The Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) was under investigation for several months over its alleged support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah group which is backed by Iran. Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist group by Germany.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday that the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) would be banned for propagating extremism and that its famous “Blue Mosque” was being searched by police.
“It is very important to me to make a clear distinction here: we are not acting against a religion,” Faeser said, but just against a group accused of undermining the German state as well as women’s rights.
The Imam Ali Mosque, known locally as the Blue Mosque, is one of Germany’s oldest mosques and is operated by the IZH.
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Before going into this, don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not supporting religious indoctrination of any sorts and think that any institution doing that should be closed down, BUT, there’s some nuance to this case.
It’s a bit sad (but completely unsurprising) that DW has left out the nuance in this situation here. I think it’s extremely worrying that the politically appointed ministers in Germany can issue such orders. Yes, she’s saying that there was an investigation into it, but it wasn’t published anywhere. No one can take a look at those files. Most importantly, there was no court order in this decision. And this is where my worries begin. Sure, the mosque can decide to challenge this decision in court (and if there is proper evidence the order will stand) but it’s a bit worrying that politically appointed ministers can just sign orders and decisions as this one without a proper court case to go with it.
Maybe two, three years ago I wouldn’t have said much about this, or I would’ve even supported the state, but seeing the German state over the last year go crazy with such orders, many of which ended up being overturned in court, makes me wonder why these decisions don’t go through courts in the first place. Why do ministers get free reign like little dictators to sign away orders as they please?
I think it’s extremely worrying that the politically appointed ministers in Germany can issue such orders.
§3 VereinsG. It’s not ministers which do it, but ministries. Huge difference. They’re shutting down associations with the same kind of authority and procedure as they’re shutting down restaurants which fail to adhere to hygiene standards, and in the same way: Based on established rules and procedures which are based in law. As a minister, you can’t just say “hey close that restaurant there I don’t like their food”, that’s not how it works. Best you can do is “hey that restaurant over there, have a look at it”. Also this is a co-decision of the federal and Hamburg’s ministry of the interior.
No one can take a look at those files
Here’s the announcement part, the explanatory statement is not public, if you want to get it you can ask the IZH they got a copy.
I might be mistaken but I don’t think they’re even confidential, they’re just not automatically published. It might be as simple as sending a freedom of information request.
As you can notice the thing isn’t even signed by the minister, but a civil servant.
Maybe two, three years ago I wouldn’t have said much about this, or I would’ve even supported the state, but seeing the German state over the last year go crazy with such orders,
Oh my. Hamburg wanted the thing outlawed for ages, they’ve had a very keen eye on all kinds of Islamists ever since 9/11 (remember where Muhammed Atta studied?) but as the IZH is not only active in Hamburg but also other states they couldn’t do it on their own, the federation needed to move. And they took their sweet time, only ever starting to get moving about two years ago after the crackdown on protests in Iran (the IZH is Iran-affiliated).
In case you’re mildly conspiracy-minded, really more smart political strategy and not conspiracy: Increased vigour and urgency could have something to do with the looming AfD ban: They’re intent on getting all the Islamists etc. they have in the pipeline banned to avoid certain conspiracy narratives Nazis would no doubt start to spin. Great replacement theory BS.
…and yes that kind of prioritisation is something a minister can do. “Put the Hell’s Angels on the back burner for now and focus getting the paperwork for the Islamists done” is within their power.
I think we’ve seen ministries mishandle investigations at the pressure of politically appointed ministers like Stark Watzinger with her Fördergeld Affäre trying to cut funding to researchers that don’t fit in her political agenda, or the case with Berlin’s Culture Minister/Senator that ended up cutting funding to a cultural center that then sued his office and won (https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2024/07/berlin-joe-chialo-foerderstopp-oyoun-vorwurf-antisemitismus.html). I don’t think such cases should be admissible under a democracy, even a flawed one as ours. I don’t care if 4 out of 5 such orders are well intended, if 1 out of 5 exist because of political pressure. These institutions then have to fight their way through courts (while also being financially able to do so), while the state doesn’t have to use the courts at all. That can take ages. If the government wants to ban an organization, it should use the court system, and everything should be on the table. Closing down entire cultural institutions isn’t something as simple as “closing down some restaurant”. If Hamburg had this cultural center in view for so long, even years, why hasn’t it used the courts to close it down? It takes the same amount of time to take them to court after all.
This is what to me is concerning about Germany and especially German democracy.
they’ve had a very keen eye on all kinds of Islamists ever since 9/11 (remember where Muhammed Atta studied?)
And no, I won’t trade democracy for this supposed sense of “security” where governmental offices get to skip a ton of steps and political influence can poison the decision making.
I might be mistaken but I don’t think they’re even confidential, they’re just not automatically published.
Why is that? Why not publish your findings? And are you so sure about the fact that you can request them through a freedom of information act? I wouldn’t be
Fördergeld Affäre trying to cut funding to researchers that don’t fit in her political agenda, or the case with Berlin’s Culture Minister/Senator that ended up cutting funding to a cultural center that then sued his office and won
Granting funds is a political act in the first place, not directly comparable to outlawing an organisation. Completely different standards apply.
If Hamburg had this cultural center in view for so long, even years, why hasn’t it used the courts to close it down?
Hamburg couldn’t act alone because part of the association’s activity was outside of its jurisdiction.
And no, I won’t trade democracy for this supposed sense of “security” where governmental offices get to skip a ton of steps and political influence can poison the decision making.
I’m not even opposed in principle against making association bans a matter of the courts – but you didn’t actually argue in favour of it, either. Your examples concern funding, if all NGO funding went via the courts it’d completely overwhelm them, you didn’t give an example of a mistaken ban. Also note how damaging those kinds of things are to politicians. And you can bet your arse that when such stuff is happening the press is getting a lot of anonymous tips as to what’s going on.
It’s also quite a bit easier to get an education ministry to stop funding something than to get a ministry of the interior, filled to the brim with legal experts and criminologists, to ban something without proper reason. I’m quite sure if you wanted to it’d be quite trivial to trick the forestry administration into buying shoddy telephones. Not their speciality.
Parties btw need to be banned not just by courts but even the constitutional court.
Why is that? Why not publish your findings? And are you so sure about the fact that you can request them through a freedom of information act? I wouldn’t be
Indeed, why not publish? If the IZH thinks that it’s all bunk, why aren’t they publishing it?
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Ah, if there are some authoritarian psychos to be defended the tankies will roll out in force. This one is extra juicy cause they can accuse everyone of being …phobic and sprinkle on some anti Israël zionist miraca bad at the same time.
It is good that Iran backed schools of Indoctrination are being shut down. They are given too much leeway anyway.
Uh… Okay… Not surprised, just disappointed.
We are not acting against a religion, we’re acting against a group undermining our support of genocide.
Israel and Hezbollah can both be bad at the same time
I wish more people understood this. It’s like the people cheering on the Houthis, who use child soldiers and have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of them.
Just because they are fighting Israel does not necessarily make them the good guys.
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Sorry… my own children have to be killed for me to find recruiting child soldiers to be a bad thing?
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Please clarify this for me: Are you saying that it is good that the Houthis are using child soldiers?
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Cheering on the Houthis because they are protecting their people from Saudi Arabia and America. The people responsible for their deaths are the ones dropping bombs on the children.
Once Saudi Arabia isn’t dropping American bombs on Yemeni school buses, then I can criticize the Houthis.
Are you justifying the use of child soldiers? It is a war crime.
I am against the use of child soldiers, but I’m not going to talk about the Houthi’s because our criticism of the Houthi’s can have no effect on whether they use child soldiers, but it does have effect of supporting western action against them, which includes induced famine and bombing schools and hospitals.
You see how blatant it is when Israelis talk about LGBT+ rights in Gaza as if gays are immune to Israeli bombs. It’s no different pretending to care about children in Yemen while bombing and starving those same Yemeni children.
This is about whether the Houthis are a good group or not.
So you are arguing that a group that commits war crimes is good as long as they are fighting Israel and Saudi Arabia. Correct?
You understand that Israel and Saudi Arabia are committing far, far worse war crime here?
Resisting annihilation is good. I’m making no statements on whether the group would be good in a vacuum because that’s not useful for anything except justifying even greater war crimes.
Many things are war crimes, I don’t see anyone getting worked up over it. International law is “only for africans” as one official has put it to the ICC.
Are you justifying the use of child soldiers?
No. I’m just saying that just throwing that as a gotcha moment isn’t worth anything nowadays. You can’t spin an entire conversation around the fact X entity is committing/aiding war crimes. At that point you’d have more reasons to hate your own country than the Houthis most likely. It’s just a way to deflect from the conversation: “oh look that guy is justifying use of child soldiers”, says the guy sitting in a home probably 90% filled with products built by child workers from China, while wearing clothes made in Uyghur concentration camps. It’s completely besides the mark
This is what I keep trying to tell people about this war. There are no good guys. There is no right side of history to be on.
There are sides. And people are perfectly welcome and justified to take a side. But you have to understand that whichever side you take, they have done terrible things to innocent people for terrible reasons.
Sure. Weird how the people the German government wants to suppress to just happen to be bad people trying to take away women’s rights in Germany. I’m sure it’s entirely unrelated.
Maybe it’s because I’m not done with my coffee but I’m not picking up what you’re putting down.
This is motivated by politics and islamophobia, no different than NYPD building a bunch of bullshit cases against muslims after 9/11.
We’re talking about a country that considers “from the river to the sea” to be hate speech and requires new citizens affirm their support of a genocidal settler colonial project.
The German authorities claim they have proof of the connection between the IZH and Hezbollah. If they do have the proof, which they now under obligation to provide of course, it is not politics and Islamophobia, it is doing what the law requires.
Now you may think the law should require doing similar things to such organizations aiding Israel. I wouldn’t disagree. But that doesn’t mean you let other organizations that aid a different group that commits atrocities and want a theocracy just because they’re fighting Israel out of some sense of fairness.
If they do have the proof, which they now under obligation to provide of course, it is not politics and Islamophobia,
Where did you read that they are under obligation to provide anything? They aren’t lol. And won’t. If they wanted to, they could’ve provided it a long time ago.
I don’t mean legal obligation.
Where did you read that they are under obligation to provide anything?
Read the VereinsG they’re required to justify a ban. Said justification has been handed to the IZH, they’re free to publish it or sue the state. Those kinds of things are way more thorough than what the ministries put out in a press release.
If they wanted to, they could’ve provided it a long time ago.
Not sure about the Hezbollah connection in particular, but the IZH already sued the Hamburg office for the protection of the constitution over their 2019 report. The office had to retract some bits and pieces, the court acknowledged the office’s difficult position wrt. having to prove something while keeping its confidential sources, well, confidential, but also ruled that that’s their problem, not the IZH’s. What the court did not have them retract was that the IZH is keen on abolishing the free and democratic basic order in Germany, is an arm of Iran’s regime aiming to export itself over the world, etc etc. It really was details.
And just as a side note the IZH is long suspended from Muslim umbrella organisations in Germany. They don’t like Islamists either.
Eh, I disagree. If they keep supporting Israel after this, it demonstrates that they are hypocritical. They are not following the law for its own sake, but as a cudgel, to bludgeon organizations they don’t like while supporting genocidal organizations they do like. And considering they are suppressing groups that directly oppose Israel, not just Muslim ones lately but also anti-Zionist Jewish ones, it becomes even more obvious. If you’re just picking and choosing which cultural groups to suppress, and purposefully letting the imperialist, colonialist Western backed, apartheid ethnostate-based ones through, even with the backing of the law, then you’re just kind of leaning into the targeted scapegoating of fascism.
Not to say that’s definitely what this is, we haven’t seen the investigation evidence yet, but Germany has been leaning into that direction lately.
If they keep supporting Israel after this,
Ever looked at recent weapons exports to Israel? Or rather their absence? The federation is not granting permission for anything but general military goods (helmets, vests, etc). Only reasonable legal reasoning behind it is that the government thinks that they could be used in a genocide, to commit war crimes, such things.
That is: They’re not saying it openly but the German federal government absolutely shit-binned Netanyahu and his Kahanites as genocidal maniacs. Also if we were still exporting weapons Germany’s streets would be way less calm right now.
Diplomatically speaking, Germany would very much rather sit this one out, and is silently hoping for non-fascists to come to power in Israel, again. People who then can at least be encouraged to restart the peace process. Because one thing’s for sure: There’s no Israeli security without Palestinian freedom, and there also isn’t Palestinian freedom without Israeli security. The two things depend on each other. Germany always understood this, and still does: That supporting Israel means supporting Palestine. The non-fascists on both sides, that is.
Wait till you hear about countries closing linguistic institutions for being spy agencies.
Seems like a good cover for a spy agency tbh
