Berlin Justice Senator Retains Anti-Muslim Racism Expert Tied To Muslim Brotherhood Groups

Ger­man media is report­ing that the Berlin Sen­a­tor for Jus­tice and his Greens par­ty have vowed con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion with an indi­vid­ual described as an anti-Mus­lim racism expert, defy­ing oppo­si­tion warn­ings about his ties to Islamist groups. Accord­ing to the WELT arti­cle:

April 9, 2021 A mem­ber of the Berlin “Expert Com­mis­sion on Anti-Mus­lim Racism” was active in asso­ci­a­tions that are con­sid­ered Islamist by the [Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency]. Nev­er­the­less, the sen­a­tor of jus­tice, the inte­gra­tion com­mis­sion­er and the Greens in the cap­i­tal are hold­ing on to him. For what rea­son? The demand of the Berlin CDU group chair­man Burkard Dreg­ger is clear: “Mohamad Haj­jaj must no longer be a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion on anti-Mus­lim racism,” says the oppo­si­tion leader in the Berlin Cham­ber of Deputies. “Those who do not appear to be com­plete­ly on the basis of the Basic Law must not be called as role mod­els in a vis­i­ble function.”

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle fur­ther reports that Mohammed Haj­jaj is a mem­ber of Berlin’s gov­ern­ing Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty who acts as the Berlin rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Ger­man Cen­tral Mus­lim Coun­cil (ZMD). He has also report­ed­ly been long active in lead­ing posi­tions of Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions iden­ti­fied by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency as tied to the country’s Hamas sup­port infra­struc­ture and the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB), a transna­tion­al Islamist influ­ence net­work cov­ered by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR):

• Tei­ba Kul­turzen­trum (Tel­ba Cul­tur­al Cen­ter), led by Ferid Hei­der, a for­mer stu­dent of the GMB’s Insti­tut Européen des Sci­ences Humaines and a fre­quent lec­tur­er at its Ger­man offshoot.

• Palästi­nen­sis­che Gemein­schaft in Deutsch­land (Pales­tin­ian Com­mu­ni­ty of Ger­many), whose mem­ber­ship main­ly con­sists of Hamas supporters.

• Inssan e.V., a Berlin Mus­lim asso­ci­a­tion with numer­ous ties to the GMB and whose chair Lydia Nofal is also a mem­ber of the Berlin Expert Com­mis­sion on Anti-Mus­lim Racism.

Addi­tion­al report­ing by WELT has revealed Haj­jaj also shared anti-Semit­ic imagery equat­ing Israel with Nazi Ger­many via his Face­book profile.

Pri­or GIOR report­ing about the GMB in Ger­many has included:

• An Octo­ber 2020 report that Germany’s main Mus­lim Broth­er­hood umbrel­la Deutsche Mus­lim­is­che Gemein­schaft (DMG), par­tic­i­pat­ed in an inter­na­tion­al high-lev­el con­fer­ence of GMB groups.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment had stopped its fund­ing for Islam­ic Relief Ger­many as a result of its ties to the GMB.

• A March 2021 report that the main umbrel­la body for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe had held a vir­tu­al train­ing event on “intro­duc­ing Islam” fea­tur­ing the for­mer DMG Secretary-General.