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.
People will vote for parties who will pass laws that enable the state to act swiftly and harshly.
But staying in Germany isn't covered by human rights. German law already stipulates that anyone who endanger liberal democracy (freiheitlich demokratische Ordnung) can deported. No conviction necessary. Not even proof beyond reasonable doubt. Just a reasonable level of certainty that our interest in getting rid of them outweighs their interest in staying here.
We obviously need to distinguish here, some people may just have been naive and ended up in that protest accidentally, but for the rest: I really hope they throw the book at them. We always say "Nazis raus" (Nazis out) and I like that very much and here we have a case where we can actually deport quite a few de-facto nazis. Let's just home enough of them aren't citizens (the citizen thingy is a problem with the traditional Nazis).
Your quote does not support your statement. People have rights, and we have to uphold them. This absolutely has to be proven in a court, and if there is a shortcut around having a trial with evidence, then this is lawful but not right. "Endangering public safety" is not something that you decide based on reading articles online and having a gut feeling that they shouldn’t protest.
Vibes based deportation lol
Of course there would be a court case, but not a necessity to prove beyond reasonable doubt. There are different levels of proof required in different scenarios. If a court sends someone to prison they need to prove with absolute certainty that this someone committed the crime. If they make someone pay for breach of contract they just need to make it reasonably certain that they breached the contract. Afaik deportation follows the latter pattern.
Of course not. I wrote
Hence I obviously don't want to just put everyone in that protest on a plane tomorrow. To me joining such a protest is a reason for suspicion. I.e. the authorities should start investigating these people and try to distinguish those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time from those who actually want to overthrow our democracy.
This is a German issue, exporting it won't solve it.
People like you are the problem.
Neither OP nor you want a degradation of the rule of law and human rights in Germany. To achieve that, it is necessary to have a significant majority of people on board with democracy, especially in religious communities. Deporting people without democratic values would mean, in a republic with rule of law, that also Christians without democratic values have to be deported (I assure you there are many in Germany). Where to? Rome? Greece? Israel?
The idea is to deport foreigners without democratic values. You obviously can't deport people who don't have a foreign citizenship, but you can and should deport people without German citizenship when they show to be enemies of democracy.
Only some 47% (excluding converts) of Muslims in Germany are German citizens and the group of citizens is mostly of Turkish or Balkan origin. I.e. from a group where religious extremism is a lot less widespread than in MENA.
It’s crazy that this is even a controversial opinion.
Because it can only be one or the other? Why not both?
Yes....it literally can't be a democracy and a caliphate at the same time.
There are no shortage of Islamic jihadists who openly say they intend on overtaking democratic countries via immigration and birth rates in order to change the laws.
An issue Europe is struggling with is the lack of societal integration from the refugees that have been absorbed over the past couple of decades. You can see the frustration in this very thread.
You don't see the irony in asking for deportations for the people that are protesting being deported from their homes?
They are german. None of them are being deported or face deportation. They enjoy all freedoms of a democracy and the protection of free speech in germany while trying to destroy it.
Ahh yes. Deporting people for their political views is surely a great selling point for "liberal" democracies. Right up there with telling women what they are allowed to wear, because that is surely an expression of a liberal spciety were women enjoy rights.
All these things are doing is confirming the claims that are made by radical preachers about our hipocricsy.
The good old paradox of tolerance. There needs to be a line somewhere. And "I want a caliphate" is clearly past that line.
I would say deporting people for holding a certain opinion is something requiring less tolerance.
If someone works to undermine the free democracy that is perfectly punishable by existing laws.
Well, holding an opinion obviously isn't something we can or should forbid. Voicing it however, especially publicly in a protest, is something that has always been subject to certain limitations in Europe. Spreading certain messages simply is a way of undermining free democracy, hence it can be punished. I don't know if asking for a caliphate is covered by criminal law in Germany, but it's clearly problematic enough to warrant certain actions. E.g. deportations for foreigners and bans from entering from civil service for citizens.
You want to see people dead because of religion? That's just like having a vagina. Keep going! Nothing to see here.
Where did he say that?
Deporting people for religious views compared to women wearing clothes.
As I'm reading his posts he thinks that both deporting people or prescribing what women can wear is not fitting for a liberal democracy. I don't see where he does want to see people dead because of religion.
what the fuck are you even talking about?