Financing of mosques in Germany

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) supports the initiative of Jens Spahn, vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, who is demanding “a new approach to Muslim organizations in Germany”. “It cannot be that most of the mosques in Germany are financed by other states – and that the imams are officials of foreign states. After all, whoever finances the mosques is able to decide on what is taught,” explained Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Correspondent, in Göttingen today. At the same time, he warned against placing Muslims in Germany under general suspicion. “Many Muslims in Germany do not feel represented by the Islamic associations at all. All democratic parties – and also Mr. Spahn – must be accused of having courted these associations and of still courting them. They decided to make the problematic Islamic associations their partners, and to suppress the voices of critical Muslims,” Sido added.

Over the past few years, the STP had repeatedly called upon the Islamic associations in Germany to advocate for the religious freedom of, e.g., Christians, Yazidis, Bahai’i, and Hazara in the Islamic world – especially in the Near and Middle East. “Unfortunately, there was no reaction to our appeals. In the case of the Turkish mosques, the reason for this was surely that they are controlled by the Turkish Presidium for Religious Affairs, Diyanet. Under Turkish President Erdogan, Diyanet has become an organizations of hate preachers,” Sido reported. “In the year 2018, almost all of the Diyanet-controlled mosques encouraged prayers for a victory of the Turkish army in connection with the internationally wrongful invasion of the Syrian-Kurdish region of Afrin. In these mosques, hate speech against Jews and against Israel has become commonplace.”

As early as in 2013, the STP had asked the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) and other Islamic associations in Germany to advocate on behalf of the Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Mor Gregorius Yohanna Ibrahim, and the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, Boulos Yazigi, from Aleppo. The two Syrian Christian dignitaries had been abducted by unknown persons on April 23, 2013, close to the border to Turkey. The region was and still is partly controlled by groups that are financed by Turkey. The fate of the two clergymen is still unclear.

On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq (August 3, 2014), the STP called on almost all Islamic associations in Germany to remember the genocide in the mosques, asking them to set a sign of solidarity with the persecuted people of Yazidi faith – 200,000 of whom are living in Germany. Unfortunately, the Islamic associations had once again remained silent.