Germany Mulls ‘Mosque Tax’ to Help Distract Muslims from ‘Foreign Influence’

Islamization Backlash, in Germany?

It's about time and, possibly, too late

Sehitlik Mosque in Berlin

In a bid to curb a potentially radicalizing foreign influence on its Muslim residents, German lawmakers are considering a new “mosque tax,” intended to make Muslim communities self-reliant and under more control.

Many German mosques are sponsored and are de-facto controlled from abroad, leaving local authorities in the dark about what happens inside. Now, several MPs have come up with an idea that they call a “solution” for a problem that has become increasingly unnerving for Berlin in recent years.

The MPs’ proposal involves the introduction of a special tax to be paid by all practicing Muslims in Germany, which would then be redistributed by the state among all officially registered Islamic religious institutions. A similar tax already exists in Germany and some other European countries for Catholic and Evangelical Christians.

The initiative is aimed at helping “Islam in Germany free itself from the influence of foreign states and get a stronger domestic orientation,” Thorsten Frei, the deputy head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) faction in the German Parliament, said, calling the proposed tax “an important step in that direction.”

Frei’s idea immediately received support from other members of the ruling Grand Coalition. “Independent financing” would make the communities congregating in mosques in Germany more “transparent,” Michael Frieser, a legal expert and a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union – a long-time CDU ally, said. A prominent member of the Social Democratic Party, Burkhard Lischka, called the suggestion “worthy of discussion.”

Other suggestions voiced by MPs include legally obliging the imams preaching in Germany to upload their sermons on the internet uncut. “The mosques must be open and transparent,” said Frieser.

One of the top figures in the CSU, Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, has said Islam has no place in German society...

"Islam has no cultural roots in Germany and with Sharia as a legal system, it has nothing in common with our Judeo-Christian heritage," Alexander Dobrindt, the deputy leader of Bundestag’s biggest party, CDU/CSU, told Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

“Our ideas of tolerance and charity, freedom and equality,

cannot be found in the Islamic world." 

"These values are exactly the reason why so many people want to live with us,” he added, noting that migration from Christian countries to Muslim ones is almost non-existent.

However, any potential legislation on that matter has a long way to go before it could be implemented. Any draft bill should be first discussed with the German states as it falls within their jurisdiction, Lischka explained. So far, no detailed account of the future legislation has been presented.

Still, the idea also seemingly received backing from the Interior Ministry, which said “it can be a solution.” However, the ministry also said that the initiative would mostly rely on grassroots support from the Muslim communities themselves as it would still require a great deal of self-organization on their part.

Anti-Islam book becomes German bestseller less than two weeks after release — RT World News:

A new book highly critical of Islam and Muslims has been flying off the shelves in Germany to become a non-fiction bestseller. Mainstream media panned it for a simplistic approach to the religion.

The German Muslim community has so far remained conspicuously tight-lipped about the initiative. An outspoken unorthodox female preacher, Seyran Ates, founder of the first “liberal” mosque in Berlin, has been the only one to comment on the initiative so far. Ates backed the proposal by saying that “in the future everything that the community needs could be paid-for by its members themselves.”

For now, most Muslim religious institutions in Germany rely on foreign aid in some form. The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), directly controlled by Ankara, is considered to be one of the largest organizations contributing to German mosques as it exerts influence over 896 Muslim communities across the country. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally opened one of the newly built mosques in the German city of Cologne during his visit in September.

DITIB might be one of the most influential Muslim organizations in Germany but the authorities are apparently more concerned about some other forces, which also seek to gain influence over German Muslims and which are much more radical. In 2017, German security forces warned that extremists from the Muslim Brotherhood –a radical Salafist organization established in 1928– were seeking to gain a “monopoly” over mosques in the eastern German state of Saxony and were even planning to “establish Sharia law in Germany.”

Earlier reports in the German media also suggested that Islamic religious groups from Gulf States such as Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting the radical Salafist movement in Germany with the suspected approval of their governments. The activities of the foreign-funded Islamic NGOs have caught the attention of the German authorities following the 2015 refugee crisis, as Berlin grew increasingly concerned that their actions would lead to further radicalization of German Muslims as well as refugees, who arrived there in large numbers.

The German domestic intelligence service, the BfV, has also warned that the Salafist movement became one of the most rapidly growing extremist groups in Germany. In late 2017, the then-head of the agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, said that there is now a record number of Islamists in Germany, putting their number at roughly 11,000.

In January 2018, a report by the BfV said that the number of Islamists in Berlin has more than doubled since 2011 and is steadily rising as 100 new followers joined local Salafist groups since the spring of 2017.

Middle East Forum Senior Staff Disagree over Trump's Bombing of Syria

Middle East Forum Senior Staff Disagree over Trump's Bombing of Syria - and they both manage to get it wrong!

U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria last week elicited varied reactions from

Middle East Forum fellows and staff.

I want you to know I have great respect for MEF and its staff. But this is a complex situation where the truth is far from being transparent.

PHILADELPHIA  – It's in the nature of a research institute to share a basic outlook. The board, staff, and fellows of the Middle East Forum (MEF) agree broadly on such things as countering Islamism, supporting U.S. allies, promoting American interests, and rewarding democratic practices.

Of course, how one reaches these policy goals is a matter of debate, and argument over strategy and tactics has been a feature of MEF life since it opened its doors in 1994.

Rarely, however, has a clash of views been as sharp as now, with President Daniel Pipes calling U.S. missile strikes against the Syrian air base responsible for a deadly chemical weapons attack a "mistake" and Director Gregg Roman praising the operation. Nonetheless, we see this as a healthy diversity of opinion over how to reach common goals.

No to Bombing Syria

Writing in National Review Online on April 7, Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes reiterates his long-standing opposition to direct intervention in the 6-year-old Syrian civil war, which pits a motley assortment of Sunni Islamist-dominated Arab rebels, backed by Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, against a far more unified Iranian-dominated network of Shiite, Alawite, and Christian pro-regime forces.

Pipes has long argued that the U.S. should work to ensure that "[Syrian President Bashar] Assad & Tehran fight the rebels & Ankara to mutual exhaustion" while awaiting the emergence of a "moderate alternative to today's wretched choices." In addition to alleviating suffering where possible, the goal should be "to help those who are losing, but indirectly," he explained in an April 7 interview with i24News.

Being American and a patriot, Mr Pipes fails to recognize that the world is being run by those who make and sell weapons of war. His policy to encourage the Syrian war to continue to exhaustion is exactly what the military industrial establishment wants. It keeps the inventory rolling and the money coming in. 

But his policy is also really poor for several more reasons:

1. It has contributed greatly to the suffering and death toll of Syrian civilians

2. It has contributed greatly to the complete destruction of what was once a fairly modern society

3. It has contributed greatly to the mass migration of Muslims into Europe and the subsequent Islamization of Europe

4. It is probably illegal

5. It is definitely immoral

6. His assumption that an acceptable Muslim group will emerge to replace Assad is absurd. Muslim groups never evolve toward moderation - they evolve toward extremism. The strongest groups are supported by Saudi Arabia which is determined to replace Assad with a Salafist government. If you think that will be an improvement, you need to take a trip to Saudi Arabia. If you think having a Salafist country bordering Israel can be anything but disastrous, you need to think again. 

Pipes insists that U.S. intervention in Syria should remain indirect.

In 2013, amid rising prospects of a rebel victory "replacing the Assad government with triumphant, inflamed Islamists," the application of this principle led Pipes to advocate support for pro-regime forces. Today, with the regime having regained control over Aleppo and other key real estate, he argues that the U.S. should assist the rebels with arms and intelligence on the grounds that they are now the weaker party.

But Pipes insists that U.S. intervention in Syria should remain indirect. Limited strikes of the kind ordered by Trump (and contemplated by Obama in 2013) don't have much deterrent value because of the American public's well-known aversion to sustained military intervention in Middle East conflicts. "[I]t's really a paper tiger," he told i24News. One-off missile strikes also give Assad the halo (among supporters) of having stood up to the U.S. military without paying a prohibitive cost. "Unless a great deal follows, which I don't think is going to happen, this will be seen as something that the Assad regime has been able to survive," he added. "Symbolism is not a good idea in warfare."

Yes to Bombing Syria

Writing for The Hill on April 7, Middle East Forum Director Gregg Roman expressed strong support for the strike against Syria.

Roman's primary concern is the loss of American credibility following Obama's 2013 'red line' fiasco.

Roman's primary concern is the loss of American deterrence credibility in the wake of President Obama's bungled response to Assad's chemical weapons use in 2013. By acting quickly, unilaterally, and unpredictably (all in sharp contrast to his predecessor's playbook), Trump helped "wash away the stain" of Obama's "red line" fiasco and thus restore American credibility and prestige. The "astonishingly favorable reaction to the strike throughout the world," he writes, "underscores that bold American leadership and decisive action are the way to win friends, not multilateralism and diplomatic nicety."

Some research will reveal that the chemical weapons used in 2013 were not the same as the chemical weapons that Assad had available at that time. It will also reveal that it could not have originated from government controlled airfields. I'm amazed Mr Roman isn't aware of that. Obama could have responded quickly and decisively as, I'm sure, many of his advisers wanted him to, but if he had he would have played right into the hands of the rebels who actually did use the gas. 

This is exactly what Trump has done! Instead of gaining credibility he, when the truth is revealed, will look like the loose canon he is, and the world will be far less safe than it was before last week. But, hey, weapons makers and sellers are having the time of their lives.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Forum's Jihad Intel project, offers a more limited endorsement of the strike. "Besides reducing the absolute number of aircraft capable of bombing Syrian civilians (absolutely a good thing in its own right)," he writes in an April 7 Middle East Eye op-ed, "the strike is useful in sending a message that international norms prohibiting chemical weapons use cannot simply be violated and merely condemned with words." However, he warns of the dangers of escalation and expresses concern that broader military intervention "cannot be completely ruled out" given the "volatility" of the Trump administration.

The Middle East Forum is dedicated to promoting American interests in the Middle East and protecting the West from Middle Eastern threats. It does so through intellectual, activist, and philanthropic efforts.

Is Assad to Blame for the Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria?

It seems obvious to anyone willing to look for the truth that it makes no sense for Assad to have used chemical weapons last week. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose. He was winning and in a stunning reversal of policy, the White House was behind him. Assad may be evil and brutal, but he is not stupid.

On the other hand, his opponents, backed by America and Saudi Arabia and others had just found out that they had little hope of winning with America willing to keep Assad on. That had to change or the war would be lost.

No proof has been offered of Damascus' involvement and yet great criticism is vented upon anyone who expresses doubt. It's like the man-made global warming movement - no proof, just condemnation for those who express doubt. 

Yet, in 2013, Assad was accused of using chemical weapons and everyone jumped on the band-wagon from the White House to MSM. It was soon proven that it could not have been Assad's regime but was, in fact, from a rebel group, a rebel group sponsored by the USA and Saudi Arabia. 

If you think the pattern is coincidental, think again. Remember Iraq? The only weapons of mass destruction they ever found there was American intelligence.

Saudi Arabia wants desperately to replace Assad with a Salafist regime and will do anything to make it happen. 

Donald Trump is being manipulated by the military industrial establishment that he has surrounded himself with and probably by NATO, neither of whom want peace in Syria or with Russia. You can't move weapons in great numbers during peace-time and you can't justify the existence of an organization created to maintain peace if there is a threat of peace breaking out. NATO needs a villain and a threat and is willing to create one where it doesn't exist.

Deutsche Welle

Is the regime of President Bashar al-Assad responsible for the chemical weapons attack in northern Syria? Experts suggest it could have been jihadi rebels. It wouldn't be the first time.

More than 80 people were killed by suspected chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun. That is about the only thing certain about the attack. Western statements place blame at the feet of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, an accusation Damascus and Moscow contest.

The Syrian regime may not have had a compelling motive, believes Günther Meyer, the director of the Research Center for the Arab World at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. "Only armed opposition groups could profit from an attack with chemical weapons," he told DW. "With their backs against the wall, they have next to no chance of opposing the regime militarily. As President [Donald] Trump's recent statements show, such actions make it possible for anti-Assad groups to receive further support."

Former President Barack Obama famously drew a "red line" in 2012. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus," he said at the time. Meyer views the statement as an "invitation for Assad's opponents to use chemical weapons and make the Assad regime responsible for it."

Rebels' chemical weapons

In 2014, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on opposition forces' ability to use chemical weapons. In an article for the "London Review of Books," Hersh obtained documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon's own spy organization. They suggested that the Nusra Front, a Syrian offshoot of al Qaeda, had access to the sarin nerve agent. A chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August 2013, which was blamed on Assad, was carried out by rebels, according to Hersh's article. They wanted Washington to presume Assad had crossed Obama's "red line" and draw the US into a war.

There are doubts over whether the suspected chemical weapons strike in Ghouta came from Assad's forces.

The Ghouta attack

Obama's Director of National Intelligence at the time, James Clapper, was able to dissuade Obama from ordering a cruise missile strike, according to a newly-published book by Mideast expert Michael Lüders. Presumably, a deciding factor was an analysis of the chemical weapons used in Ghouta, conducted by a British military lab, which found the gas to be of a different composition than the Syrian army possessed.

The attack took place while UN weapons inspectors were in the country, on Assad's invitation, said Meyer. Assad had asked them to investigate a chemical weapons attack from March 2013 outside Aleppo, which killed Syrian soldiers.

"It makes no sense that the regime would carry out an attack with inspectors in the country," he said.

Former weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and MIT professor Theodore Postol cast further doubt on Assad's role in the Ghouta attack. They reported in 2014 that the chemical weapons could have only been fired from rebel-held territory, with a range of up to 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles).

Chemical weapons as a deterrent

At the time of the Ghouta attack, the Syrian government had access to about 600 tons of material necessary to make sarin and mustard gas. The stockpile was to counterbalance Israel's nuclear arsenal, Meyer said. "Israel has an estimated 200 nuclear weapons," he said. "Chemical weapons are something of a poor man's atomic weapon."

The US reported these chemical stockpiles had been destroyed in 2014, although the state of confusion surrounding such a war zone makes that hard to confirm. (see below).

In Idlib, the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front maintains significant influence

Al Qaeda's role

No one can say how the situation has evolved since the DIA's assessment in 2013 of the Nusra Front's weapons. The al Qaeda affiliate is today the most significant rebel group in the northern Syrian province of Idlib, Meyer said. Along with other jihadi extremists, it has turned itself into the "de facto ruler of Idlib."

Assad has not hesitated to use ruthless means to stay in power. In confronting the most recent use of chemical weapons in Syria, credible questions remain as to why Assad would bring world opinion against him at a time when his continued rule is beginning to be accepted.

Another excellent read - The New American - Was the chemical attack a 'false flag'?

Declassified intelligence brief

Report by White House Alleging Proof of Syria as the Perpetrator of the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun... by RT America on Scribd

On Tuesday, the White House released a declassified intelligence brief accusing Syrian President Bashar Assad of ordering and organizing the attack, in which Syrian planes allegedly dropped chemical ordnance on civilians in the rebel-held town.

The report “contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft,” wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol, who reviewed it and put together a 14-page assessment.

“I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun,” wrote Postol.

A chemical attack with a nerve agent did occur, he said, but the available evidence does not support the US government’s conclusions.

“I have only had a few hours to quickly review the alleged White House intelligence report. But a quick perusal shows without a lot of analysis that this report cannot be correct,” Postol wrote.

It is “very clear who planned this attack, who authorized this attack and who conducted this attack itself,” Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer also said that doubting the evidence would be “doubting the entire international reporting crew documenting this.”

Sounds like an argument without any facts.

The report offered by the White House, however, cited “a wide body of open-source material” and “social media accounts” from the rebel-held area, including footage provided by the White Helmets rescue group documented to have ties with jihadist rebels, Western and Gulf Arab governments.

The White Helmets are not what they appear to be on MSM. It is clear they are agenda-driven and anti-Assad. Check out this report by a Canadian journalist.

Sarin canister crushed from above not exploded from within

“Any competent analyst would have had questions about whether the debris in the crater was staged or real,” he wrote. “No competent analyst would miss the fact that the alleged sarin canister was forcefully crushed from above, rather than exploded by a munition within it.”

This was probably why Putin suggested that it was a rebel chemical weapons plant that was hit by Syrian bombs.

Instead, “the most plausible conclusion is that the sarin was dispensed by an improvised dispersal device made from a 122mm section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on both sides.”

“We again have a situation where the White House has issued an obviously false, misleading and amateurish intelligence report,” he concluded, recalling the 2013 situation when the Obama administration claimed Assad had used chemical weapons against the rebels in Ghouta, near Damascus.

“What the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true,” Postol wrote, “and the fact that this information has been provided in this format raises the most serious questions about the handling of our national security.”

On Tuesday, Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel-General Sergey Rudskoy questioned the “authenticity” of media reports concerning the attack. He said that using social media to reconstruct the course of events raised “serious doubts” not only among the Russian military but also “among many respected experts and organizations.”

Rudskoy noted that, under the 2013 agreement to give up its chemical weapons, the Syrian government destroyed its stockpiles at 10 sites that were under its control. This was verified by the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). However, the remaining two facilities were in territory controlled by the rebels, he said, and it remains unclear what happened to the chemicals stored there.

Islamist who Planned to ‘Blow Up Police or Soldiers’ Arrested in Germany

Potential terrorists in Germany has now reached 1600

© Christian Charisius / Reuters

German police have detained a young man after finding chemicals used for making explosives in his apartment. The suspect admitted that he planned a bomb attack on police officers or soldiers, prosecutors and police said in a joint statement.

A German citizen, 26, whose name has not been revealed yet, was detained on Wednesday in the German town of Northeim, in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony. He is suspected of preparing to commit a “grave violent offense against the state” and of attempted murder, the statement issued by the regional police department in Goettingen and the regional Prosecutor General’s Office in Celle says.

Earlier, police raided his home and found various chemicals used to make explosives based on acetone peroxide – a highly explosive agent, which is difficult to detect and which was earlier used in a number of terrorist attacks across Europe, including the Brussels attacks in 2016.

The police officers also discovered “components that could be used for assembling an unconventional explosive device,” the statement said, adding that the details found in the suspects apartment particularly included “electrical components of a time fuse.”

According to the investigators, the suspect was actively preparing for a terrorist attack when he was captured. They also managed to find out that he was a member of a Salafist group – an ultra-conservative Islamist movement.

During his first questioning, the suspect admitted his guilt and said that he was planning to “lure police officers or soldiers in a trap and kill them with a homemade bomb.” The investigators have not revealed any further details about this case and have said that they are “at the very beginning” of the inquiry.

They also stressed that it is too early to speak about any possible accomplices of the suspect or about his potential ties with any known terrorist groups or links to any similar incidents.

Both police and the Prosecutor General’s Office called the operation “a great success in the fight against terrorism.”

“Police have acted professionally and consistently here and all necessary measures were taken in a timely fashion,” Uwe Luehrig, the head of the Goettingen police department, said in the statement, adding that police will use all available legal means to counter the terrorist threat.

Northeim pedestrian area

About 700 members of Salafist groups live now in Germany’s state of Lower Saxony alone, German media report, citing data provided by the regional office of the German domestic security service, the BfV.

Some 77 of them have traveled to Syria and Iraq, the intelligence data says, adding that about 50 of them are regarded as posing “an acute threat” to the German security and are subjects to “increased surveillance.”

Salafists in Germany is a problem that needs to be addressed urgently. They are still building mosques especially in former East Germany where their influence is growing. Salafists will not be absorbed into German society, they will never put German laws above Sharia and they have one goal - to subject the world to Sharia. Germany needs to shut down Salafist mosques as they did in France or they will pay a high price.

Two weeks ago, police detained two men suspected of terrorism in Goettingen. The investigators found combat weapons, ammunition, data storage devices and Islamic State flags in their apartment during the raid. One of the suspects was an Algerian, 27, while the second one was a Nigerian, 22.

The Regional Interior Ministry initiated deportation for both suspects but they legally challenged this decision, German media report. Their cases were eventually handed over to the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.

In the meantime, the BfV once again warned that Islamist terrorists pose a significant threat to Germany. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the BfV, said this week that his service receives from two to four tips relating to some potentially dangerous acts a day. He also added that the number of potential terrorists and their supporters has recently reached 1,600 people.

That is a whole lot of people to manage! It would require a Communist-era Stasi-like force to keep track of them. I can't imagine that is something Germans want.

Northeim, Germany