%) had the Turkish citizenship, and approx. 32% had dual citizenship. The German-born second generation was better integrated and educated than its parents, their level of education was higher, especially of women of the second generation, as a survey by the Migration Authority shows.[3] However, the Turks in Germany (other than Kurds) are in general loyal not to the place they live in but to the Turkish government, particularly under Erdogan. In 2017, he even appealed to his fellow countrymen living in Germany, not to vote for the ruling parties CDU and SPD or the Greens in the elections to Germany’s Federal Parliament. This interference in German internal affairs was immediately and unequivocally dismissed and slammed by both Chancellor Merkel (CDU) and the then Foreign Minister Gabriel (SPD).[4] Erdogan rejected the repudiation and sharply rebuked Germany’s Foreign Minister: “He knows no limits! Who are you to talk to the president of Turkey? Know your limits. He is trying to teach us a lesson… How long have you been in politics? How old are you?” This haughty and superior attitude toward an “Unbeliever” who, in the eyes of a Muslim only deserves to be a Dhimmi, especially of an Ottoman Sultan-like politician, is not the usual diplomatic intercourse between two close partners. It was a particular piquancy in this case because Sigmar Gabriel’s first wife to whom he had been married for 9 years, was a Turkish citizen, and he was well acquainted with Turkish culture.

In 2016, a new political Turkish party, Allianz Deutscher Demokraten (Alliance of German Democrats, ADD), was founded in Berlin as a protest reaction after the German Parliament passed a resolution recognizing the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915/16 when up to 1,500 million people were murdered, a fact which has been denied by the Turkish governments even today. This party claims that no German party is eligible for election, it demands a full membership of Turkey in the EU, a double citizenship for the Turks in Germany, the right for Muslim women to wear the hijab whenever and wherever they wish so, as well as a right to vote for migrants both in elections to the Parliament and to the Parliaments of the German federal states. The party is regarded as an overt political tool operated by the Turkish President and his party, AKP. Locally, it achieves slightly better results than in the rest of the country, as in the case in the north of the city of Essen, an area densely populated by Muslims, not just Turks, but has otherwise no influence. On the other hand, the Turkish President Erdogan came to Germany on the occasion of Turkish elections in May 2014, in order to make a campaign for his Islamic-conservative party AKP. 16.000 Turkish supporters as residents of Germany applauded him and gave him their votes while 45.000 protested against him.[5] This was shocking for the Germans to see that their country was regarded by Erdogan as a sort of an Ottoman province. He insisted on making an election campaign again in 2018 but the German government did not consent any longer, and Erdogan slammed his critics by comparing them to the Nazis.[6] In Cologne, in 2017, the Turkish religious Islamist authority, DITIB, has constructed a very big Mosque (of 8000 square metres), despite protests from the population but without permission to have a Muezzin calling. These days, however, this permission was granted by the mayor of the city, a woman who regards this as a “sign of mutual tolerance” and compares this to Church bells’ chiming. In the next two years, not just the Church bells but also the Muezzin-call will ring out every Friday, proclaiming the slogan of Political Islam and Dhijadism, “Allahu Aqbar!”. Cologne is not the only city, and more will surely follow. This is an usurpation in the eyes of the opponents of Political Islam which, in turn, does not allow the practice of Christian religion in many Muslim countries.

The former President of Germany, the Christian Democrat Christian Wulff (he only served 1,5 years 2010-2012), publically maintained on the national holiday, the Day of the German Reunification, October 3, 2010 that, “Besides Christianity and Judaism, Islam belongs in the meantime to Germany as well”. His controversial remarks touched off a debate in the country on identity and integration. Ten years later, he said that this sentence is more necessary than ever because the number of enemies of social variety, of a colourful German Republic, of a coexistence with minorities on the basis of equal rights has grown. Wulff referred to the neo-Nazi terrorist activities in several cities, like the murders of – mostly Muslim immigrants – by an underground group, the assassination of a Leftist politician in Kassel, attacks on the Synagogue in Halle, and murders of customers of a Shisha-shop in Hanau. He warned of Right extremism, conspiracy theories, hatred and radicalization in a materially and economically thriving country. Approximately 5 million Muslims live in Germany today. Yes, all these things happened here and indicate the danger coming from the political parties on the extreme Right, especially the biggest one at the moment, the Alternative für Deutschland, AfD.  It was founded in 2012/2013 by a group of at-that-time Christian Democrats and liberal-conservative reformers with an anti-Euro agenda, like the Professor of Economy Bernd Lucke, the lawyer and journalist Alexander Gauland, the journalist Konrad Adam, et al. After an internal conflict, the new party shifted far to the Right and focused mainly on immigration and Islam, strengthening ties with Russia, similar to how the French far-right Front National had. Its co-chairman’s, Alexander Gauland’s, rhetoric used at times Nazi overtones, vulgarly calling the Hitler-era a “Vogelschiss” (bird shit) as compared to the otherwise glorious German history.

The party’s changing leading staff has gradually become historical revisionist and extremist, fuelled by Chancellor Merkel’s unlimited and uncontrolled immigration of over a million refugees from Syria and other countries since 2015, which the AfD vociferously opposes. Europe, and Germany in particular, are deeply weighed down with guilt for its past, both the colonial and the murderous bellicose which not only revisionists reject. At present, it is led by a well-known anti-Semite Björn Höcke, member of an extreme right “Wing” in the party, now dissolved. Höcke is a school teacher, and a rival of the rather moderate University Professor Joerg Meuthen who is now backing out. The two represent the controversial political tendencies in this party, as Höcke’s AfD-members support anti-Semitic conspiracy theories à la QAnon. The party regards itself as the saviour of democracy and Western values, while some of their members, including a fraction of “Jews in the AfD”, even express their support for Israel, regarding it as a stronghold against Islam.[7]

Along with the radicalization on the Right, there is a growing radicalization and propensity to violence on the extreme Left – including attacks on AFD-politicians -, and a general polarization of the political spectre in Germany. While the leftist parties are pronouncedly pro-migrant and Islam friendly, the political centre is unsure how to deal with the difficulties and problems caused especially by the masses of Muslim migrants. Whoever is openly critical about these issues, faces mobbing and is slandered as “AfD-affiliated” by the Leftists. The social climate has become aggressive and raw in recent years. There are frequent attacks against Muslims as well as Jews, and Muslims attack Germans and Jews almost daily in return. This violence is the opposite of a free, democratic, and open society, and I am writing this text at the time of elections of the German Parliament, when a new government is being negotiated and a new chancellor, probably a Social Democrat, will put an end to the 16-year Merkel-era.

In 2017, the now-deceased famous German, France-based fashion-designer Karl Lagerfeld, sparked both outrage and praise in Germany by criticising Chancellor Merkel for opening the borders to Jew-hating migrants. He, as an enfant terrible, said that his country cannot – if there are decades between them – murder millions of Jews and now bring in millions of their worst enemies to replace them. While the Leftists are particularly positive, even enthusiastic, about the Muslim influx into the country, the Catholic and Protestant Churches, as well as Central Council of Jews in Germany push towards “Interfaith-Dialogue” with the Islamic organizations, which are partly radical, connected to the Arab Muslim Brotherhood or the Turkish Grey Wolves, etc. Whoever claims to be active in this “dialogue”, gets state funds for joint projects more easily than for others. Besides the advocates of the Muslim immigration among politicians or in the academia, there are a handful of serious opponents and critics of this development among German as well as immigrant Muslim intellectuals.

One of the gravest problems connected to the new situation, is the considerably grown number of crimes on the part of Muslim perpetrators, a view not shared by all commentators but confirmed by prison directors and police authorities. In 2019, 12,4% of the residents of Germany were foreigners. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was a high percentage of criminal offences committed by non-Germans, such as for example 57% of thefts, but also a worrisome number of gang-rapes. The prisons, however, are filled with foreigners, as local politicians report. The public safety has been considerably shaken since 2015, as among the supposed refugees qualified for political asylum, quite a number of terrorists were able to smuggle into Germany. The most spectacular crime committed by a refugee was a terror attack on the Christmas Market at a central square in Berlin, the Breitscheid Platz, by a Tunesian citizen and supposed refugee Anis Amri on December 19th, 2016.  He hijacked a truck and rammed it into the lively crowd at the tourist attraction, killing 12 visitors and causing over fifty additional casualties. Amri escaped, travelled across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France to Northern Italy, where police killed him near Milan three days later.

This assault was the first major terrorist event in Germany for decades. Amri asked for asylum in Germany, using fourteen different identities. The German authorities mobilized a “Task force” in the aftermath, digging up enormous security-relevant failures and gaps in the federal system as concerning the dangers of uncontrolled immigration. This case has not yet been finally solved until today, i. e. five years later.[8] The Berlin terror act was modelled after the attack in Nice on the 14th of July 2016 where 86 people were killed and over 400 seriously wounded. The German authorities have fortunately succeeded in preventing several planned terror acts by Muslim perpetrators and we are therefore more lucky than the French. But criminal offences on a smaller scale indicate a problem with the so far unsuccessful integration of immigrants – mainly male Muslims from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Africa.

The first shock after the refugees’ arrival in the Summer of 2015, was a mass sexual assault of over 1,200 women which took place at a public New Year’s Eve celebration in the centre of Cologne – between the railway station and the Cathedral – by a mob of young non-European male foreigners. The same but on a smaller scale, took place in other big German cities like Bielefeld, Stuttgart and Frankfurt on the Main. Women reported cases of rape, groping, and the in Germany to that moment in Germany seldom experienced oriental specialty, “Taharrush jamai”. With the influx of Syrian refugees in 2015, this Arab-originated form of gang-rape, known to the Westeners from the time of protests commemorating the second anniversary of the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak at the beginning of 2011 at Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2013[9], has spread to Europe. It has also been exercised in Stockholm as the collective sexual assault on lone women.[10]

What was at the beginning a very hospitable and friendly atmosphere with country-wide banners “Refugees Welcome” supported by a wave of good-will and helpfulness to them, quickly devolved into an atmosphere of fear and suspicion: “Rapist refugees are not welcome”. And a number of serious incidents, including the murders of young German girls and women by Muslim newcomers, did not make them popular among the German population. One of the first cases which shocked the country was the rape and murder of a 19-year-old medical student in the city of Freiburg/Br. (Southern Germany) by an Afghan migrant in October 2016. The perpetrator came to Germany as a refugee via Greece, claiming that he was an unattended minor for whom there are special EU help-programmes. But he had lied, as he was an adult upon his arrival. For this crime, he was sentenced for life with additional safe custody.

There are almost daily attacks with knives on people in the streets or supermarkets, like the deadly attack on three women in Wuerzburg (Bavaria) in June of this year, where a supposedly mentally ill refugee from Somalia wounded seven other persons. Among the most recent cases is an attempted Islamist attack by a young, 16-year-old, Syrian refugee on a Synagogue in Hagen in North Rhine-Westphalia on Yom Kippur, the highest Jewish holiday, when the Synagogues are full of people. The teenager had internet contacts to Islamist circles, and the German authorities were informed by a foreign secret service of the planned terrorist attack, which luckily could be prevented. Another recent assault around the same time happened in Hamburg. There, in the centre of the city, a silent vigil against anti-Semitism and for Israel took place on the 18th of September, whose participants were attacked by several young men who yelled “Shitty Israel”, “Shitty Jews”, and “Free Palestine”. One of the participants, a Jewish 60-year-old-man, was beaten and severely wounded by one of the perpetrators and might lose his eye-sight. The men fled on E-Scooters, but witnesses filmed the attack, and the police caught the perpetrator in Berlin, also supposedly 16-years-old, one week later. His mother is an active Hezbollah- and Assad-supporter, openly anti-Israeli. They all receive benefits from the German state, while they live secluded in their own circles and make no efforts to integrate into the democratic, open society that shelters and supports them.

There is little knowledge of Islam in Germany, and Muslim propaganda is very effective, presenting a Taqiyya-image of Islam as a peaceful, tolerant, and merciful religion. The fact that the Muslims regard theirs as superior to other religions, primarily Christianity and Judaism, and the fact that Islam has a missionary zeal with the aim of establishing a Caliphate and subduing all Unbelievers as Dhimmis, like they did in the long centuries of Islamic rule in Europe, is being ignored by a naïve German public, by Leftist media, academics, and politicians. Thus, they continue to support the Muslim parallel society, which has developed here in the course of 60 years.

Germany was only declared a de facto country of immigrants through the passage of new citizenship and immigration laws in 2000 and 2005.[11] Today, ¼ of German population has a migrant background, maintain Muslim lobbyists.[12] At present, after the fall of Afghanistan, and the victory of the Taliban, the German government and authorities are faced with a new wave of asylum-seeking refugees who worked for the German forces in the past two decades, and are now a target to the Taliban. Their exact number is not known, their evacuation was chaotic, and thus terrorists, criminals, and other unentitled people succeeded in entering Germany already, while those who should be evacuated out of Afghanistan, are trapped in their home country. The latest news from Afghanistan is worrisome. The local helpers of the NATO forces seem to be getting summons to Taliban show trials. It is very difficult to deport the criminals among those Afghan refugees who had made it to Germany, and this has grave consequences. These days, one of the criminal Afghans, Ahmadi, known to the police, who was deported to Afghanistan in 2017, but is said to be in Turkey at the moment, has spread a video threatening to murder German police and members of special forces by “his people”, in Frankfurt on the Main and the area, of whom 100 are on the deportation list, and who are ready to do anything to prevent it. The German authorities are in great worry. This, too, is one of the most serious problems related to uncontrolled immigration.[13]

The migrants with German citizenship usually, if at all, vote for the established German parties, mostly on the Left. Many of the nationalist Muslims are influential in German media and foundations related to the Leftist parties, especially the Greens. A recent case of the lack of information in the superior echelons of the media has caused a scandal with an echo in the foreign press as well. A young Arab woman, Nemi (Naame) El-Hassan (28), supposedly a physician, calling herself a Palestinian but born in Germany, who had been wearing a hijab but has now discarded it after having become the main figure in the affair, has been working in a satirical show for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). This public TV and radio broadcasting service has already repeatedly caused political controversies in the past. This time, the channel planned to employ her as a TV-presenter in a renowned scientific TV broadcast “Quarks”, but after sharp protests from Jewish and other sides, it changed its mind. An aggressive anti-Semitic activist such as El-Hassan, who is known as an Islamist activist, had participated in the annual Al Quds March in 2014, calling for the destruction of Israel and for the gassing of Jews. Recently she even tweeted anti-Semitic texts and posted other such on the Instagram.[14] After the protests, she deleted some of her texts and took off the head scarf, at the same time apologizing for her participation in the Al-Quds rally. But her apologies are not credible and the channel decided not to employ her there. However, besides the protests, a group of notorious German BDS-supporters and enemies of Israel, including Leftist Jews and Leftist not-fully-informed foreign journalists,[15] have signed a petition and published articles on her behalf.

This false tolerance on the part of Leftist anti-Zionist and appeasers of Political Islam has become a topic of almost all media. The German Section of the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East was one of the protesting parties. In Germany, like in the United States, identity politics has become the agenda of activists on various fronts.[16] Muslims present themselves as oppressed and victims of “Islamophobia”, calling themselves “the new Jews”. They belong to the hyper-specific group, which promotes anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli ideology, frames political claims, demands privileges, while at the same time they also are dangerous enemies of Jews, as I shall show later.

The fact that in addition to the Muslims who live here longer, the new-comer minors among the refugees are a real threat to Jews in Germany, is something which should alarm the politicians and put the police on the alert. The radicalization and indoctrination of the younger generation by Imams takes place in Mosques and in Islamic institutes, organizations, or social centres, often called “Cultural Societies”, and frequently funded by the German state or by Muslim states, like Iran, Turkey, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia. The Muslim Brotherhood or the Turkish Grey Wolves are sponsors of some of these institutions, and they hide their political Islamistic agenda of infusing radical ideas and spreading the Sharia among the young Muslim generation in Germany behind claims to promoting welfare or providing education. Many of these registered societies are granted the status of tax reduction and collect money for terrorist organizations.

Problems of different kind are caused by the criminal Arab, Turkish and Kurdish clans in Germany, of which the ten biggest are the Remmo, Abou-Chaker, or the Miri-Clan, etc. These very large families have been residing in big cities in Germany as well as in Göteborg and Stockholm, Sweden. They live isolated from the rest of the society and act mafia-like. Some of the Arab clans controlled certain Muslim-populated Berlin areas (Kreuzberg, Gesundbrunnen, and above all Neukoelln) where the police dare to patrol only in squads of multiple officers, as was the case for many years in the Berlin Sonnenallee, a street name in Neukeolln, which became internationally known as a Berlin “no-go-area”.[17] Only in the last few years, the clan criminality has become a significant public issue, because it had long been neglected for fear of accusations of xenophobia or, worse, “Islamophobia”, a term invented by Ayatollah Khomeini to describe the supposed hatred of Muslims by the Western societies, and insinuate their status as innocent victims. For 20 years, however, members of several of these Arab families have earned their livelihood exclusively through social welfare and crimes such as theft, robbery, drug trafficking, protection money, extortion, and prostitution. As the police and the justice did not seem to play a role in regulating them, the clans became too self-assured and arrogant, and they committed a series of heavy-handed robberies, which made headlines and attracted the attention to the thus far clandestine layers of the society. In Berlin alone, they looted a jewellery shop in the luxurious department store KaDeWe, blew-up an entire bank in order to crack the deposit-boxes, and stole a 100-kilogramm gold coin from the Bode Museum.

Ralph Ghadban, a Lebanese-born Islamic scholar, published a bestselling book on the clans, revealing them as underrated danger (Arabische Clans – Die unterschätzte Gefahr) in 2018, and he has had to live under police protection since. He claims that the “Clans behave in their German surroundings as if they were tribes in the desert. Everything outside the clan is enemy territory and available for plunder.”[18] In the meantime, the police and the ministers of internal affairs in the federal states have coordinated their policy, they take massive action, and started dealing with organized crime with an iron hand. However, the clans’ possessions are multifarious and the state authorities keep on paying social aid to the millionaires because of lack of documents from the past, and attempts to drain this swamp are not always successful. There are at least encouraging first signs of change in the attitude to this particular aspect of a failed migration policy, but they come too late and their measures are not committed enough. The clan problem will not be solved so quickly.

Islam has become a constant topic in the media, research projects, and public debates. It is omnipresent. The Islam-apologetic fraction is vast, has various media in which it spreads its pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah agenda, anti-Israeli agitation, anti-Jewish propaganda, and presents Islam more recently as “liberation theology”, as in the online-forum Muslim Markt. This radical, Islamist German Website, has been running since 1999 and under observation of the German Intelligence Service for its Holocaust-denial and anti-democratic positions. It is published by the Turkish brothers Yavuz and Gürhan Özoguz. They grew up as children of secular parents but converted to Shia. Their integration should have prevented them, German citizens, engineers with PhDs, from becoming radical Muslims, but education and full citizenship obviously failed.

Their sister, Aydan Özoguz, is a German-born (1967) deputy of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the Federal Parliament, she is married to Michael Neumann (SPD), Senator of the Interior in Hamburg, has dual citizenship (since 1989) and has served as a Minister of State for Migration, Refugees and Integration (2013-2018). She has been a member of the SPD since 2004, and has made a meteoric career in the politics as a role-model Turkish migrant and the first politician of Turkish origin to hold a top position. As a protegee of Olaf Scholz in Hamburg (the present possible successor of Angela Merkel as Chancellor) and by Sigmar Gabriel, the later object of Erdogan’s abovementioned wrath, she has a strong position within her party. But she is viewed critically by other parties for her controversial opinions. While she pretended to dissociate herself from her Islamist brothers, she acted often more loyally to the Muslim minority than to the German majority she represented. Thus, in 2011, she led calls for Muslims to boycott a government-sponsored Islam Conference meant to combat extremism. But this move was met with opposition from the head of the largest Turkish Muslim organisation in Germany.[19] She advocates a dual citizenship for all children of immigrants having grown up in Germany. In May 2017, she caused a scandal when she polemized in an interview in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel against the term “Leitkultur” (dominant culture) and maintained that “a specifically German culture is, outside the language, totally unidentifiable. Historically seen, rather regional cultures, immigration, and diversity have coined our history. Globalisation and pluralisation of living environments are leading to a further multiplication of multiplicity”.[20] This woman, verging on Turkish nationalism and Muslim haughtiness, has even been mentioned as a future President of the Parliament as successor of the Wolfgang Schäuble after the elections of 2021. Her opinion on the lack of genuine German culture is shared by not a few other known Muslims in the country.

The opposite of Özoguz is Navid Kermani. Kermani was born 1967 in Germany as son of Iranian parents who had come to Germany in 1959. His father and three brothers are medical doctors. He has a post-doc in Oriental studies, holds a dual citizenship, and was married (until 2020) to an Islam scholar Katajun Amirpur. As a book author on Islam, Middle East, and Christian-Muslim dialogue and as essayist, he is revered by Leftist circles in Germany. Kermani has received many awards, including the most renowned Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, awarded by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in the Frankfurt on the Main Paul’s Church, the seat of the prototype of first German Parliament of 1848. In his acceptance speech in 2015, he spoke about the inner Islamic war in Syria, slammed what he called the European “indifference” to the suffering, and he talked about the coexistence of Christianity and Islam. He praised the religious culture of Islam in history, its originality, intellectual scope, its aesthetic power and also its great humanity.[21] He received standing ovations and was even suggested as a candidate for German Presidency, despite not a single word from him about persecution of Christians even today, the prohibition of music, culture, the disdain of the Unbelievers, or the oppression of women. And when at the end of his speech, Kermani, who was interpreted by most German media as an advocate of religious tolerance, spoke a Muslim prayer in a symbolic birthplace of the German secular, enlightened democracy, the Paul’s Church (now a memorial place), the guests were moved to tears. And no one protested this scandalous and definitely not tolerant encroachment and usurpation, as just one single well- informed journalist in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung correctly called it, took place.[22] For all who are wondering what all the fuss is about: In the Fatwa Np. 273838 of the 12th of January 2014 it is the Islamist, Caliphate command: “Perform ‘Eed prayer on a piece of land that could be usurped”.

This grave incident shows how ignorant even the elites of the country really are about Islam and Muslim rites and rules. Illumination is badly needed, but not many authors dare to publish unpopular information, threatened by woke know-it-alls and political correctness-police. In my last part of this article, I will provide a short review of selected examples of the today’s humanists’ “Epistolae obscurorum virorum” in their unfortunately not humorous struggle against the contemporary obscurantists.

Media, expert opinions, analyses and suggested solutions

While there is a big number of Muslim publications in German now propagating a favourable but untrue image of Islam as a peaceful, tolerant, and merciful religion, there is a small group of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and publicists with expertise presenting another, truer side to Islam. These persons scrutinize Islam critically, and those who are insiders serve as an important objective and dependable source of information about Islam in Germany. The topics of the Muslim publications range from politics to life-style, fashion, culture and literature, for example the newest quarterly published in Austria, Qamar (The Moon), which, according to the editors (using gender-speech, insinuating equality between the sexes), is directed to the 700.000 Muslims living in Austria. It claims not to be of religious but of social character.[23] In the interview with the Leftist daily TAZ, the chief editor complains about the press coverage about Islam: “It usually about the same topics: Clan criminality, honour murders, terror, the headscarf. This has a dangerous impact on the society: Whoever reads these articles only, gets a very one-sided perspective, gets a wrong picture of Muslims and in the worst case does not want to live together with such people”. But he also says that in the meantime it has become a little bit better – the media tackle “anti-Muslim racism”, discrimination on the job market or the housing market. And he claims that “We are totally normal citizens, we have professions, pay the taxes and interest ourselves for topics far from religion and racism.”

Considering the fact that Islam is not a “race” and the deployed “anti-Muslim racism” does not exist, being part of general xenophobia but not without reason which he of course leaves out. The Muslim narrative of “victim” is thus present even in this professedly modern and “a-religious” publication. The hijab is presented as something normal and not as a symbol of Sharia restrictions that reduce woman to a lower human being than man. This journal reaches out to non-Muslim readers in the German-speaking countries, and, in the dangerous deceitful Taqiyya-manner, it spreads anti-modern ideas and fishes for sympathy. Unfortunately, the inherent hypocrisy is being overlooked by the majority of the readers. Whoever wants to get a more realistic picture of the Muslim society has to resort to books by the critics.

One of the countrywide best known insider critics of this line of thought is Ahmad Mansour. The Berlin based Israeli Arab, born in 1976 in a small Arab town Tira into non-religious Muslim family, radicalized himself in his school days, but his studies in Psychology at the University of Tel Aviv (1996-1999) saved him from becoming an Islamist. He has lived in Germany since 2004, after he had witnessed a terror act, and continued to study in Berlin. He was a participant in the German Islam Conference (2012-2014), has been granted the German citizenship since 2107, and works in youth projects against radicalization (especially among Muslim youth), honour-motivated crimes, and anti-Semitism in the Muslim communities. Moreover, he is research fellow at the Centre for Democratic Culture, and an Advisory Programme Director at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. Mansour is an expert on Salafism, anti-Semitism, and psycho-social problems of the Muslim migrants as well as prevention of extremism. He has many foes among his fellow Muslims as well as among the anti-Muslims and lives under police protection, but on the other hand he has been awarded numerous medals and prizes also from Jewish organisations, as well as for civil courage and promotion of democracy from state related institutions. He has published several books and articles on the subject of Muslim migrants, and the problems with their integration.

In his book Klartext zur Integration. Gegen falsche Toleranz und Panikmache (Plain text on integration. Against false tolerance and scaremongering, 2018), he deals with the difficulties faced in Germany by migrants from Muslim countries, so different from the German society, on the one side, and, on the other side,  with the lack of experience on the part of the German side in dealing with the strangers. He calls for less blaming and more understanding on both sides, urges Muslims to integrate and accept the duty to acknowledge the German constitution and legal system, but at the same time advises the German side involved in the issue, to have an open ear for the difficulties on the side of the migrants, as these difficulties stem from the upbringing in the different worlds and values they come from. But Mansour warns us not to remain silent and to call out false tolerance for non-democratic and radical behaviour like Islamism[24], Leftist and Right extremism, which is are the wrong means for dealing with Muslim migrants. He pleads for a debate culture about all the dangerous developments in our society, for the sake of our children – he has one himself – and the common future.

Another prominent Arab critic of the Islamists is Hamed Abdel-Samad. According to his Wikipedia-biography he war born in 1972 in Egypt as a son of a Sunnite Imam. He mentioned having been raped by a 15-year-old youth at the age of 4, and by a gang of five teenagers at the age of 11, the fate of many Muslim children. As a student of English and French in Cairo, he became a member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. He came to Germany in 1995, and at the age of 23 married a “Leftist teacher with a penchant towards mysticism” who was 18 years older than he. He studied Political Science in Augsburg, later Japanese in Japan, and married for a second time. His wife is half Danish and half Japanese. Until the end of 2009, he taught at the Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich where he worked on an (unfinished) dissertation on “The image of the Jews in Egyptian school books”. He is known as an Islam critic and was, from 2010-2013, also participant in the 2nd German Islam Conference. Since November 2011, he is on the Advisory Board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, advocating secularism and “evolutionary humanism”. In 2013 he was a guest speaker at the “2nd Critical Islam Conference” (organized by the Council of ex-Muslims and the Giordano Bruno Foundation), and since September 2015, he is a member of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom. Raif Badawi, a Saudi Liberal, sentenced in 2013 to 10 years of prison and 1000 strokes of a whip, is a symbol of the fight for freedom in the Arab world. In 2013, Abdel-Samad gave a talk in Cairo in which he accused the Muslim Brotherhood of fascism. The day after, he got death threats because he had offended the Prophet Mohammad, from the entourage of President Mursi to Professors at the al-Azhar-University. He got no help from the Egyptian authorities but the then-German Foreign Minister Westerwelle (Liberal Party, FDP) offered him assistance. Abdel-Samad gave talks to the AfD – the extreme right Party, but claimed not to be connected to them. Together with Ahmad Mansour, he was awarded a medal for his fight against anti-Semitism in 2015. He criticizes that the Churches in Germany for being in dialogue with Muslim functionaries’ organizations instead of listening to the individuals, and he stresses that Political Islam is not interested in integration. but it exploits the grey zones of the German constitution in order to establish its own – Islamistic – infrastructures, and thus enable Erdogan’s model of Islamism to take root. He has published several books, some of them bestseller, like Der Islamische Faschismus. Eine Analyse (The Islamic Fascism. An Analysis, 2014), and recently Aus Liebe zu Deutschland (Out of love for Germany, 2020), and believes that only “Islam light” without Djihad, Sharia, sexual apartheid, and missionizing has a future in Europe.

The last but not least of the selected authors to be mentioned here is the Sociologist Necla Kelek, born in Istanbul in 1957, into a non-religious Circassian family. In 1966, the family joined the father who had been working in Germany, and she grew up here, enjoying German citizenship since 1994. She earned her doctorate in Greifswald and Hamburg on the Islamic religiousness and its importance in the  lifeworlds of pupils with Turkish background, is adviser to German legal authorities on Islam in cases related to migration, was a member of the Islam-Conference 2005-2009, was temporarily a member of the advisory board of the Giordano-Bruno-Foundation, and, since 2009, a member of the Senate of the German National Foundation. Since 2014, sha has also sat on the board of the feminist-oriented organization Terre des Femmes, which combats domestic and general violence against women, forced marriages, and other forms of persecution. Kelek has been awarded numerous prizes. Since 2020, she is the President of the Society Secular Islam in Hamburg.

In one of her books, Himmelsreise. Mein Streit mit den Wächterns des Islam (Heavenly journey. My conflict with the keepers of Islam, 2007; paperback 2011), Kelek’s main topic is the parallel society in which Muslims live in Germany. She opposed the erection of the Central Mosque in Cologne, regarding mosques as a source of Shariatic indoctrination, which indeed is the case. She is against the fundamentalist interpretation of the Quran, rejects the hijab for girls and women. Kelek also slams the downplaying of the dangers of Islam, false tolerance, lack of education among Muslims, and she advocates efforts to bring Muslims closer to enlightened, civilian, democratic society. She criticizes the Islamic conception of a male as incapable of controlling his sexual drives, and was attacked for this by another Muslim woman, Lamya Kaddor, who runs under the label of a progressive scholar of Islam but whose academic qualifications and her position as unorthodox – she claims to be a mediator between the secular and the traditionalist Muslims – are contested. Kaddor, an advocate of Islam in Germany, and married to Thorsten Gerald Schneiders, German Islam expert in the Deutschlandfunk (German Broadcasting Services), criticized the “growing enmity towards Islam in all the social layers”. Together with Michael Rubinstein, the then-General Director of the Jewish Community in Duisburg/ Mühlheim /Ruhr and Oberhausen (North Rhein-Westphalia), Kaddor published a book on a interreligious dialogue between Jews and Muslims, and received the prize of the Rotary Club in 2009. Kelek won a process against Kaddor’s malicious allegation of Kelek’s unscientific and generalising approach as defamation of all Muslim men. Kaddor (born in 1978 in Germany of Syrian parents), joined the Green Party in April 2020, and has been elected as a deputy to the German Parliament in the recent elections.

Besides the Muslims, there are several German authors of books on Islam who are widely read. One of them, is the young journalist, Constantin Schreiber (born 1979), has been attending Muslim worship services in twenty Mosques, mostly in Berlin, but also in Hamburg, Potsdam, Leipzig, Karlsruhe, and Magdeburg for eight months in order to inform himself about the contents of the sermons, their influence on the thousands of people attending them every Friday, and learn more about this unknown world. Actually, this world was not really strange to him as he lived for a longer while in Syria, speaks Arabic, had an internship in Port Said, and worked later as correspondent of the German Wave Broadcasting Service in Dubai. He is an expert and advisor on Islam-related affairs. The result of his “field studies” were published in the bestselling book Inside Islam. Was in Deutschlands Moscheen gepredigt wird (Inside Islam. What is being preached in Germany’s Mosques, 2017), in which he describes the antidemocratic and radical attitudes he met with in the Shiite and Sunnite Turkish and Arabic Mosques. The topics of his examples range from the demand “to again read and love the Quran” or the warning of the “biggest dangers of all, that is the danger of Christmas” in Sunnite Mosques, while in the Shiite Turkish Mosque, the Imam tells his worshippers unequivocally: “You cannot say: I am a democrat and a Shiite at the same time” or, in a Sunnite Arabic Mosque the clear duty to missionize the Unbelievers is named: “The biggest thing is when through you a Non-Muslim will be led on the straight and even way and embraces the Islam.”

The sermons are seldom harmless. The terrorist from the Berlin Christmas Market supposedly frequented a Mosque-Society where he met with Salafists. In the Ahmadiya Mosque, the author found pamphlets and a book with the title Islam, the Promise (subtitle The Third Heritage) and proferring statements which shocked him: “God alone is the lawmaker”, “A community does not ground on a declaration of human rights”, the Quran excludes the parliamentary democratic system, which is called there “the Western malady”. The author of this book was the French Holocaust denier and Antizionist, Roger Garaudy (1913-2012), a previous Communist, Protestant, Catholic and finally a convert to Islam, revered in the Muslim circles. The Imams are hypocritical, use the Taqiyya in their contacts with Unbelievers, pretend to be harmless, friendly and unpolitical. Although the author has a considerable knowledge of Islam, he was nevertheless perplexed at what he experienced in the Mosques.

Another well-informed non-Muslim author is Samuel (Heinrich) Schirmbeck, born in 1941. He worked from 1961 for the Agence France Presse (AFP) in Paris, and there he sympathized with the 68’s movements in France and Germany. He was expelled from France in 1968 in the course of the students’ revolt and started working in Frankfurt on the Main for the Hessian Broadcasting Service. In addition, he studied Sociology and Philosophy. In 1991 Schirmbeck founded the German State TV (ARD) studio in Algier and for ten years reported from there, Tunis, and Morocco. In 2015 and 2016 he published articles against the Left and the Islamic image of woman after the Silvester night in Cologne, in the biggest German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In his book The dangerous tolerance. The fatal handling of the Islam by the Leftists (2018), he judges these very sternly, as they tolerate especially obscurantist Islam and fights the progressive one. Schirmbeck claims that the Leftists understand nothing about Islam and blames them for leaving the confrontation with it to the extreme Right.

The Dutch-born Sociologist Ruud Koopmans has been professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin since 2013 and the director of the Department of Migration, Integration, Trans-nationalisation at the Berlin Social Science Centre. He focusses further on ethno-cultural conflicts, religious fundamentalism, policy of globalization, social movements and evolutionary sociology. Moreover, he is an expert on right-wing movements in Europe. In 2019, his important book on Islam, Das verfallene Haus des Islam. Die religiösen Ursachen von Unfreiheit, Stagnation und Gewalt (The delapidated house of Islam. The religious causes for lack of freedom, stagnation and violence, in German 2020) was published and has aroused controversies. Koopmans was attacked as “far-right” by far-left critics (who tend to idealize Islam, as seen above) because he analyses the state of the Muslim societies objectively and ruthlessly. The results of his empiric studies of the present Muslim milieus (he is married to a Turkish woman) present a very dreary picture of the failed integration, lack of education, violence against Jews, homosexuals, and women, conspiracy theories, terror, intolerance, lack of self-criticism and larmoyant evocation of “Islamophobia”, etc. He blames religious fundamentalism and fanaticism for causing many of the problems. Koopmans defines his book as critical of Islam but not hostile to it.

Having travelled in the Muslim countries from Sengal to Indonesia, Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey over a period of several decades, he noticed the growing decay since 1970’s, when cities like Istanbul, Cairo or Karatshi were much more tolerant and open from the cultural and religious points of view than they are today. Sharia degrades people and especially women, and causes segregation, apartheid, in their societies, leading to the lack of democracy, human rights, and impede economic affluence. These are the main reasons, maintains Koopmans for the mass migration from the Muslim countries. But in the countries to which they immigrate, they don’t do any better. Regarding the Muslim, especially the biggest Turkish minority, as the results of Koopman’s studies show, are the result of the backward way of life these migrants depict: Birthing too many children, prevents women from going to work and contributing to the family budget. This, in turn, is an obstacle to prosperity and better education. Lack of language knowledge makes the migrants concentrate in Ghettos – like we see it in the Muslim areas of big cities, with shisha bars, supermarkets, cafes – where the migrants stay among themselves. They don’t integrate into the society like other migrants do – Italians or Greeks – they read the press and watch TV in the mother tongue, having little interest for German culture and politics, and are less qualified than other migrants, thus occupying the lowest echelons also in terms of family income. But instead of critically reflecting upon their situation, they put the blame on others, and don’t move forward. Koopmans’ findings are not popular among the people he would actually like to help by depicting the deficiencies.

Seeking the fault in others, is the specialty of the Muslim political organizations which represent the different migrant groups and are very influential in political respect. They are the subject of a thorough analysis in the recent book by Susanne Schröter, Politischer Islam. Stresstest für Deutschland (Political Islam. Stresstest for Germany, 2019). Susanne Schröter, born in 1957, an ethnologist, has been since 2008 Professor of Anthropology of colonial and postcolonial orders at the Cluster of Excellence “Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe-University Frankfurt (German Universities Excellence Initiative), the head of a research group on “Contemporary discourses on state and society in the Islamic world” and conducts a research project founded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) entitled “Re-negotiating gender in contemporary Indonesia. Empowerment strategies of Muslim and secular women activists”. She is a member of the German Islam Conference.

Schröter has studied and criticized the behaviour of the radical Muslim minority in Germany. What is now called Political Islam is a radical political-religious ideology, also called by others Islamism or Djihadism. It is an aspect of the Islamic revival that began in the 20th century, and not all forms of political activity by Muslims are discussed under the rubric of Political Islam.[25] In her book she questions the Islam policy in Germany. The one-sided empowerment of Political Islam, represented and reinforced by large organizations of foreign governments, particularly Turkey, claiming their representative role, is a growing cause for concern of democrats in the country and increasingly represents a conflict with secular modernity, individual’s rights of freedom and human rights in Germany. Schröter informs about their institutional structure and orientation. The most influential ones among them combine nationalism, racisms and Islamism, defining itself as the new centre of Muslim Brotherhood.

Susanne Schröter presents a systematic enumeration and description of the various radical Islamic movements in Germany and their international connections, like the Salafists (in which German converts to Islam play an eminent role), and she criticizes Islamists (via the various Muslim associations and federations)  for being the main cooperation-partners of the state, as for example DITIB (Turkish-Islamic Union of the Education Institution), the biggest Sunnite organisation in Germany, which has for years provided ideologically firm import-Imams and teachers of religion, thus determining the direction in which the young generations of Muslims have been and will be indoctrinated. Or the VIKZ (Union of Islamic Cultural Centres), ZMD (Central Council of Muslims in Germany), all of them having the mission, “to preserve and strengthen the Islamic identity of the Muslims”, thus to establish them as a distinct (and influential) group in the society. Schröter reminds of the Quranic Jew-hatred which began in the 7th century and has persisted over the centuries until today.  As we can see, the old battles and conflicts between the Muslim and the Western civilizations have not stopped in the course of time and continue into our days with modern means.

This overview of the situation in Germany as regards the Islam, is not exhaustive or complete. It should only give a first glance at a very complicated and multifaceted development, which, if not stopped and reversed, will surely move forward towards a dystopic nightmare envisioned by Michel Houllebecq in his book Submission (2015) or, even, –a step further – by Boualem Sansal in his novel 2084. End of the World (2016). Whether Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), nor George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are probably read by Islamists, but their vision should be a warning to us all not to let things get out of control by the state governed by the rule of law. Germany is not alone with this problem as the readers in France, Holland, Denmark, etc. may all well know. The murdered Charlie Hebdo-journalists, the terror at Bataclan, Hyper Cacher, and all the attacks on Jews and priests, on public spectators at Soccer games, etc., are not forgotten. In 2005, André Glucksmann published his book on Hatred – tracing this sentiment from Medea to Bin Laden. His conclusion is that it cannot be vanquished by arguments, only by combatting it. Gilles Kepel analysed the crises in North Africa and the Middle East, caused by the insidious Islamisation and Djihadism in his book Sortir du Chaos. Les Crises en Mediterranée et au Moyen-orient (2018). But the “Arab spring” failed, the civil war in Syria is not finished yet, and Afghanistan is now in the hands of the Taliban. And the problems deriving from all this “Chaos” will not be solved so soon, whether here nor anywhere else, I’m afraid.*

—–

*I thank Dr. Doyle Quiggle for close reading this manuscript.                                   First published in Dogma. Revue de Philosophie et de Science Humaines, Automne 21, Edition No. 17 as “Muslim Immigration to Germany and Related Problems, A Quick Walkthrough” p. 90-108.

[1] A continuation of Huntington’s pessimistic vision is Douglas Murray’s diagnosis of Europe as moribund in his book The Strange Death of Europe. Immigration, Identity, Islam, 2017. There he writes: “[…] For even the mass movement of millions of people would not sound such a final note for the continent were it not for the fact that (coincidentally or otherwise) at the same time Europe lost faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy.” (p. 3)

[2] cf. Carole Cusack, “Did the Crusades lead to Islamic State?” https://theconversation.com/amp/did-the-crusades-lead-to-islamic-state-54478 (viewed 9/12)

[3] Susanne Schührer, „Türkeistämmige Personen in Deutschland. Erkenntnisse aus der Repräsentativuntersuchung ‚Ausgewählte Migrantengruppen in Deutschland 2015‘“, Working Paper 81, 2018. „https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Forschung/WorkingPapers/wp81-tuerkeistaemmige-in-deutschland.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=12

[4] Patrick Alexander Wittum, 02 July 2020 “’Do not vote for these parties’– The Turkish President’s interference in German internal affairs”; https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2020/07/do-not-vote-for-these-parties-the-turkish-presidents-interference-in-german-internal-affairs/

[5] Matthias Inverardi, May 24, 2014, “Turkey’s Erdogan slams critics in German speech”, in: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-turkey-erdogan-idUSBREA4N0CF20140524
https://www.google.de/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSBREA4N0CF20140524

[6] Philip Oltermann, 5 March 2017, in: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/05/erdogan-accuses-germany-of-nazi-practices-over-blocked-election-rallies

[7] Cf. For example D.F. Patton, “The Alternative for Germany’s radicalization in historical-comparative perspective”, in: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=govfacpub

[8] Sebastian von Münchow, „Aftermath of the Terror Attack on Breitscheid Platz Christmas Market: Germany’s  Security Architecture and Parliamentary Inquiries”, July 2017, in: https://www.marshallcenter.org/de/node/1115

[9] Patrick Kingsley, “Egypt. 80 sexual assaults in one day – the other story of Tahrir Square”, in: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-rape-sexual-assault-tahrir-square

[10] “The `Rape Game’:Framing and the Cologne and Stockholm Events”, in: https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/aktuelt/aktuelle-saker/2016/the-rape-game.html;

Abhishek Saksena, „Taharrush – The Sickening And Terrifying Arab Rape Game That Is Spreading Across Europe”, in:

https://www.indiatimes.com/news/world/taharrush-the-sickening-and-terrifying-arab-rape-game-that-is-spreading-across-europe-249466.html

[11] Klaudia Prevezanos /slk; Ed. Marzin Kuebler, 30.19.2011, „Turkish guest workers transformed German society”, in: https://amp.dw.com/en/turkish-guest-workers-transformed-german-society/a-15489210

[12] Luise Sammann, „Migrantenparteien- und Initiativen. Der Kampf für die Vielfalt politischer Perspektiven“, Deutschlandfunk, 17.05.2020, in:

https://www.google.de/search?q=Deutsche+T%C3%BCrkenpartei&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de-de&client=safari

[13]04.10.2021: https://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik/inland/politik-inland/unterwelt-boss-droht-abschiebe-kandidaten-sollen-deutsche-polizisten-toeten-77860858.bild.html

[14] Alex Feuerherdt, „‚Israelkritikerin‘ Nemi El-Hassan: Das Aus beim WDR?“;30. September 2021, in:  https://www.mena-watch.com/israelkritikerin-nemi-el-hassan-das-aus-beim-wdr/

[15] Arno Rosenfeld, „A journalist exposed Nazis – then lost her dream job over Israel”, Spetember 28, 2021, in: The Forward, https://forward.com/news/476072/germany-el-hassan-bild-antisemitism-holocaust-bds/

[16] Sylke Kirschnick, in: https://www.sylke-kirschnick.de/2021/09/23/warum-die-fuersprecher-nemi-el-hassans-die-oeffentlichkeit-in-die-irre-fuehren/; Jonas Hermann, 29.09.2021, „Der andere Blick, Fall El-Hassan: Bei muslimischem Judenhass nimmt man es in Deutschland nicht so genau“, in: Neue Züricher Zeitung (https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/der-andere-blick/fall-el-hassan-bei-muslimischem-judenhass-nimmt-man-es-in-deutschland-nicht-so-genau-ld.1648045?reduced=true)

[17] Andreas Kopietz, October 2019, in:  https://www.german-times.com/arab-clans-control-many-berlin-streets-where-the-police-dare-to-patrol-only-in-squads-of-multiple-officers/

[18] Ibid.

[19] “Aydan Özoguz, Turkish-German at the top”, 17.12.2013, in: https://amp.dw.com/en/aydan-%C3%B6zoguz-a-turkish-german-at-the-top/a-17300952

[20] Andreas von Delhaes-Guenther, „Keine deutsche Kultur“17.05.2017, in: https://www.bayernkurier.de/inland/25087-keine-deutsche-kultur/

[21] Dennis Abrams, “Navid Kermani Receives Peace Prize from German Book Trade”, October 21, 205, in: https://publishingperspectives.com/2015/10/navid-kermani-receives-peace-prize-from-german-book-trade/

[22] Johan Schloemann, “Dankesrede von Navid Kermani. Warum Kermanis Aufforderung zum Gebet ein unerträglicher Übergriff war“,20. Oktober 2015, in:

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/oeffentliches-beten-so-geh-in-dein-kaemmerlein-1.2699166 ; https://www.google.com/search?q=navid+kermani+betet+in+der+paulskirche+süddeutsche&client=safari&channel=iphone_bm&ei=E2JbYfvHBNaB9u8PlbuVuAw&oq=navid+kermani+betet+in+der+Paulskirche+südde&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYADIFCCEQoAEyBQghEKABOgcILhBDEJMCOgUIABCABDoECAAQQzoFCC4QgAQ6BAguEEM6BggAEBYQHjoECB4QCjoECCEQFToHCCEQChCgAVCHFlirwQFg18sBaA1wAHgAgAH_AYgBtzeSAQYyLjM1LjiYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp

[23] I thank Paul Möllers for the information. Cf. Susan Djahangard, interview with the chief editor of Qumar Muhamed Beganovic: “Chefredakteur über muslimisches Magazin ‘Wir wollen Mut machen”, in: TAZ, 3.2.2021.

[24] Ralph Ghadban, Islam und Islamkritik. Vorträge zur Integrationsfrage, 2011 (Islam and Islam criticism. Lectures on the question of integration); Bundesministerium des Innern, Islamismus. Texte zur inneren Sicherheit, (Islamism, ed. by the Ministry of Internal Affairs), 2nd edition 2004.

[25] Voll, John O.; Sonn, Tamara (2009). “Political Islam”. Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195390155-0063.

Twenty Years After 9/11. Muslim Immigration to Germany and Related Problems. A Quick Walkthrough.

  • 0