Anonymous letter against mosques in Germany

2023-08-13 09:15:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Anonymous letter against mosques in Germany

Protection for mosques, Manheim Mosque

Uncertainty in the Muslim community in Germany - a mixed feeling of concern, fear and even anger is growing. For years, Muslim communities in Germany have been receiving threatening letters, a few more addressed to churches. In early August an anonymous letter arrived in the Muslim community in Osnabryk. The city police, according to the spokesman Matthias Bekermann, points out that it is primarily about "defamation against private persons from the Osnabryk area." So far the police are of the opinion that the selection of the addressees is independent of "religious affiliation", said Bekermann when asked by Deutsche Welle.

Other letters throughout Germany

This may apply to some cases in Osnabryk, but also in other parts of Lower Saxony, Hesse, Bavaria and Berlin mosques have received several threatening letters in the past years. The total number of anonymous letters should be higher than necessary. According to information from Deutsche Welles, Muslim communities inform the police, but on the other hand, they give up media attention. Certain representatives from Muslim associations also receive threatening letters, even mentioning family members and minor children.

Police in front of the Cologne mosque - protection after the threat of assassination, 19.11.2021

"The threat to Muslim communities is not new," says Burhan Kesici, chairman of the Islamic Council for the Federal Republic of Germany. Even before there were threatening letters. But then it was obvious that the letters came from a single person, sometimes even with a signature. Meanwhile, Muslim communities receive more frequent threatening letters. Not infrequently there is a connection with terror and NSU. (a far-right criminal organization that killed several people of foreign origin in Germany, ed.). "It makes you insecure," according to Kesici. "And it's demotivating. Because you can't do anything about it."

According to police data from letters sent since 2018, 18 have substantive links to the right-wing extremist group, NSU, National Socialist Illegality. Members of this group killed 9 small migrant entrepreneurs and a policeman between 2000 and 2007. The series of murders remained unclear for a long time. Only in 2011 were the perpetrators discovered.

It is the NSU's connection to terror that makes many Muslims in Germany insecure, says the Secretary General of the Central Muslim Council, Abdassamad El Yazidi, to Deutsche Wellen. "That these letters refer to the NSU, shows that the authors see their ideologues with the same attitude as models, they want to revive the anti-human terrorist acts of the NSU and glorify them."

Abdassamad El Yazidi

Uncertainty and disappointment

Insecurity must be seen in a wider context. The Conference of Islam convened at the end of 2006, and in the fifth round does not get the attention it deserves. At the end of June 2023, a group of independent experts after 3 years of work presented an extensive report on hostility towards Muslims in Germany, in which a wide phenomenon was found. Among the 20 recommendations for the government was the creation of a regular Council of experts as well as the appointment of a federal commissioner for combating hostility towards Muslims. But so far nothing has been done. "None of the 20 recommendations of the expert council have been addressed," criticized Yazidi. "We Muslims are regularly discriminated against, we are attacked in society, but we do not have a person in charge of Muslim life, as in other communities, where this has long been the standard.

Should police forces be stationed in front of mosques? Spokesman Bekermann does not say specifically. Measures are always adapted to the current situation, but there are no data that go beyond a state of abstract endangerment. But some representatives of mosques in Lower Saxony are urgently calling for a visible police presence. Other mosques take care of their own security measures, others appoint a security officer themselves.

The head of the Islamic Council, Kesici, is suspicious of concrete protection of mosques. Who has to get past the cops to get into the lord's house might get scared the most. And the head of the Central Muslim Council, Yazidi, demands more social solidarity. "Of course we expect protection from the security authorities in a concrete case of danger", but "what we expect most before the rise of anti-Muslim racism is more solidarity, more empathy, more commitment to the normalization of Muslim life in Germany and inclusion of Muslims and their communities of general social engagement in our German society."/ DW