20 - 26 December 2001
Issue No.565
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 December 2001 Issue No.565 |
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No rest for troublemakers
Germany is cracking down on its Islamist groups. Gamal Nkrumah looks into the implications
Barely a week after Afghan leaders signed a UN-brokered peace agreement in Bonn's Hotel Petersburg, German authorities have carried out raids on the offices of over 20 Islamic organisations and Muslim community centres around the country.
Federal German Interior Minister Otto Schily justified the widespread and surprise raids as a precautionary measure to prevent potential terrorist attacks in Germany and abroad. The German authorities were acutely embarrassed about revelations that several of the suspected instigators of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington had lived, trained and apparently plotted on German soil. Two of the attackers -- Mohamed Atta and Ziad Al-Jarrah -- enjoyed a widely-publicised extended stay in the German city of Hamburg. This, combined with the fact that many of the suspects appear to have flown to the US from Germany, has raised suspicions that a core group of militant Islamists planned the attacks during their stay in Germany. Some of the suspects entered and left Germany several times using fictitious names and identities.
The raids also signal an end to the hitherto lenient application of Germany's relatively liberal political and religious asylum laws, both at federal and state level. Until now, Germany has been accommodating asylum seekers from around the world.
Dawn raids on allegedly Islamist organisations were carried out by police in the German states of Baden Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Perhaps the most brazen of these was the police raid on the headquarters as of a notoriously high- profile group, dubbed as the "Califat Compound" in Cologne. The Califat, a militant Islamist organisation based in Germany but with followers in Turkey and several other European countries, is headed by Metin Kaplan, who has vowed to overthrow the secular Turkish state by violent means and institute an Islamist regime. Two of Kaplan's associates were arrested.
Kaplan is Germany's most infamous Islamist and he has solicited the help of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda organisation in the past. German intelligence agencies claim that Kaplan failed in his attempts to forge close ties with Al-Qa'eda, however. Bin Laden apparently rebuffed Kaplan's overtures. It is difficult to ascertain whether the two Islamist groups collaborated, or to prove that they have suspected terrorist links.
America's most wanted: an Afghan fighter in Tora Bora shows the leaflets being dropped in Afghanistan offering a ransom for the capture of Bin Laden and Ayman El-Zawahri (photo: AFP)
Turkey has long demanded Kaplan's extradition, but Germany has consistently refused to hand him over because he is liable to be executed under Turkish law. Like most European states, Germany has outlawed the death penalty. Kaplan is currently serving a four-year sentence in a German high-security prison. It is not clear whether the German authorities will heed the growing demands -- which are coming not only from Turkey but also from within Germany -- to extradite Kaplan.
Similar raids were carried out on an Islamic community centre in Weisbaden where two men were arrested and documents seized. The men were allegedly Muslim clerics.
Germany has one of the largest and most dynamic Muslim communities in Europe. While the number of Muslims is estimated to be just over three million according to official figures, unofficial estimates put the figure at five million, mostly Turks.
Germany's Turkish community makes up nearly 30 per cent of the foreign residents in Germany. Although the vast majority of Germany's Muslims are ethnic Turks, there are also large Arab and African Muslim communities in the country. North Africans are the most numerous -- Moroccans, for example, are the second largest foreign-born community after the Turkish.
Other large Muslim groups include Tunisian, Algerian, Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Egyptian, Sudanese and Somali communities. Germany also has some 350,000 Afghans and there is a growing Muslim community from South Asia, as Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians have started to migrate to Germany.
"The German Federal Ministry of Interior is not a police ministry as such, nor is it the equivalent of the United States' FBI," said Dr Christoph Hauschild, head of the immigration division at the Federal German Home Affairs Ministry. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Germans "are proud of our traditionally liberal laws that have permitted millions of political refugees to find asylum in Germany over the past four decades. We do not intend changing this tolerant and accommodating tradition." He added a warning, however. "We can no longer afford for political refugees to abuse our hospitality."
Germans have generally been tolerant of the increasingly cosmopolitan and multi-cultural nature of their society, especially in large urban centres. Nowadays, however, more stress is being put on facilitating the integration of foreigners into German society and their fuller participation in local and national politics and in the decision-making process.
"We do not want parallel societies. We want Turks and other foreigners to integrate into German society," Hauschild stressed. Immigrants, he added, are now required to prove that they are participating in government-sponsored integration courses. More emphasis is to be put on teaching the German language to newcomers and foreign residents. A good command of German is now a prerequisite aspect of the integration courses, and more stringent measures are being applied to ensure that foreign-born residents master the German language. Immigrants now have to pass an oral and written test of competence in German.
Integration measures, however, are not restricted to the linguistic arena. Teachers -- who are considered civil servants under German law -- are not being permitted to wear head scarves or the higab, the Islamic veil. Their students, however, can wear the higab.
Socio-economic conditions of Muslims in Germany are far from healthy. Unemployment rates are far higher among ethnic minorities than among ethnic Germans. Over 40 per cent of ethnic Turkish males in Germany are unemployed.
Many first-generation Turks return to Turkey after retirement, as they are not generally keen to settle permanently in Germany. Second and third generation Turks, however, have less binding ties to Turkey.
Nevertheless, Hauschild noted that over 30 per cent of Turks in Germany chose a spouse from Turkey as opposed to either marrying Germans or Turks resident in Germany. Geographically, the community is concentrated in large urban centres.
The German authorities intend to improve their data collection system about foreigners who live in Germany. This is no idle fantasy on their part, and is already being implemented. The Califat, the Servants of Islam and other German-based Islamist groups are now being closely watched and their activities monitored. The introduction of compulsory biometric fingerprints and cranium measurements when obtaining entry visas and residence permits is on the cards. These so-called "biometric identification criteria," are to be introduced for foreigners and German nationals alike, with the ostensible aim of "improving data collection."
Meanwhile, security is being heightened at airports and border checkpoints (Bundesgrenzschutz). German special forces -- the so-called "sky-marshals" -- are now travelling aboard all Lufthansa flights, both domestic and international.
Germany's new anti-terror measures include the lifting of the constitutional protection of religious organisations. Churches already sponsor religious education in Germany and there is a heated debate in the country about whether to permit Muslim centres to sponsor Islamic education as well.
Leyla Onur, a member parliament for the ruling Social Democrat Party, is of Turkish extraction and is concerned about developments. She is particularly interested in the promulgation of new anti-terrorist laws. "We cannot tolerate fanatics in our midst. People like Kaplan must be locked up for the public good. They are killers who preach violence. They must be brought to book," she said.
"Are you a Muslim?" I ventured to ask at the end of the interview. "Me? Oh no," she shrugged her shoulders . "My grandfather was," she added, by way of explanation. One suspects that Onur is the acceptable face of the immigrant population in Germany. She represents the thoroughly integrated, politically co-opted and sanitised aspect of the ethnic minority population in Germany today.
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