German police raid mosque

[Timber Loftis]

July 13, 2004
German Police Raid Mosque Said to Show Jihad Videos
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

BERLIN, July 12 - Police officers raided a mosque in Frankfurt on Monday after a 9-year-old girl told one of her teachers that children had been shown violent videos calling for "a holy war against unbelievers," a spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecutor said.

The police carried away computer hard drives and disks from the Taqwa Mosque, used mostly by Moroccan immigrants, in Frankfurt, Germany's financial center.

"There's a suspicion that during Islam lessons, films with a martial or warlike content were shown to minors in the rooms of the mosque," a police news release said. "This suspicion is based on the statement of a teacher, who was told so by a 9-year-old student."

German television said the child, who has not been identified, had told a teacher that a beheading had been shown on one of the videotapes, but there was no confirmation of this from the prosecutor's office.

A member of the executive board of the Taqwa Mosque, Ahmed Ayaou, denounced the raid as an insult, saying it was an overreaction to an unconfirmed allegation.

"Probably at the moment, every Muslim is under suspicion," he said in an interview at the mosque, near Frankfurt's main train station. "It is the right of the police to search but not to overdo it in such an aggressive way. Somebody hears something from a child and then the police arrive with 200 men. There were other ways of finding out if something like that was shown or not."

Mr. Ayaou said that the mosque staff had not been able to interview all of the teachers who give classes in Islam on Saturdays and Sundays, but that as a general rule films were not used in the classrooms.

"We have no video recorder or DVD player in this whole organization," he said. "If something like this was shown at all, the teacher would have to have bought a player himself."

"There are tutorial programs and games for children, but nothing political, no pictures of war or dead bodies," he added.

The raid on Monday seemed similar to other police raids that have taken place in this country over the last year or more, in which the German authorities have tried to collect information on suspected militant activities by Islamic groups.

One Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocates the restoration of a caliphate, or supreme theocratic ruler in all of the Muslim world, has been banned by the interior minister, and the police have raided homes and offices of members of the group.

There have also been complaints in Germany that children attending at least one private Muslim school in Bonn are taught that Jews and Christians are waging a "crusade" against Islam and that it is the first duty of all Muslims to fight their enemies.

German law forbids disseminating materials that encourage racial or religious hatred.


Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt for this article.

[Black Baron]

That is new! Truly. Untill now no direct action was made against the Fanatic Morons Unlimited. Good news. I wish that there would be more of it.

[pritchke]

Could be one fanatic teacher in the school. All the teachers could not be fanatics if they reported it to police.

[Timber Loftis]

I got the impression that a teacher OUTSIDE the mosque reported it, Pritchke. The lessons given inside the mosque are given on Sat./Sun. This was probably reported by the child's regular school teacher -- seems to me, anyway.

[Grojlach]

I believe something similar happened in our country as well; problems like these mostly occur when imams with no integration or any bonds with the Western world whatsoever are invited ("imported") to preach in our mosques. There was a small riot in our country concerning a certain book that was being sold at one particular mosque which encouraged people to throw gays off a building, to give an example. Luckily these are still isolated incidents, though - many muslims seem to integrate just fine.

[ 07-13-2004, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]