Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Europe

Turkish religious group founded by Erdogan has no place in France: French government

2021-04-06

[AlArabiya] An influential Turkish religious association founded by the mentor of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has no place in France as it goes against French values, the government spokesman said Thursday.

The Milli Gorus association has courted controversy in France in recent weeks by refusing to take part in a government-coordinated charter against Islamist extremism and over its backing of a new mosque in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Tensions between Paris and Ankara are also running high after a series of rows between Erdogan and President Emmanuel Macron, who warned last week that Turkey would meddle in 2022 presidential elections.

"I consider that this is an association which goes against the values of the (French) Republic, which fights against the values of the Republic, against equality between women and men, against human dignity," Gabriel Attal told BFM TV in an interview.

"Clearly it should not organise activities and exist in the Republic," he added, while emphasising he was not announcing that the organisation was being banned.

Milli Gorus is among three Islamic groups in France which in January refused to sign up to an anti-extremism charter championed by Macron after a spate of attacks blamed on radicals.

Based in the German city of Cologne, Milli Gorus is a pan-European movement for the Turkish diaspora founded by late prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, regarded as the father of political Islam in Turkey and Erdogan's mentor.

Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has in recent years distanced itself from Milli Gorus but its conservative values remain close to those of the president.

According to its website, Milli Gorus is a "key player in the life of Muslims in France". It assists with pilgrimages, funerals, the construction of mosques and religious instruction.

In an interview with Le Point magazine published Thursday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin warned that the state had "nothing to negotiate" with the groups that refused to sign the charter and would step up controls of their activities.

"That certain associations did not wish to sign it has revealed this shadowy world of foreign interference and extremist movements operating on our soil," he said.

French legislators are currently debating a draft law on cracking down on Islamist extremism seen as seeking to limit the influence of religious groups with foreign funding and restrict their role in education.

Officials in Strasbourg, run by a Green mayor, earlier this month approved a grant of 2.5 million euros (nearly $3 million) to Milli Gorus to build a new mosque, sparking an angry reaction from the government.

Link

Europe

More than 32,000 Islamist extremists in Germany

2006-05-22

BERLIN - The number of Islamist extremists based in Germany increased slightly last year but the country faces far lower threat of terrorist attacks than states which took part in the Iraq war, an official report said Monday.

There were 32,100 Islamists living in Germany last year - an increase of about 300 from 2004, said the report by Germany's domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz. Germany has a Muslim minority of about 3 million out of a total population of 82 million, said the report.

The biggest Islamist group is Milli Gorus, a Turkish movement with 26,500 members. Other groups are Hamas with about 300 members, Hezbollah with 900 and the Muslim Brotherhood with 1,300. The Verfassungsschutz has no figures for the number of al-Qaeda members based in Germany, the report said.

Some will be strictly al-Qaeda only, others may be members of above groups as well. Nothing sez you can't carry two or more membership cards

"Even though the degree to which Germany is threatened is clearly lower than for those states which took part in the Iraq war, it must be noted that Germany is still seen ... as a helper of the US and Israel," said the report which underlined the presence of German troops in Afghanistan as boosting this image.

Stand up against Islam anywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, etc, and you're the enemy.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declined to send troops for the 2003 Iraq war and his refusal to deploy German soldiers in Iraq has been kept in place by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The police and military in Germany are gearing up for major security operation during the football World Cup which opens June 9 in Munich and ends July 9 in Berlin.

Link

Europe

Tribunal strips Islamists of German nationality

2005-05-19

A German tribunal said on Wednesday it had stripped three naturalised men of their German nationality because they had failed to disclose that they were members of Turkish Islamist group Milli Gorus. The three lost their appeal to the administrative tribunal in Wiesbaden against a decision by officials in Giessen, north of Frankfurt. The men will have to hand in their German passports when the deadline for any further appeals expires. Officials said they will become stateless, because they renounced their Turkish citizenship when they were naturalised as Germans.

No biggie. They're free to go form a Caliphate now.

Germany keeps Milli Gorus under surveillance and says it has 26,500 members in Germany, making it the largest Islamist group on German soil. The three men were active in the Milli Gorus chapter in the small town of Limburg. Officials say the men should never have been granted German citizenship because Milli Gorus is hostile to democratic principles. Naturalisation is only available to those who speak German and offer allegiance to the German constitution.

Islamists generally not fond of allegiances other than to Big Mo and his holy men.

Link

Europe

German court rejects Turkish imam's expulsion appeal

2005-04-15

"Get out. Stay out. No seething. No whinging. Don't darken my doorway again."

Berlin's state constitutional court on Thursday rejected an appeal by the former imam of the local Mevlana Mosque against his expulsion from Germany on grounds of incitement.

[Ed. note: go read the Mevlana Mosque link for an interesting history of mosque building in Germany.]

The 59-year-old Turkish man, whose identity is not given in German judicial proceedings, was ordered to be expelled by Berlin's office dealing with foreigners in late 2004. The authorities cited a speech he had given at a rally of the extreme nationalist Milli Gorus organisation in which he had praised the suicide attackers in Jerusalem and Iraq as martyrs. The imam had also been shown to use insulting language in his sermons about the Germans, calling them "infidels" and saying that they "stank" and were of "no use to Moslems". Authorities cited the remarks, which were tape-recorded, as evidence that the man was inciting hatred against Americans and Jews and endangering the peace in the local German community. The expulsion order was previously upheld by the Berlin civil court. The Turkish man, who has been living in Germany since 1971 and is one of the founders of the Mevlana Mosque in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, then appealed against the expulsion on to the state constitutional court.

Link

Europe

Dutch Muslim Politician Drops His Mask

2005-04-12

Hat tip: LGF

Cid Martel of the Dutch Disease blog has kindly sent along this revealing translation of a Dutch story from Trouw. Cid explains: "A small Dutch Christian party called ChristenUnie (ChristianUnion) is trying to figure out how to deal with Muslims. Some feel Muslims are a threat, others think that Christians need to be open to people from other cultures. There was a debate recently between the party leader and the director of Milli Gorus. It started out fine but suddenly Haci Karacear, the director, dropped his mask."

Haci Karacaer was rather provocative. He hammered home that Europe has its roots in Islam. "Europe does not have Judeo-Christian roots. We gave them to you!" When they talked about religious education things got even more heated. "AndrÃ©, try to keep up with the facts. Demographics tell you that a school board can't continue to proselytize. I'll go as far as to say that the Christian identity of these schools doesn't mean a damn thing."

AndrÃ© must have been shocked. You think you do your Muslim brothers a favour by giving them an opportunity to build their own schools and suddenly they want to take over yours. Maybe he finally realized Milli Gorus' strategy. Karacear has for years been towing the same line as the Swiss preacher Tariq Ramadan. Avoid conflicts, be friendly, consensual and oppose the segregation of Muslims. Because it's their holy mission to Islamize Western society you can't have ghettoes like Islamic schools. You don't Islamize by locking yourself up, but by using secular or Christian structures and turning them upside down when the time comes. But maybe Karacaer stumbled and dropped his mask a bit too soon. By already playing the demographics card, annexing the Jewish-Christian roots and glaring at the 'black' confessional schools he might have woken up the ChristianUnion.

I don't expect any "awake" state anytime soon. More like a hangover, after years of kool-aid drinking, not going away soon. It may take quite a few season changes for EUros to find their balls and take a stand.

Link

Europe

Germany shuts down Islamist newspaper

2005-02-26

Germany closed down on Friday a Turkish-language Islamist daily newspaper that has denied the Holocaust. Interior Minister Otto Schily put a banning order on the Yeni Akit publishing house, which brings out the European edition of Anadoluda Vakit. The title means "the times in Anatolia". Prosecutors have been collecting evidence against the newspaper for months. The Interior Ministry in Berlin said the closure was ordered because Vakit had incited to ethnic hate. The newspaper had attacked Israel, Jews in general and the fundamentals of western society. Schily said Friday officials had impounded property as well as evidence at the company's offices in a southern Frankfurt suburb.

Despite warnings, the newspaper recently ran a letter headed "Hitler was right". In December last year, a member of parliament held up an issue that claimed "There Was No Holocaust" and appealed to the government to ban the paper. Vakit's publishers have said in the past that the paper has a daily circulation of 10,000. Hesse state's office for the protection of the constitution says the paper appears to be associated with the Milli Gorus movement of Turkey and carries its advertisements. Holocaust denial and incitement to racial hatred are both crimes under the German criminal code.

Link

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