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

[Primroseoil]

https://www.foxnews.com/world/protesters-germany-call-islamic-fundamentalism-caliphate-solution

@Mrsdyna no. The Nazi were not socialists.

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

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?

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

that's true. But i can't see any German government, even a coalition of Die Linke and Bündins Grünen/90 (who will have to cozy up to the SDP) putting up with actual serious calls for a caliphate. How are they going to enact that into law (having said that, i really didn't think we'd actually end up with SelfID here, so what do i know?)

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 that's categorically not what I'm saying. (Maybe I'm overwriting for fear of lack of clarity and paradoxically making myself unclear.)

What I'm saying is that a lack of nuance in the public discourse causes multiple problems.

So that broad brush dismissals of Islam as a bad thing, "backwards", "misogynistic" etc, are a) wrong, b) give understandable offence and therefore c) cause a justified backlash - or an over compensation- which makes it harder, rather than easier, to tackle honour violence, grooming gangs and so on when they crop up in sections of the Muslim community.

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.

Yes absolutely we should be able to do these things (law enforcement, policy implementation...) on a purely factual, justice is blind, rational basis, but the realpolitik's not like that currently.

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

Interesting post generally

This specifically is obviously a bit OTT reporting, but the wider threat of Islamism to the world is not. I recently read Unveiled by Yasmine Mohammed. It's obviously very personal as a story but it's still a bit disconcerting, where it's all going.

I am as worried (if not more worried) for my friends in the US of fundie Christians than i am for me and my friends here in Germany being forced to live under Sharia law.

I would also like to remind everyone that here in Germany governments and individuals have to be VERY careful about appearing to discriminate. Becausee the danger of people just ignoring the actual events/issues and shouting "see, once a nazi always a nazi" is very real.

I literally got asked on my last visit to UK how i handle living among nazis given my trotskyite-style views. An actual honest question.