Legacy Media visits Islamists in Hamburg
Reporting from the frontlines of Europe's struggle against Islamism, which, according to the Bundesverfassungsschutz, 'is not a crime per se'
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Institute of Hate
The Islamist scene in Hamburg is growing, but politicians are largely powerless. A visit to one of the most important meeting places for radicals
By Christoph Hartmann, Tom Kroll, Die Zeit, 15 April 2025 [source; archived]
The air is miserably stuffy, with around a hundred men are crowded into the prayer room. Columns support the low ceiling, condensation mists up the window panes. ‘Brother’, one of the guests asks his neighbour, ‘would you like a date [orig. Dattel, i.e., the fruit, not a meeting with a woman]?’
A packet of fruit wanders through the rows. Fingers reach in while the boys mumble to each other. Few here are older than their early twenties. They are spending this Saturday evening in January at the Al-Azhari Institute in Hamburg. What sounds like a centre of Moslem scholarship is, according to Hamburg officials, a meeting place for Islamists.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution [same outfit as those who just declared, in the most opaque ways possible, that the AfD is a ‘far right-wing extremist’ party] reports that ‘among other things, clear anti-Semitism’ is taught here [call me surprised (not)]. According to the report, men associated with the institute posted on social media and wrote that Jews were ‘apes and pigs’ [nothing new under the sun; mind you, I’m not endorsing these views]. Salafist preachers have been appearing at the institute for two years, saying prayers [sic], such as: ‘Allah, take every single one of them and then destroy them all.’ [remember: Islam is a religion (sic) of peace]
Since spring 2024, up to 2,000 men dressed in black have marched repeatedly around the brick building in the St. Georg railway station district, demanding the establishment of a caliphate with radical Islamic laws. Police wanted to ban this, but were unable to take action [why? because religious freedom]. The Federal Chancellor announced that he would examine ‘all options for action’. However, this has not yet resulted in any concrete steps. The former FDP-led Federal Ministry of Justice rejected plans for stricter laws in September. A spokesperson for the ministry told Die Zeit that criminal law ‘already offers concrete possibilities’ for prosecuting the ‘types of behaviour mentioned’. [nothing has been done, though, which points squarely towards the notion of: politicos™ don’t want to act]
Meanwhile, according to the security authorities, the Islamist scene is growing due to propaganda in social media, because of the war in Gaza and also because many young Moslems feel marginalised in this country [here’s a quick thought: go back to whatever shithole country you came from?]. At least one group of teenagers who planned an attack on synagogues or churches in North Rhine-Westphalia last year had been influenced by messages on the internet, according to investigators after the arrest.
‘Today is a special day’, says one of the men in the institute to Die Zeit’s reporters. Another shouts: ‘Just move through to the front!’ Many other guests are standing outside. The audience is sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, cross-legged in front of a stage. That evening, the preacher Ahmad Armih, who calls himself Abul Baraa and adorns himself with the honourable title of ‘Sheikh’, is due to perform [so, it’s a performance and not a religious meeting?] at the institute. The event was advertised on ‘Dawah Hamburg’, a private WhatsApp group with 657 members. Recently, the television channel CNN described Abul Baraa as a ‘rock star’ of the scene.
Abul Baraa is the son of Palestinian parents. He came to Germany from Lebanon with his family as a child and now lives in Berlin. He was imam at a mosque in Wedding [a ward of Berlin] for a long time.
Abul Baraa enters the hall at around 9.15 p.m. He is wearing a flowing robe, his beard reaches down to his chest. ‘There are gay flags [orig. Schwulenfahnen] everywhere in the city’, he says. ‘I pity you, my brothers. Are you allowed to tear them down?’
Abul Baraa’s assistant quickly places a smartphone on a small tripod and presses ‘Live’ to stream the lecture on Instagram. Baraa talks about being a guest in a city ‘full of unbelievers’ [that would be all non-Moslems].
His topic that evening is temptation, he talks about fitna [Wikipedia]. It’s about masturbation: ‘Would you do it in front of your parents?’ Abul Baraa asks his audience: ‘No, of course not.’ Then, that is his message, you must not do it alone either, because Allah is always watching: ‘Fitna!’
An Internet Phenomenon
In another room, separate from the men, sit the women. They had to enter the house through the back entrance. The young listeners in the main room are mainly wearing hoodies or tracksuits. Some probably struggle to understand the German language, others speak to each other in broad Northern German. The institute’s target group is 18 to 35 years old, according to the Office for the Defence of the Constitution, and before the young men come to the institute, most of them are not ‘rooted’ in the scene.
One Moslem died while masturbating, says Baraa. His parents broke down the door to his room and saw the dead man with his trousers down.
Abul Baraa’s team cuts short clips for TikTok from lectures like this one. He has 102,000 subscribers there. Abul Baraa has long since come to the attention of the authorities. His mosque in Berlin was searched and closed back in 2020. In June 2024, Lower Saxony banned an association in which he was active according to the authorities.
By then, Baraa had long since become an internet phenomenon. His videos are not enough for the authorities to ban them [talk about contradictions: if it’s not enough for a ban, why observe him? Also: doesn’t apply to the AfD]—and the same applies to his lectures. The head of state security at the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office, Arnold Keller, does not want to comment on individual members of the scene. But he says:
Islamism in itself is not a crime [that’s a tricky position, because it’s an ideology masquerading as a religion (same with Zionism, by the way)]. Those involved usually know exactly what they are allowed to say without being prosecuted. That’s where we see learning effects.
On Instagram, Abul Baraa certainly meets with opposition, with some users calling him a ‘Stone Age man’, for example when he condemns music as a tool of the devil [well, shall we talk about Sam Smith now?]. Others take his answers to everyday questions seriously: are Moslems allowed to keep hamsters? Are they allowed to work in an insurance company, or is that participation in gambling? And what does the Sheikh say about nutmeg?
These serious people are sitting in the hall of the Hamburg Institute, hoping for answers. No one looks at their mobile phones or moves around, there is silence, sometimes interrupted by laughter, for example when Baraa talks about how many wives you get later in paradise [sorry not sorry if this offends anyone, but that’s just bonkers].
In the WhatsApp group ‘Dawah Hamburg’, many of the young men are self-confident. They pose with a raised finger. Or in front of the mirror at the gym. Others decorate their profiles with black banners or pose covered up with Palestinian scarves. If you ask them for a chat, there is no response. Only one student from the group gets in touch, even agrees to a meeting—and then cancels at short notice. He had ‘discussed it and was still not interested’. [so, this entire piece is written w/o a voice from these Moslems].
Al-Azhari Institute in Hamburg: c. 1,600 People Demonstrated in Hamburg on 12 October
But a former Islamist is willing to talk to Die Zeit. His name is said to be Aslan Kaya, but he doesn’t want to read his real name in the newspaper. Until a few years ago, he was a member of an Islamist organisation called Hizb ut-Tahrir. It has been banned in Germany since 2003, but it is still active—and was probably also behind the demonstrations in St. Georg. He says today that he once found a sense of belonging in Hizb ut-Tahrir.
His parents come from Türkiye, where he was the ‘Almanci’, the ‘German’, but here, in Germany, he is always a Turk. The Achis, the ‘brothers’, as the Islamists call themselves, approached him at the sports club. They invited him on walks, then to smaller parties with lectures. Today he says that Hizb ut-Tahrir behaves ‘like a sect’. [not the same as, say, a political party like the AfD]. Back then, he ‘felt taken seriously’. As part of an elite.
Radical Faith Promises Advancement
The Al-Azhari Institute, say constitutional experts, brings together various Islamist movements. They all recruit young Moslems, make them believe that Germany does not want them—and claim that they know what drives the young men. Above all, however, they speak their language: German. ‘Most mosques preach in Turkish or Arabic,’ says Aslan Kaya, adding ‘those who were born here often hardly understand any of it.’
Authorities have surveyed the Islamist scene in Hamburg: 1,840 people currently belong to it, they say, of whom around 1,400 are said to be ‘violence-orientated’, while police classify 15 people as Islamist threats who are likely to carry out a terrorist attack at any time.
The new generation comes from neighbourhoods such as Billstedt in the east of Hamburg. Neighbourhoods with many poor families. Men with long beards and big cars often drive up to a car park there, hang out, and roll out the prayer mat.
In an internet video, the ‘Moslem Interactive’ group drives through Hamburg in a Lamborghini. Officials see them as an offshoot and PR troupe of the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. The radical faith promises advancement, success and recognition. How should we counter this?
A social worker from Billstedt is willing to give an interview. She does not want her name and job to appear in the newspaper, as she has received threatening phone calls in the past. She talks about parents who have come to her in despair. ‘Sometimes teenagers come out of their room one day and are completely radical.’ [the dangers of the internet: ‘surf responsibly’, will likely be a new social media campaign by the gov’t to ‘counter hate’: good luck]
Even a father she looks after was supposed to be recruited. He refused, but allowed his son to join out of concern that he might break off contact with him. ‘He would have lost his son, so he kept quiet,’ she says. [shit parenting, too, and I’m mentioning this not due to the concerns voiced but because what must have been going on (or not) before it came to this moment]
At the youth centre next door, they say a boy has disappeared. Staffers and his acquaintances say he frequented a well-known mosque, grew a beard, and broke off contact. He could not be contacted by Die Zeit either. Schools in other neighbourhoods raised the alarm because senior pupils went to the caliphate demonstrations.
Even among the youngest pupils, at a primary school in the Mümmelmannsberg neighbourhood, there was an incident after the start of the war in Gaza: a group of boys asked their classmates one by one whether they were Jewish. When they found one, a child with roots in Eastern Europe, they attacked him [same in Norwegian schools: local gov’t knows why but refuses to do anything about it for fears of being called ‘Islamophobic’].
After all, the city supports several prevention programmes and projects to promote democracy and also offers support to those who have left the scene. But who intervenes when young people become radicalised? ‘We can’t do that’, says the social worker. Wherever the state fails, the Islamists push in: they have rented flats in Billstedt, found jobs, and arranged partners [that’s also how totalitarian movements of the past have expanded by leaps and bounds, that is, by offering help™ when the gov’t won’t or couldn’t—which offers a partial answer as to why the gov’t permits this: the more things spiral out of control, the more voters will demand gov’t intervention].
A mother from the neighbourhood tells how she almost lost two of her children to the scene. She sent her son to the countryside without a mobile phone to save him. Her daughter came to her senses and showed her the messages from the Islamists: ‘What you are doing is forbidden by Allah. Don’t listen to your mother.’
A Strategy of Pinpricks
The Al-Azhari Institute in St. Georg is run by an association that has been in existence since 2013. ‘Further education and Arabic language’ is the official purpose of the association. Although the authorities have been warning against the institute for six years, it has not yet been banned. Why?
In response to an enquiry, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated that they had nothing to add to the mention in the annual report. A spokeswoman for the Hamburg Interior Ministry writes by email:
You don’t talk about bans beforehand, you do them. [kinda makes a mockery of the AfD declaration, isn’t it?]
In order to be able to do this in a court of law, it would have to be proven that the institute is working aggressively against democracy.
Authorities are pursuing a strategy of pinpricks: suspected members of the ‘Moslem Interactive’ group were raided and charged because police officers were attacked at a demonstration in October 2023. Just a few weeks ago, the police disrupted a suspected secret meeting of 280 men in the gym of a Hamburg school, apparently a recruitment meeting [good luck proving this in court].
In February, on Valentine's Day, ‘Dawah Hamburg’ organises a ‘Brotherhood Day’. The idea is to eat together, get to know each other, and exchange ideas. The invitation post is decorated with a digital rose.
When a reporter from Die Zeit appears, shortly before 6 p.m., a few men are praying in the direction of Mecca. When the journalist reveals himself, the atmosphere changes. Friendliness gives way to mistrust. The Zeit reporter is politely but firmly asked to leave the institute.
A young man named Hadi, apparently one of the organisers of the ‘Dawah Hamburg’ group, gets in touch a few days later. ‘We’ve had bad experiences with the media’, he explains. Of course you are welcome to give public lectures. Nothing illegal happens at the institute, it is said.
The following weekend, Abul Baraa is once again a guest at the Institute. But before he appears, two men demand that Die Zeit journalist leave the room. They invoke their rights as owners or renters [orig. Hausrecht].
The lecture is broadcast on the internet. This time, the young people are also allowed to ask questions. One of them says he doesn't know how to avoid eye contact with girls at school. Abul Baraa becomes very serious, the girls get all dressed up ‘as if they are going to a wedding’. They are 12, 13 years old and they are already talking about sex, ‘these disco girls’. This makes school a dangerous place [this is how Islamism controls vast swaths of the populace: by keeping them ignorant].
Abul Baraa advises the teenager to sit at the front so he can’t see the girls in class. But during the breaks? At best, there is ‘not much contact’ with the girls. When in doubt, the boy should turn to Allah and pray.
Bottom Lines
What could be said that hasn’t been said already?
I believe that many, if not most, people from Islamic countries who came to the West before 2015 did so for many reasons, among them their desire not to live with Islamists.
Now the Islamists are here, too, and while these people pose a serious threat, there’s also precious little one can do about it: they’re often naturalised and/or born in Western countries, hold citizenship (which they disdain), and will never be accepted in the countries where their ancestors came from.
To illustrate this with numbers: in late April 2025, Austria’s capital Vienna held state elections—and the most important number to note is that close to 35% of residents do not have voting rights as they are foreigners.
I’m not at-all to further dilute the electorate by granting all these people voting rights; there’s a pathway to citizenship, and if you’d like to vote, there you go.
Problem is, with that high share of non-citizens, public order will become ever more tenuous:
With Islamic pupils now the single largest faith group in Vienna, the city’s future looks quite bleak:
If even a handful of these become radicalised to such an extent, it will test both police and the judiciary to the breaking point and, perhaps, well beyond.
Buckle up, the next years will be trying.
Islamicists are imperial tools in their own countries and most certainly within Europe. European governments work for the forces behind the Empire. By now, this ought to be clear to anyone with a semi-functioning brain. They aren’t working for the People but against them. The same forces which brought you the Middle East wars (benefitting Israel), and massive Muslim immigration to Europe are also the same forces which wish to see European Civilization destroyed. Is there any wonder why anyone trying to stop that destruction is now a fascist, but those who are “purging” Palestinians from their neighborhood are heroes to those same governments who are quick to denounce any effort to protect European Civilization? Neither Islam nor even Islamicists are our true enemies; our enemies are the forces which desire to destroy that which ordinary people see as most desirable. We are on the receiving end of a monstrous war against us all. Our political systems, our informational systems, governing institutions, education, deep state, entertainment complex,…, are all working against us. If a critical mass of us don’t wake up to our true reality, we’ll be gone within one generation.