Head of Turkish Mosque Association Branch Resigns Over Anti Semitism Accusations

Ger­man media is report­ing that the head of the Göt­tin­gen branch of a Turk­ish-Ger­man mosque asso­ci­a­tion has resigned over accu­sa­tions of anti­semitism. Accord­ing to the NDR report:

March 4, 2021 The chair­man of the Ger­man-Islam­ic Mosque Asso­ci­a­tion (DITIB) in Göt­tin­gen, Mustafa Keskin, has resigned from his post. He is alleged to have spread hate mes­sages against Jews and Arme­ni­ans. Keskin reject­ed the anti-Semi­tism accu­sa­tion. He announced legal action. The accu­sa­tions come from the social­ist youth orga­ni­za­tion “Die Falken.” Keskin is said to have referred to Israeli sol­diers as “Jew­ish dogs,” for exam­ple. Some of his posts sug­gest­ed that Jews and Israelis were delib­er­ate­ly killing chil­dren. He also alleged­ly used the iden­ti­fy­ing sym­bol of the Islamist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on sev­er­al occa­sions. In his What­sApp pro­file, the ex-Ditib exec­u­tive had used a pic­ture depict­ing Don­ald Trump and Joe Biden as pup­pets of invest­ment banker Jacob Roth­schild. In anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy myths, the Roth­schild fam­i­ly serves as a place­hold­er for “the Jews” who are sup­posed to con­trol finan­cial mar­kets and governments.[Translated by DeepL]

Read the rest here.

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs, also known as DITIB, man­ages over 900 mosques in Ger­many. The Turk­ish Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet) deter­mines the the­o­log­i­cal guide­lines for the imams’ ser­mons, and the Turk­ish con­sulate pays their salaries. The report notes that DITIB dis­tances itself from Keskin’s postings:

Mean­while, the asso­ci­a­tion on Thurs­day dis­tanced itself from Keskin’s remarks. “None of the post­ings and opin­ions of the said chair­man can even begin to reflect an atti­tude that could find tol­er­a­tion among a DITIB offi­cial,” said the head of depart­ment at the fed­er­a­tion, Zek­eriya Altuğ. He added that the asso­ci­a­tion had demand­ed his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion. The inci­dents are now to be dealt with.

Oth­er GIOR report­ing about DITIB includes:

• In Decem­ber 2020, we report­ed on DITIB col­lab­o­rat­ing with Mil­lî Görüş to influ­ence the Turk­ish dias­po­ra in France.

• In Novem­ber 2020, we report­ed on Turk­ish-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tions protest­ing a Turk­ish offi­cial’s request that DITIB sup­ply can­di­dates for Turk­ish teach­ers in mosques.

• In Octo­ber 2020, we report­ed on the head of DITIB ask­ing the orga­ni­za­tion’s stu­dent dorm coor­di­na­tors to encour­age their stu­dents to work for the organization.