Germany Links Hamburg Mosque Organization to Iranian Government

Ger­man media is report­ing that the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency has found evi­dence that a Ham­burg mosque orga­ni­za­tion is linked to the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. Accord­ing to the Die Welt report:

July 16, 2021: The Islam­ic Cen­ter Ham­burg is con­sid­ered the most impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Iran­ian regime in Europe. Now the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion has pub­lished new evi­dence of this. Nev­er­the­less, the sup­port­ing asso­ci­a­tion con­tin­ues to be a part­ner of the city via oth­er means. For three decades, Ham­burg’s Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion has been observ­ing the Blue Mosque on the Out­er Alster; accord­ing to the ser­vice’s assess­ment, Iran­ian Islamists are at work here. The mosque is spon­sored by the Islam­ic Cen­ter Ham­burg (IZH), which, accord­ing to the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion, aims to “export the Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion.” With regard to the IZH, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment also speaks of one of the Islam­ic Repub­lic’s “most impor­tant pro­pa­gan­da cen­ters” in Europe. New doc­u­ments, to which the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion referred on Fri­day, prove the assess­ment from the point of view of the ser­vice. Cur­rent Iran­ian doc­u­ments avail­able to the state office showed the IZH direc­tor Moham­mad Hadi Mofat­te­h’s ties to the Iran­ian regime, spokesman Mar­co Haase said on Fri­day. The IZH’s self-drama­ti­za­tion as a pure­ly reli­gious insti­tu­tion inde­pen­dent of Tehran is there­fore implau­si­ble, he said. “In the opin­ion of the LfV, the IZH is still to be con­sid­ered an endeav­or that is direct­ed against the free demo­c­ra­t­ic basic order as well as against the idea of inter­na­tion­al under­stand­ing,” the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion said. [Trans­lat­ed by DeepL with edits]

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle fur­ther explains that the Islam­ic Cen­tre Ham­burg (IZH) has reject­ed the accu­sa­tion announced planned legal action in this regard.

As GIOR report­ed last month, the IZH has been involved in a state-rec­og­nized shu­ra council.