Twenty-four Muslims from across Germany formally passed their imam training at the country’s new Islamkolleg Deutschland in the northwestern city of Osnabrück on Saturday.
The graduates, who included men and women, received their first certificate of completion after attending a two-year part-time course.
“This is a historic day,” said the chairman of the Islamkolleg’s board of trustees, former German President Christian Wulff during a press conference.
Germany’s famous festival, Oktoberfest, attracts plenty of dirndl- and lederhosen-wearing merrymakers to Munich, Bavaria. This year, it runs from September 16 until October 3.
Yet unpleasant incidents can occur with millions of people gathering at the Wiesn, the area in Munich where the festival takes place, and beer flowing. The “Sichere Wiesn,” or “Safer Oktoberfest,” campaign supported by Munich’s city health department assists female visitors in cases of harassment. This year, the campaign has helped 143 women and girls who felt unsafe during the festival’s first week, including seven suspected cases of drink spiking.
These women sought help at Sichere Wiesn’s so-called Safe Space, located on the Oktoberfest grounds behind the Schottenhamel beer tent. It is open daily during the week.
The fact that the left-liberal government of Germany and the centrist leadership in France are hoping for a less confrontative government in Warsaw after the Polish elections on October 15th should come as no surprise, but they may be more actively engaged in bringing about such a change, according to a pro-government Polish journalist and a former Polish Prime Minister.
In Germany, a Syrian migrant tried to kill a snack bar employee, stabbing him in the neck. There was nothing unusual about that: there has been, during the last few years, a wave — a decuman — of murderous attacks by Muslim migrants throughout Europe. But this one was noted because the German police tried, yet again, to hide the criminal’s nationality from the public.
For centuries, Jews have debated what it means to be one. One thing all Jews can probably agree on is that a connection to extremists with antisemitic views and aims to overthrow the German republic is a disqualifier.
But that hasn’t stopped some from trying.
At least 10 associations calling themselves Jewish received official, nonprofit status, only to be revealed to have links to Germany’s “Reichsbürger” (literally, “citizens of the German Empire”) scene.
Popular support for the right-conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) has, for the fourth time in the last few months, climbed to a new record high. Amid a deluge of problems facing the nation, including skyrocketing illegal immigration numbers, soaring prices, and a stagnant economy, the left-liberal political class in Germany has, so far, refused to address the concerns of working-class Germans. But even they are beginning to change their tune.
Germany’s president has warned that the country has “reached the limit” of the number of migrants it can take in.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that the fact a third of all migrants who reached the EU come to Germany means that the country has “like Italy, reached the limit of what it can bear”.
Talking to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Wednesday, Mr Steinmeier said that he “took seriously the calls for help from local government” and said that “stronger controls and surveillance on Europe’s external borders” were necessary.
Police in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart on Sunday said dozens of people, including at least 26 officers were injured amid unrest surrounding an Eritrean cultural festival.
Along with 26 officers, four people participating in the event and two protesting it were injured, police said in a statement. Six of the injured officers were being treated at the hospital.
The clash was the latest in a string of incidents at such events in Germany and elsewhere, with fights breaking out between Eritrean government supporters and opponents.
Translation: Stuttgart. Riots broke out at an Eritrean event on Saturday afternoon. Several hundred Africans attacked participants and police officers with stones, bottles and boards. 10 officers were injured.
🇩🇪 Stuttgart. W sobotnie popołudnie podczas erytrejskiej imprezy wybuchły zamieszki. Kilkuset Afrykanów zaatakowało uczestników i funkcjonariuszy policji kamieniami, butelkami i deskami. Rannych zostało 10 funkcjonariuszy.https://t.co/mMr8xr2Gub pic.twitter.com/cQj0Dxr2ON
— Adam Gwiazda (@delestoile) September 16, 2023
Germany’s secret political police were weaponized against those considered “Islamophobes” by the Home Secretary.
Sigrid Herrmann (SPD) is an expert on political Islam and publishes the blog “Islamism and Society,” where she provides well-founded reports on the main actors and activities of radical Islam in Germany. Herrmann helped reveal the connections between the “charitable organization” Islamic Relief, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gaza affiliate, Hamas.
Islamic Relief is banned in Israel and the UAE for its terror ties, but was funded by the German government, advertised by German public broadcasters and supported by major German political figures such as President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Bundestag Vice-President Aydan Özoguz, until Herrmann’s revelations in 2021, when they had to shelve the collaboration.
With almost exactly a year to go until Germans head to the ballot boxes in Brandenburg to elect a new state parliament, the conservative, anti-globalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is, for the first time, the strongest political force, with nearly one in three voters supporting the party.
Far-left anarchists have taken credit for an attack on German railways that took place on Friday, September 8th, as three fires broke out on power lines of the Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national rail company, in the area around the city of Hamburg, leading to the cancellation of all service between Hamburg and Berlin until Saturday.
According to a report from the German tabloid Bild, the suspects managed to enter an isolated area not open to the public and set cables on fire after opening a cable duct.
AfD’s surging popularity says more about the growing dissatisfaction with the political elite than about ‘extremism’ in Germany.
Rising support for right-wing AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) is not due to the ‘radicalisation’ of the country reported by most media outlets, but is a protest against the establishment’s unpopular policies, according to a new survey by the Allensbach Institut for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Participants in the poll were asked questions about various issues to determine how ‘radical’ their views were. The results show that only 2% of participants were deemed to be on the hard right of the political spectrum and another 2% on the extreme left. Of the respondents, 12% were considered to be strongly on the right, and 7% were strongly on the left. Everyone else had centrist views or was moderately on the right or left.
AfD voters are rebelling against a failing economy
For decades, Germany was a beacon of centrist political stability. During her 16-year leadership, Angela Merkel led a succession of grand coalitions which neutralised the political extremes, and piloted her country through an era of steady economic growth.
Today, that political settlement has dissolved. Germany’s reliance on Russian gas has devastated its industrial economy, while the surface tranquillity of the Merkel era is a distant memory. Alternative für Deutschland, a far-Right populist party, has been the beneficiary of this chaos, surging in the polls to become the second-most popular party in Germany.
Special forces raided the Cologne apartment of a couple at the centre of the dissemination of pro-Russian propaganda on Monday, August 21st. The couple was suspected of violating weapons laws and being in possession of a Kalashnikov machine gun.
Elena Kolbasnikova and her partner Max Schlund are both well-known activists previously targeted by media outlets for their fundraising efforts in aid of the Russian war effort in Ukraine as well as their vocal anti-NATO sympathies.
The head of one of Germany’s major Roman Catholic associations has called for banning members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from lay positions within the Roman Catholic Church, arguing their conservative values are in contradiction to the faith.
Irme Stetter-Karp, President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), stated that she did not believe that members of the AfD and their values were compatible with Christianity, and called their recent surge in the polls “dangerous.”
