Germany: Muslims want more burial space

Germany: Muslims want more burial space
     
Via The National:

In a sombre sign that Muslims are becoming more integrated in German society, the 300,000-strong Islamic community in Berlin has complained that it is running out of graveyard space, and is urging authorities to help solve the problem.

The shortage of sites reflects a desire by increasing numbers of Muslims to be buried in Germany rather than be taken to their countries of origin after their death. Community leaders have stepped up their campaign this month for more burial space.

"They live here in the second and third generation and they want to be buried where they lived and worked," said Ender Cetin, the chairman of the Muslim association at the Sehitlik mosque in Berlin. "This is a problem that urgently needs to be solved." 

(source)

Germany: Online terrorist threat against far-right party, magazine

Germany: Online terrorist threat against far-right party, magazine

Via AP:

German officials say they’ve taken security measures at a popular German magazine and for members of a small far-right party after a known terrorist called for them to be attacked in a video online.

(...)

In it, Bonn-born Yassin Chouka, who is believed to be with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, calls for Muslims to kill Pro NRW members.

He also calls for the murder of Der Spiegel employees for printing pictures showing the cartoons.

(source)

EU: German sues Macedonia for rendition

 EU: German sues Macedonia for rendition

Via AP:

A German citizen took his claim that the CIA illegally whisked him to a secret prison in Afghanistan to Europe's human rights court Wednesday in what could be the final chapter of a case that has shed light on U.S. practices in the war on terror.

Khaled El-Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, says he was brutally interrogated at a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for more than four months after being kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, apparently mistaken for a terror suspect. He says he went on a hunger strike for 27 days and was eventually flown back to Europe and abandoned in a mountainous area in Albania.

(source)

Turks in Germany, ‘We won’t allow a cover up’

Turks in Germany, ‘We won’t allow a cover up’


Via Hürriyet Daily News (h/t Turkish Digest):

The discovery of a neo-Nazi cell that was apparently able to go on a nationwide spree of racially motivated murders of 9 immigrants over several years, under the noses of the German intelligence services, has sent shock waves across the country.

“German ministers said they were shocked. We told them we are surprised that they are surprised,” said Hilmi Kaya Turan, deputy head of the Turkish Community in Germany, or ATT, one of the hundreds of nongovernmental organizations representing the 3 million-strong Turkish-German community. “The fact that they are surprised actually frightens us,” he told a visiting Turkish parliamentary group, invited by the German government.

(source)

Germany: Five Yazidi siblings jailed for 'honour' killing

Germany: Five Yazidi siblings jailed for 'honour' killing



I reported about this murder in the past, but I did not realize the family was Yazidi.

Via Postmedia News:

A court in Germany jailed five Kurdish siblings on Wednesday for the "honour killing" of their 18-year-old sister after she left home to live with her German boyfriend.

Germany: ‘Berlin Needs You!’

Germany: ‘Berlin Needs You!’

Germany: Iranian death threat sends rapper underground

Germany: Iranian death threat sends rapper underground

Germany: Malaysians to bring Islamic investment

Germany: Malaysians to bring Islamic investment


Via DW:

Islamic investing represents a 1.2 trillion-euro market. Now one Malaysian firm wants to bring the trend to Germany. Others have tried and failed before, so it could be a struggle.

Confident and professional, the female chief executive of Malaysia-based CIMB-Principal recently gave a press conference in Frankfurt about the only registered Islamic investment fund in Germany.

With uncovered hair, red lipstick and silver earrings, Noripah Kamso said, "I want to share the new i-word with you. It doesn't stand for iPad, iPhone or inflation–but for Islamic banking."

(source)

Germany: Cop suspended for radical Islamist beliefs

Germany: Cop suspended for radical Islamist beliefs

via the Local (h/t Jihad Watch):

Western German police chiefs have suspended an officer after they discovered he belonged to a branch of Salafist Muslim fundamentalists, and had been distributing radical religious material, it was reported on Tuesday.

“Disciplinary action is underway, with the aim to dismiss the man from the police force,” North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Ralf Jäger confirmed on Tuesday. It is the first time a policeman has been suspended for radical beliefs in Germany.

The head of the Essen police force told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the suspended officer does not believe in the German constitution, which is required of police officers - rather he holds Islamic law to be paramount. When questioned by state security if he lived under Islamic law, he said only that “what he believed privately was his business.”

(source)

Germany: "Germany will not allow anybody to impose religious wars on us"

Germany: "Germany will not allow anybody to impose religious wars on us"

Via Reuters:

Germany is considering a legal ban on ultra-conservative Salafist Muslim groups, its interior minister said on Wednesday after violent clashes with the police, one of which was provoked by German ultra-rightists.

(...)

"We will use all the possibilities at the disposal of a constitutional state to oppose them (violent Salafists) wherever they fight against... our constitutional order," Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told n-tv television.

"Germany will not allow anybody to impose religious wars on us, neither radical Salafists nor far-right parties such as the Pro NRW," he said, referring to the ultra-nationalist that clashed with the Salafists in Bonn.  

(source)

North Rhine-Westphalia: Gov't wants ban on Muhammad cartoons

North Rhine-Westphalia: Gov't wants ban on Muhammad cartoons

Via Parool:

The government of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia wants to curtail the display of the Danish Muhammad cartoons.  Minister of the Interior Ralf Jäger (SPD) said he hoped such a ban will stand up in court.

This after a Pro NRW demonstration in Bonn displaying Muhammad cartoons led to violent clashes between police and Salafists.  Pro NRW also held demonstrations outside mosques in Aachen and Leverkusen, with calm counter-demonstrations.

Germany: Foreign Minister calls for international campaign against Internet terrorism

Germany: Foreign Minister calls for international campaign against Internet terrorism

Via AFP:

Germany's foreign minister on Friday called for international efforts to eradicate "virtual hiding places" for terrorists who use the internet to plan attacks.

Speaking at a UN Security Council debate on terrorism, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said: "The Internet is increasingly abused by terrorist groups for incitement and recruitment."

He highlighted a case in Germany where an extremist group had used the internet "unnoticed for many years" to "plan vicious attacks and recruit supporters." 

(source)

Bonn: Salafists clash with police over Muhammad cartoon protest (UPDATED)

Bonn: Salafists clash with police over Muhammad cartoon protest

Salafists in Bonn clashed with police on Saturday after a Pro-NRW protest displaying anti-Islam cartoons.  29 police agents were injured, and over 100 people were arrested.

Update: Video was mistakenly dropped from original post. English-language report: AGI.

Germany: loner terrorists are greatest threat

Germany: loner terrorists are greatest threat

Via the Associated Press:

Germany's top security official said Friday the greatest terror threat to the country no longer stems from big networks like al-Qaida but from small, independent terrorist cells or "lone wolf" perpetrators.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told The Associated Press that terrorist activities by Muslim extremist organizations have evolved to be decentralized, making their activities harder to track for authorities.

"What worries us" is that there will likely also be more lone wolf attackers who are not directly connected to a major terror group but have radicalized themselves, often through propaganda available online, he said. "There will likely be more of them because the Islamists' propaganda networks seem to be further gearing up."

(source)

Kenya: Belgian, German seized over suspected terror links

Kenya: Belgian, German seized over suspected terror links


Via the Daily Nation:

Police in Lamu have arrested two foreigners suspected to be members of the Al-Shabaab terror group.

Lamu East police boss Samuel Obara on Wednesday said the Tunisian born men were Belgian and German citizens.

(source)

Germany:Police arrest 30 Salafists after clashes

Germany:Police arrest 30 Salafists after clashes

Police spokeswoman Anja Meis said a group of Salafists protesting against a far-right march threw stones and attacked officers separating the two rallies in the western German city of Solingen Tuesday. Three policemen and a passer-by were injured. (source)

Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Germany: Al-Qaeda plans buried in porn

Via CNN:

On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards.

Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja."

Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence -- more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group's most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.

Future plots include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by Pakistani militants that paralyzed the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Ten gunmen killed 164 people in that three-day rampage.

Terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic were among the documents, too, according to intelligence sources.

(source)

Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign

Germany: Party plans Mohammed cartoons campaign

('Freedom, not Islam')

Via the Local:

A far-right party on the campaign trial in Germany's most populous state is threatening to put caricatures of Mohammed outside mosques in a string of cities, prompting fears of violence.

The "Pro NRW" party in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia has already shown anti-Islamic caricatures in Essen and Gelsenkirchen, though the police prevented demonstrations taking place directly outside mosques.

(...)

Interior Minister in state Ralf Jäger condemned the campaign and expressed support for planned counter-demonstrations. "Pro NRW is committing spiritual arson," he told the paper.

"The party is consciously taking into account that Muslims will feel provoked and upset. The authorities will exhaust all legal avenues to prevent a xenophobic hate campaign."

(source)

Germany: "We will conquer Rome!"

Germany: "We will conquer Rome!"

Via KATH.NET, translated by Via Catholic Church Conservation:

A 26-year-old regularly preaches in a mosque in Solingen - Cologne City Superintendent: His theses are an "impertinence", Representatives of Muslim organizations distance themselves

Anti-Christian expressions of a radical Islamic preacher concern the Protestant Church Association of Cologne City. The 26-year-old Austrian Mohamed Mahmoud was released in September 2011 after a four-year prison sentence in a Vienna prison on charges of forming and promoting a terrorist organization . After a short stay in Berlin, he moved at the end of 2011 to Solingen, near Düsseldorf. Currently he is living in Erbach in Hessen(Odenwald).

Several television stations reported on his challenge to Christianity: "We will conquer Rome! And then Peter's Square, or whatever it's called, yes, that is [...]to be the site of the conversion and the area to implement Allah's laws in order to implement Allah's punishment, so that enough people will be able to witness the events!" The City superintendent of the Protestant Church Association of Cologne and region, Rolf Domning, called the remarks of the preacher's hate "impudence."

(source)

Catholic Church Conservation updates that Mohamed Mahmoud is to be deported from Germany.

Germany: Neo-Nazi attacks on the rise in western Germany

Germany: Neo-Nazi attacks on the rise in western Germany

Via DW:

Scenes from near Nuremberg in Bavaria: Right-wing extremists threaten some young Kurds, shouting, "Get out you damned Turks!" Then several neo-Nazis attack the group, brutally beating up the migrants. One young man sustains severe injuries, falls into a coma and only barely survives.

On a different occasion some youths hold a vigil for the victims of right-wing extremism. They hold up banners saying "Fascism - never again." Suddenly they are bombarded with fireworks by a group of masked people. Later the youth center is daubed with swastikas and the threat: "We will get you all!"

(source)