Germany: Assault on the Freedom of Religion

We hereby publish an unofficial translation of an article by Dem Volke Dienen:

Featured image: The Blue Mosque in Hamburg; Source: Dem Volke Dienen

The attack on the Blue Mosque is an attack on freedom of religion

The Federal Ministry of Interior has issued a ban against the Islamic Center of Hamburg (IZH), which operates the Shiite Imam Ali Mosque – also called the “Blue Mosque”.

Already last year, the State forces had arrived in the street “Schöne Aussicht” in the north of Hamburg, had stormed and searched the impressive building on the Outer Alster lake. On this November 16, 2023, searches had taken place in a total of 55 properties in seven federal states.

On Wednesday morning, the police, led by the Ministry of Interior, dealt the big blow against the Shiite religious community in the FRG. In Hamburg and seven other federal states, the action was carried out. At the Outer Alster lake in Hamburg, the police arrived at 6 a.m. with a large contingent. Masked law enforcements jumped out of their cars and stormed the building. With some heavy equipment, the police gained access to the mosque and the associated buildings.

There were raids in a total of 53 properties such as mosques, clubs and private apartments in Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Hessen, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. The “Islamic Academy of Germany “, the “Association of Supporters of an Iranian-Islamic Mosque in Hamburg “, the “Center of Islamic Culture ” in Frankfurt (Main), the “Islamic Association of Bavaria ” in Munich and the “Islamic Center Berlin ” were also banned and attacked as alleged sub-organizations of the IZH.

Map of Germany, where the attacks were carried out; Source: Dem Volke Dienen

In Hamburg alone, 30 properties were raided. According to the Ministry of Interior, there were five in Lower Saxony. Four raids took place in the area of Oldenburg, one in Lüneburg. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a private apartment in Greifswald was raided.

More than 80 police forces were deployed on Wednesday morning in a raid against the “Center of Islamic Culture” in Hessen. According to the Hessian Ministry of Interior, three properties in Frankfurt and Bad Homburg were searched: the headquarters in Frankfurt-Rödelheim and the living quarters of two board members.

Four properties were raided in Berlin in the early morning. These were the Islamic Center Berlin in Berlin-Tempelhof and three apartments. In Bavaria, the headquarters of the Islamic Association of Bavaria in Munich was affected. There were also two other raids in the city. An apartment in Stuttgart was also raided. In Bremen, the premises of a company in the Huchting district were the target of the attacks.

For a long time, the campaign has been running against the IZH, which is regularly called the “extended arm” of the Iranian regime in Europe, because the heads of the center are appointed by the supreme religious leader of Iran. This action became particularly drastic after the Al-Aqsa flood operation and the subsequent genocide campaign of the Israeli state against the people of Palestine – for which not only Israel, but also the Federal Republic of Germany has to answer to the International Court of Justice.

In unison, all bourgeois parties agree that this attack on the Shiites in Germany is right, the only criticism was that it was carried out too late or not decisively enough. Of course, the German press monopolies immediately found some Iranians who celebrated this attack on constitutionally guaranteed rights, such as freedom of opinion and religion, in the best Uncle Tom manner.

The Blue Mosque was financed more than half a century ago by Iranian merchants living in Hamburg and the rest of Germany and has since served as a religious meeting point for Shiites living in Germany and beyond. The Shiite mosque on the Outer Alster, built in the sixties, with its magnificent minarets and the beautiful sky-blue dome, could be a landmark for a cosmopolitan Hamburg, now it has become a symbol for the most disgusting German imperialist chauvinism.

Of approximately four million Muslims living in Germany, slightly less than 10 percent – between 280,000 and 360,000 – belong to the Shia. The official Shiite umbrella organization is the Islamic Community of Shiite Communities of Germany (IGS), which was founded on the initiative of the Islamic Center of Hamburg on March 7, 2009.

The attack by the German State is an attack on these hundreds of thousands of believers, even if Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) hypocritically assures: “We are not acting against a religion.” That’s exactly what they do.

This is a phenomenon that began with the declaration of a state of emergency in the so-called corona pandemic. The state concentrates its power in the executive branch and tramples on its own constitution.

To this end, they have demonized hundreds of thousands of citizens of this country – conspiracy theorists, aluminum-hat-wearers, all Nazis. Revisionism and opportunism have supported this with fervor. An entire group of the population is declared an enemy, not some marginal small groups, but hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Something very similar happened with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Every expression of their national identity, every sympathy for their homeland has been demonized – all Putin supporters. The measures against the Shiites were and are a specific expression against their political identity, against a political statement against the genocide of Israel and its imperialist rulers, against what the Iranian regime calls the axis of resistance.

Are you against the state of emergency? – You are an enemy of the state!

You are Russian? – You are an enemy of the state!

Are you a Muslim? – You are an enemy of the state!

This incitement is part of the actions of the State to further the division of the working class in this country. This has reached a new level in recent years. Again and again, larger groups of the population are declared enemies of the state and are correspondingly affected by repression.

Anything else would also contradict the increasingly clear tendency in which German imperialism is developing. In a bourgeois state there is always a struggle between the fascist tendency and the bourgeois-democratic tendency. The likely perspective, with the intensifying crisis, the intensifying class struggle, the intensifying inter-imperialist contradictions and, above all, the intensification of the main contradiction in the world – imperialism and oppressed nations – is that reactionarization, militarization, the fascist tendency will be driven forward. This is something that all progressive people have to consider.