German Ruling Party Adopts Resolution Ending Cooperation With Islamist Groups

Germany’s rul­ing CDU/CSU par­ty has adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion aimed at curb­ing Islamism in the coun­try. Accord­ing to the res­o­lu­tion, var­i­ous forms of coop­er­a­tion between the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and Islamist groups under obser­va­tion by the domes­tic intel­li­gence agency should be discontinued:

April 20, 2021 Asso­ci­a­tions that pose a threat to our free and demo­c­ra­t­ic basic order and are mon­i­tored by the fed­er­al and state [domes­tic intel­li­gence] offices can­not be part­ners of our state at the same time. Islamists must be treat­ed with the same dis­tance and rejec­tion as the polit­i­cal extrem­ists from the left and right. In future, there­fore, all finan­cial dona­tions, sub­si­dies, con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ships and coop­er­a­tion with Islam­ic […] asso­ci­a­tions that are the object of obser­va­tion by the [domes­tic intel­li­gence] offices must be checked and dis­con­tin­ued at the fed­er­al and state lev­els. [trans­lat­ed from German]

Read the rest here.

The res­o­lu­tion demands the imple­men­ta­tion of a doc­u­men­ta­tion cen­ter mon­i­tor­ing Islamism in Ger­many and Europe and calls for increased trans­paren­cy regard­ing the fund­ing of the country’s Islam­ic asso­ci­a­tions and mosques. The paper fur­ther rec­om­mends the estab­lish­ment of sev­er­al pro­fes­sor­ships through­out Ger­many in order to deal with the issue sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and says the state should under­take efforts to ensure the train­ing of imams takes place with­in the country.

Accord­ing to Ger­man media, when enact­ed, these reg­u­la­tions would indi­rect­ly affect the Islam­ic umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many (ZMD), some of whose mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions are mon­i­tored by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency. Although the ZMD is esti­mat­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Agency for Civic Edu­ca­tion to rep­re­sent less than one per­cent of all Ger­man Mus­lims direct­ly, it is regard­ed as the government’s main dia­logue part­ner for soci­etal issues per­tain­ing to Islam and the local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. One of ZMD’s found­ing mem­bers until its 2019 sus­pen­sion was the Deutsche Mus­lim­is­che Gemein­schaft (DMG), rep­re­sent­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Ger­many, a transna­tion­al Islamist influ­ence net­work cov­ered by the GIOR.

Addi­tion­al­ly, In Decem­ber 2020, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment had stopped its fund­ing for Islam­ic Relief Ger­many as a result of its ties to the GMB. Pri­or GIOR report­ing about the GMB in Ger­many has also included:

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

• 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.

• An April 2021 report that the Berlin Sen­a­tor for Jus­tice and his Greens par­ty had vowed con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion with an “anti-Mus­lim racism expert” rep­re­sent­ing the Berlin ZMD chap­ter and who has numer­ous ties to the GMB in Germany.