Islam groups calling for caliphate in Germany, aibu to be petrified?

This is a v small bunch of extremists so yes I think yabu to be petrified. They don’t represent the 2 billion global Muslim population, just as extreme Christian fundamentalists don’t represent the mainstream Christian groups.
That said - and I say this as a practising Christian - if I was an American the US Christian fundamentalists would concern me having now significant influence in the Republican Party with negative outcomes on women’s rights.

i know it was against the far right. But the Germans are anti extremes. Don't forget half the country was ruled by an extreme version of the left for 40 odd years.

So what they like here is consensus and getting along and the extremes (left or right, religious or secular) are not really their thing.

It will take a while, i think, for the antifa and so on to get to grips with this kind of thing. But it was 1000 men (and a couple of women) in one town.

It will be interesting to see what the 1st May demos do.

Because it's also being reported in several other news outlets.

Didn't that demo have a specific remit as an anti far-right protest, though? Whilst I'm inclined to agree that the far-right is a bigger risk in central Europe than a few hundred idiots in Hamburg yesterday, it does highlight the difference between how, in the west, we tend to treat extremism differently.

Most of us are acutely aware of the need to stop those on the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, yet remain comparatively quiet when faced with the threat from Islamists.

I get that there is a lot of support for the AfD, and in many respects that is more tangible. Problem is, the Muslim Interaktiv has a large following online - we have no way of knowing how many of those followers are sympathetic to the idea of a 'caliphate' and how many are a threat to democracy.

My earlier point still stands - the events yesterday, once again, are symbolic of the coalition's failure to tackle real problems in the society.

for all the "haha Fox news" Kaliphat and Islamisten is trending on German twitter.

I can see comments and articles and what have you which are broadly as i expected: A lot of "oh fuck this is going to give ammo to the AfD" and "we of the AfD will just deport them all" (and the CSU which is the Bavarian wing of the sort of Tory party here, the CDU) are insisting that the German constitution is what counts here and not Sharia law. With the tabloids throwing down a load of "well the SPD [sort of Labour equivalent] and the Greens just voted against outlawing this organisation.

I'll be interested in what the Omas Gegen Rechts [grannies against the (far) right] say.

No I'm sorry, that's a completely unacceptable response.

What you have effectively said here is that it is understandable for safeguarding to be made secondary because people are scared of political interference for fear of being seen as racist and because we don't want muslims to feel stigmatised.

No. Safeguarding ALWAYS needs to be the main concern. Safeguarding children ALWAYS needs to be the main concern. We all have a responsibility to put that first no matter how difficult or problematic that might be or how far it pushes it outside our comfort zone or makes us fear backlash.

You know what, when the Rotherham story broke, it was the white progressives who were falling over themselves to deny any link to coming from a muslim community and the abuse. It was the muslim representatives who were saying, ' Yes we do have a problem in sections of our community.' Good for them.

If you can't name a problem, you can't put in an intervention to address it.

And you know what, I think the British public, muslim and non-muslim, are far more capable of dealing with nuance and context than we give them credit for.

What does that even mean. As if putting a sign up makes it happen. Bonkers.

Although interestingly on our local news today , 2 Muslim Green Party council candidates have been pulled up for sharing anti semitic social media posts relating to the Israel- Palestine conflict. Green Party is as liberal as you can get so it shows how boundaries can become so blurred when there are horrific conflicts occurring in the world.

I think in the next few years no but in the long term absolutely it’s possible if you have enough people who would support it.

There is a quote attributed to Gadhafi “We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

I’m not sure if that or a far right state would be worse. They both seem like fairly appalling possibilities and definitely worth worrying about

They are not much different from any of the umpteen other groups saying, basically, 'people like us should be in charge of everything' and it is very unlikely they will ever have the numbers to actually take over, either through elections or a coup.

Yes, I understand that there will be differences. For example, I read an analysis saying that the area of the UK where there were issues with gangs of predominantly muslim men sexually abusing schoolgirls, were areas with high levels of muslim immigrants from rural pakistan, rather than in areas where more affluent urban muslim migrants had settled.

But that's by the by really, isn't it? It doesn't change the fact that our public services and politicians and 'progressive' members of the public are too scared to even acknowledge the unacceptable behaviours that are coming from some muslim communities, because they are muslim, let alone stand up to them and call the behaviour unacceptable.

Well one very practical aspect is that rhetorical sweeping statements that tar the whole of Islam with the same brush, make it harder for the professionals going after the abuse gangs to do so without political interference. So that's directly related to your concern. Not to mention the much larger issue of making the moderate Muslim majority feel stigmatised and misrepresented.

Wakefield I believe.
Yes, I understand that there will be differences. For example, I read an analysis saying that the area of the UK where there were issues with gangs of predominantly muslim men sexually abusing schoolgirls, were areas with high levels of muslim immigrants from rural pakistan, rather than in areas where more affluent urban muslim migrants had settled.

But that's by the by really, isn't it? It doesn't change the fact that our public services and politicians and 'progressive' members of the public are too scared to even acknowledge the unacceptable behaviours that are coming from some muslim communities, because they are muslim, let alone stand up to them and call the behaviour unacceptable.

And they need to.

Remember, Fox News is very intent on claiming that Islam is some sort of major political power in Europe, especially UK (if you ask why they'll say.... 'Uhm, Sadiq Khan!').

There are some extremists about, who are not at all representative of Islam, but they are small in number and about a billion miles from ever having the power to establish the sort of society they're talking about. I don't say this because I am 'virtue signalling' but one needs to look objectively at what kind of threat these extremists pose - deadly attacks? Sadly yes. Dominating our political systems? No.

It's pure Islamophobic scaremongering (there are lots of Muslims, therefore they're going to take over and establish an extremist government), the equiavent of the antisemitic 'The Jews control everything' narrative (I am Jewish, BTW)

well, OP, you counter protest. Get on the streets as we already did a couple of times over here (i was one of 100,000 in Düsseldorf for eg, even my tiny town had 5,000) and protest.
And be careful who you vote for.

No, but its more predominant that people are accepting here.

Lets go back to the case of the (non-Muslim) boys who took a copy of the Koran to school and it got dropped to the floor.

The autistic boy who got the 'blame' was subject to death threats and was utterly terrified, unable to eat, terribly, terribly affect on his mental health.

His mother went to a meeting about this at the local mosque with the muslim community. A police officer was there. Did the local Imam/ muslim community leaders tell her they condemned the death threats? Did they offer her their sympathies at this difficult time? Did they reassure her they would co-operate fully with the police in any way they could to bring the people threatening her son to justice? Did they say they would be making clear statements to their community about how unacceptable the treatment of her son was?

What town was the Quran on the floor incident?

We have this situation in some parts of the UK whereby most of the Muslim migration to X textile mill came from Y village 50 years ago, and then the chain migration continued via fiancé visas etc.

Which means that in some parts of the country most of the local Muslim community is from one Islamic tradition. I think sometimes non-Muslims in those areas end up with a skewed perception of Islam itself. Which is natural, really, how can you appreciate the diversity within Islam if you're surrounded by Deobandi Muslims and nothing else? The trouble is that that narrowness is invisible to the people concerned.

You're very welcome, @SuziQuinto and @AdamRyan; personally I have no time for any organised religion, but it does bug me when they're misrepresented and the basic tenets twisted

As has been said elsewhere, so much of this is cultural rather than religious; trouble is, when the culture involves other races you get slammed for mentioning that too - even though approaches differ widely within them

Have not RTFT.

IMO this is only going to lead to a rise in far right parties over here (I'm in Gernamy, not where this was)

It is going to be interesting, watching how the next government is going to take shape if they are all going to try to avoid partnering up with the AfD.

Funny ‘Islamic stare’ has never done anything in the US or Israel. Remember how the US funded the Taliban to fight the Russians, and Israel funded Hamas to split the PLO? We always have to have a bogeyman and someone to blame to divert us from what our government is actually doing. It was the communists, the Chinese, immigrants, blacks, asylum seekers, Muslims. As long as they’re not ‘like us’. Look at the difference between Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza Palestine. Poor Ukrainian refugees, we’ll pay for you to come here. Sanctions immediately on Russia. But we say nothing to the deliberate starvation of nearly 2 million people? I don’t think it’s Muslims we should be afraid of. I’m more afraid of AI, global warming and the next shitshow from America. And if the Tories get in again - then I’ll be really REALLY afraid!

The far right English Defence League hijacked pro-Palestine protests in London, using ‘extreme violence’.

I’m guessing OP didn’t bother starting a thread then. I wonder why?

@Mrsdyna no. The Nazi were not socialists.

Most economies were and are mixed economies. Doesn't make them socialist.

No, but its more predominant that people are accepting here.

Lets go back to the case of the (non-Muslim) boys who took a copy of the Koran to school and it got dropped to the floor.

The autistic boy who got the 'blame' was subject to death threats and was utterly terrified, unable to eat, terribly, terribly affect on his mental health.

His mother went to a meeting about this at the local mosque with the muslim community. A police officer was there. Did the local Imam/ muslim community leaders tell her they condemned the death threats? Did they offer her their sympathies at this difficult time? Did they reassure her they would co-operate fully with the police in any way they could to bring the people threatening her son to justice? Did they say they would be making clear statements to their community about how unacceptable the treatment of her son was?

No they didn't. She, the representative of a schoolchild victim of a crime ( threats of death and harassment) was crying and apologising and pleading with them to save her son. Like she was in a sharia court. In the UK. Clearly, in the minds of the muslim community at that meeting, they were the victims, not her son.

This was expressed clearly by the representative of the muslim community on Anti-social on radio 4 who laughed away the death threats but was clear on how awful and distressing it is for muslims when the Koran is disrespected and touches the floor. Clearly, to her, her religious values tell her that disrespecting the Koran is worse that death threats to a traumatised school child.

That programme really made me realise that the difference in values is not between Britons ( whether muslim or not) and a few extremist, but a difference in values between muslims and non-muslims which is much more widely spread than I realised.

Now I know that there are muslims who will condemn the treatment of that boy, I have read the writings of muslim women saying that the Prophet could deal with insults in his day and that muslims should be able to deal with them in this day.

But that case really showed that its really quite widespread and mainstream that muslims expect non-muslims to show the same respect for the artefacts of their religion as they do. And that is not acceptable in a liberal society. All of us have to be able to cope with our beliefs being criticised or mocked. None of us are above challenge. That's what living in pluralistic and tolerant society means. Its not always easy, but the alternative is untenable. The alternative, in this case, was an effective sharia court in the UK where one religion felt emboldened and entitled to assert their religious beliefs over and above the child victim of death threats and harassment. And that's not just unacceptable, its genuinely shocking. The Ex-muslims who have fled repressive regimes or repression in their religion I have heard speak on this case, are absolutely horrified to see the oppression they have fled, coming to Britain through this case.

And lets not forget, as I said above, the teacher who is STILL, years later, in hiding for his life, his utterly ruined, after he received death threats for talking about the Charlie hebdo murderers in a lesson on free speech. And he was hung out to dry by our cowardly Education authorities (who had sanctioned the lesson) and our cowardly politicians.

We should be worried when our leaders are too scared to stand up to would-be thugs and murderers who are trying to intimidate non-adherents into religious obedience to aspects of their faith. . We should be.

I think people are being harsh towards the OP. It doesn't matter that it's just over a thousand people - they're gathering to call for absolutely horrendous treatment of women and gay men. I'd find it worrying if a thousand white nationalists gathered to call for the same thing.

Thanks, I won't, nor was I.

It is an authoritarian religion that is not known for being particularly progressive… Of course it’s right wing. Did you see the reaction of Muslims when primary school children were taught about sex and gender? Virtually all theocratic religion have more in common with the right wing than the progressive left. Seen any pride marches in Muslim areas lately?

Oh the school gate mobs in the Midlands and Yorkshire were terribly reactionary and depressing, yes. (I'm not a fan of the current Saturday London marches, either.)

But fundamentalist wings of all religions are the same. Moderate traditions in the same religions are less authoritarian. Like Christianity. (There's a basic problem with how to interpret ancient books as codes for modern living.) Like anything.

No amount of extremist, Islamist, fascism makes the whole religion of Islam "right wing".

Well you shouldn’t worry, it will only add to your worried state of mind.