Stimmenfang # 118 Thuringia Election: How the AfD exploits a planned mosque construction
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The first mosque construction in East Germany is being built in an industrial area in Erfurt, between the fire station and the car repair shop. For three years there have been protests against the construction project. Again and again, the construction had to be stopped because companies did not want to work with the Muslim Ahmadiyya community.
How hard is it to build a mosque in East Germany? That's what the new series of votes is all about. For that we drove to Thuringia and talked with the participants - advocates and opponents of the mosque.
We also meet the historian Yasemin Shooman, who deals with the topic Islamophobia, and talk with our SPIEGEL colleague Peter Maxwill, who has been watching the case of the Ahmadiyya mosque in Erfurt-Marbach for several years.
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The complete transcript
[00:00:02] Matthias Kirsch Welcome to Stimmenfang, the political podcast from SPIEGEL. I am Matthias Kirsch.
[00:00:10] AD: Voting is presented today by Fidelity International, which has been advising on investment and retirement for over 50 years. With the new Wealth Export, Fidelity has now created a solution that enables both private and professional investors to invest digitally and actively manage their portfolios. Because the combination of expert knowledge and algorithms allows investment advisers to react to market fluctuations and inefficient markets and to rely on the right asset class even in difficult situations. More information about the Wealth Expert and the non-binding investment recommendation can be found at www.fidelity.de/investierenleichtgemacht
[00:00:52] One- player "Do away with it! Take away the dirt!" - "Soon a load of pig heads will come!" - "sabotage the building immediately!" - "As a foundation, please, a splinter bomb!" - "Break the hut off!" - "If in Thuringia then the right party rules, you are very quickly back in your Muselland and the mosque is demolished again!"
[00:01:06] Matthias Kirsch So it is rushed in the social media, just because a mosque is being built in Thuringia. Mostly with plain names, mosque opponents leave comments like these on the Facebook wall of the Muslim Ahmadiyya community in Erfurt. The project to build a mosque in Erfurt's Marbach district is not new at all. For over three years there is already a dispute, but now, in the Thuringian election campaign, the topic reboots, especially in the social media. The state parliament election exacerbates the debate as under a burning glass.
[00:01:35] Suleman Malik We are now right here on the future mosque site, construction site where the mosque will be built.
[00:01:43] Matthias Kirsch This is Suleman Malik. He is the spokesman of the Ahmadiyya community in Erfurt, where he represents about 70 parishioners. A few months ago my colleague Sandra Sperber visited him on site.
[00:01:55] Sandra Sperber It feels pretty outskirts of the city and looks like an industrial area.
[00:01:59] Suleman Malik It's definitely a business park. But we have a plot, which is commercial and mixed area.
[00:02:10] Matthias Kirsch How hard it is to build the first new mosque in East Germany and how the AfD in particular tries to exploit this topic - that's what the episode is all about. For this we are talking with people who are for or against the mosque, with Suleman Malik, for example, whom we have already heard, but also with Stefan Möller, one of the country spokespersons of the AfD Thüringen. We also meet a researcher who deals with Islamophobia. And I'm talking to my colleague Peter Maxwell, who has been watching the conflict over the mosque in Erfurt for some time.
[00:02:46] Björn Höcke (AfD) AfD - no to the mosque!
[00:02:46] Matthias Kirsch April 2016. At this time there is not even a plot for the future mosque. But Björn Höcke, who was already the country spokesman for the AfD in Thuringia, makes it clear: A mosque in Thuringia? No way!
[00:03:03] Björn Höcke (AfD) Islam, Islam has its homeland, and this homeland is not called Erfurt, this homeland is not called Thuringia and this homeland is not called Germany!
[00:03:18] Matthias Kirsch And parts of the population in Erfurt see it then, so long before the cornerstone for the mosque is ever laid, just the same.
[00:03:26] Mosque opponents In Marbach no one can identify with Islam. We Germans do not want to identify us. First of all, I do not see at all that Germany is being Islamised and alienated. And I do not see that we just get foreign peoples imposed on foreign cultures without referendums. That simply does not work. A mosque has lost nothing in Germany.
[00:03:47] Matthias Kirsch So this is the starting point, shortly after the Ahmadiyya community in Erfurt first thought aloud about building a mosque. Here is Suleman Malik again, the community spokesman.
[00:03:58] Suleman Malik Yes, in April 2016 we did indeed submit a construction request for another property. However, the neighbor of the property refused to sign a declaration of agreement, which was important to build on an area that was green space. And so we had to give that up, because the neighbor did not want to participate.
[00:04:22] Matthias Kirsch So it's a difficult search for a suitable building plot - but good: that's the case for most other builders.
[00:04:30] Suleman Malik By chance we found this offer on the internet and bought the property from the provider. And in March 2017, we then submitted the building application for this property.
[00:04:44] Matthias Kirsch After that, rather extreme protests against the planned construction begin quite quickly.
[00:04:49] Suleman Malik In between there were many protests, there was a petition against this mosque construction. Then in March, there was an attack on the site where unknown people have distributed body parts of pigs on this site. There were swine heads everywhere, on the spit, so to speak, docked in the ground. After that there was - immediately after this action - there was a cross action. Since the identity movement and "one percent" in cooperation with the AfD eleven meters high crosses on the site.
[00:05:28] Sandra Sperber Here on the neighboring property?
[00:05:28] Suleman Malik On the neighboring area. It looked like a graveyard.
[00:05:33] Matthias Kirsch All these actions are a clear sign: people do not want this mosque to be built. But who is this Ahmadiyya community that causes so much anger with their construction project? Although members of this Muslim community have been living in Germany for more than a hundred years, little is known about them. Said Ahmed Arif is an Imam of the Ahmadiyya community and he explains:
[00:05:54] Said Ahmed Arif This is similar to the difference between Jews and Christians that the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah and the Christians believe that he has already appeared in the form of Jesus. And the difference here is that we believe he's already appeared, the second coming of Jesus. And that is also the essential difference between us and other groups in Islam. The other currents or directions are still waiting for the fulfillment of this prophecy.
[00:06:18] Matthias Kirsch Members of the Ahmadiyya are being persecuted in some Muslim countries. This is another reason why supporters of the community came to Germany and opened their first mosque in 1925, at that time in Berlin's Wilmersdorf district. Today, just under 95 years later, the construction of the Ahmadiyya Mosque in Erfurt is a bit more complicated. Because from the beginning there is, as I said, resistance to the planned mosque. And for Suleman Malik, it's pretty clear who's behind it.
[00:06:46] Suleman Malik There have been criminally relevant statements on these actions, including on the internet, where people have said, "Build your mosque in Buchenwald," yes, or even against parishioners, that you should hang it on the cross and pig's blood to pour on. So there were such comments, and the AfD has not distanced itself from these actions, but actively supported.
[00:07:11] Matthias Kirsch So does the AfD really mix in actions that go far beyond the bounds of freedom of expression? An AfD politician, who strongly opposed the construction of the mosque in Erfurt, is Stefan Möller. Möller says about the anti-mosque petition addressed by Suleman Malik:
[00:07:28] Stefan Möller (AfD) Of course we supported that as well. We already did that when collecting the signatures. And we also did some protection at the hearing. That is clear. Of course, we also understand ourselves a bit as a protective power of those who have recognized the problem, here in Thuringia, and who oppose this very, very strong political mainstream and, of course, have to reckon with repression.
[00:07:57] Matthias Kirsch Stefan Möller is one of the two country representatives of the AfD in Thuringia. The other is Björn Höcke. And he too has campaigned from the beginning against the mosque in Erfurt. Incidentally, Höcke says about Islam as a religion:
[00:08:10] Björn Höcke (AfD) Either Islam in Europe and in Germany adapts to our constitutional norms, our customs, values and norms. Or he has to be adopted.
[00:08:21] Matthias Kirsch The position of the AfD in relation to Islam is quite clear. With religious freedom - after all, anchored in Article 4 of the Basic Law - that does not really have much to do. In the current election program of the AfD for the state election in Thuringia is also for example - quote - :.
[00:08:37] Election Program AfD Thuringia "According to the AfD, Islam as a political religion is incompatible with the central rules of our secular constitutional state, which is why Islam can not be part of Thuringia."
[00:08:49] Matthias Kirsch - End quote. Stefan Möller, Björn Höcke and the other opponents of the Ahmadiyya mosque fear that the presence of this temple will contribute to Islamization. My colleague Sandra Sperber has addressed Stefan Müller on site.
[00:09:04] Sandra Sperber We also talked about Islamization on the demos. How concrete does that look like? That's about 70 parishioners from the Ahmadiyya community. How do you feel that they are Islamizing society here?
[00:09:16] Stefan Möller (AfD) Yes, it is foreseeable. Right now, we are at the beginning of a process that, unless you put in appropriate barriers early on, will put you in the path of a barrier that leads to so-called Islamization or, at least, significant changes in religious aspects.
[00:09:39] Sandra Sperber But are you seriously worried that these 70 members building a mosque here are changing the society in Erfurt, the majority society?
[00:09:47] Stefan Möller (AfD) Yes, everything starts small.
[00:09:50] Matthias Kirsch For Stefan Möller, the followers of the Ahmadiyya community are not harmless believers but followers of a dangerous sect.
[00:09:58] Stefan Möller (AfD) Now it is relatively typical that they project outwardly a very progressive, liberal, self-promoting understanding - in the inner life, in religious practice, in the practice of community work quite another To live self-image. And so it is with this sect.
[00:10:17] Matthias Kirsch At this point it should be made clear: The ethnic-nationalist wing of the AfD, whose spokesman is Björn Höcke, is assessed by the constitutional protection as a suspected case in the field of right-wing extremism. The Ahmadiyya community, on the other hand, is and has never been observed by the constitution protection. In addition, in Hesse and Hamburg, it is a public corporation with the same rights as, for example, Christian churches. To call them a sect, as the AfD does, is not right. Nonetheless, it is also important to emphasize that science is not one hundred percent in agreement on how to classify the church. The sociologist Necla Kelek, for example, who was a long member of the Federal Government's Islam Conference, once referred to the Ahmadiyya on Deutschlandfunk as a fundamentalist community that exercises a very conservative and restrictive religion. But you can not blame the Ahmadiyya community for one thing: that they do nothing to get in touch with their critics.
[00:11:18] Suleman Malik I believe we as a community are also calling for dialogue. And that is the only way for us as a church to counteract the prejudices and fears that the AfD propagates.
[00:11:32] Matthias Kirsch But does this effort lead to anything? My colleague Sandra Sperber talked to historian Yasemin Shooman about it. Shooman is a member of the Council for Migration and the Integration Commission of the German Federal Government.
[00:11:46] Sandra Sperber What the Ahmadiyya community describes as what they are doing in Erfurt is a lot of dialogue, going out, trying to reduce fears, to take fears. Does that really help to reduce this Islamophobia?
[00:12:02] Yasemin Shooman Dialogue is certainly never bad, but it has limits of effectiveness, because you have to look more closely at the function that fulfills these prejudices. So we can say that this rejection of Muslims or this anti-Muslim sentiment in society is partly related to actual integration. This sounds paradoxical, because Muslims are accused, especially the lack of integration. But if we see integration as an increased social participation, then we can see that it always entails dominance conflicts. And you can see that for example: the backyard mosques were no problem. Only at the moment when Muslims started to build places of worship that identify members of society that are visible in the cityscape - was this just as strong a defense.
[00:12:53] Sandra Sperber That means that the church can not actually - I say - go "right" way, because the more present and the more open it shows, it provokes to provoke more prejudices?
[00:13:04] Yasemin Shooman No, of course, the consequence can not be a retreat or any strategies to sort this out in the back with the city government. There still has to be an open dialogue. But it must be clear that these prejudices are not just based on real, so to speak fears or ignorance, but that they have a function; that some people regard a diverse, pluralistic society as a threat because, of course, it means that minorities participate more and in the end it means that we all have to share the cake - and on an equal footing.
[00:13:36] Sandra Sperber But I hear it out: you see a direct link between criticism of Islam and racism, which you kind of disguise.
[00:13:44] Yasemin Shooman The boundaries are very fluid. Under this, under the flag of the criticism of Islam sailed very many people, with word contributions that are classified as clearly racist.
[00:13:56] Matthias Kirsch Criticism of Islam, including the fierce criticism of the Ahmadiyya community, is therefore in many cases only disguised racism. For example, last November saw the impact of this on mosque construction. For then the Thuringian Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow had come to Erfurt. There were also representatives of the other faith communities, namely the laying of the cornerstone of the new mosque. There are videos of this cornerstone laying on the internet. Bodo Ramelow has a shovel in his hand. He smiles into the cameras - and across the street are dozens of counter-demonstrators.
[00:14:41] Protesters It is very dangerous to spread this disinformation here through the media among the people.
[00:14:41] Matthias Kirsch Your resistance is useless. So the construction could start, and that could have ended the affair of the Ahmadiyya mosque in Erfurt. For at least in the past it was often the case when mosques were rebuilt, as in 2014 in Hesse in Friedberg - there were protests before the start of construction - but then it became quiet. But how is it in Erfurt now? I'll talk about the current state of the conflict with my colleague Peter Maxwell. Because Peter has also been researching this story for some time, and he was only recently back on the scene. Hi Peter.
[00:15:15] Peter Maxwell Hello, hello.
[00:15:16] Matthias Kirsch Peter, you have been dealing with the case quite recently. Could you please tell us what happened during the last few weeks and months on this construction site during this construction project?
[00:15:28] Peter Maxwell Basically you can say: So much has not happened, measured by what should have happened there. Actually, it should be so far that now in these weeks, the mosque is already completed and inaugurated. But this will not happen this year, but with at least four months delay then sometime 2020. And that has a lot to do with what has just happened in the past few months. Namely on the one hand relatively much hate speech about social media against the mosque and especially against the spokesman for the community. And on the other hand, the simple fact that the community has not found enough construction companies to progress with the construction work. Apparently, because many entrepreneurs are afraid or own resentment to participate in so mosque construction project.
[00:16:15] Matthias Kirsch There was resentment that we already heard from the AfD, from the population. But that is, there are actually indications that construction companies did not want to continue this construction for the reason that this Ahmadiyya community is controversial among the population.
[00:16:31] Peter Maxwell Yes, when I was there recently and met with the mayor of the village Mr. Malik, he also showed me an e-mail he got. And this mail comes from the time when it was just about to find a crane company to make a roof on the mosque shell on it. And they have actually spent weeks and months trying in vain to find a crane company, because - and it came out of this mail - the company, which was originally planned, has refused to participate in the end, because - so it was in the Mail in any case - allegedly afraid of attacks on their employees and on the machines. And that, of course, is an expression of the spread Islamophobia and resentment. And that then has such effects and that this only delayed months, of course, is quite questionable. It also adds that there are other construction companies who have also refused to participate in the construction project, and - said, according to Mr. Malik - even very clearly on the phone: Since we put a foot on it, so we do not want to have anything to do with it.
[00:17:34] Matthias Kirsch In the past there were attacks and disgusting things that happened on this property - for example, parts of a dead pig were put on skewers there. You've seen the last few months that these hatreds and resentments have shifted to the internet, into social networks. How did you perceive that?
[00:17:56] Peter Maxwell Yes, that's really amazing, how little is left of these manifest protests right on the site - the demonstration and this pig's head action and all these things. And how strong the hate in the net is still there and with what open hostility people with their real name, for example, post something on Facebook. That is already violent, in which concentrated form that occurred in the past months.
[00:18:23] Matthias Kirsch Peter, what is the current status of this work? You said that the construction work was slower, in some cases even stopped. How is the stand now?
[00:18:35] Peter Maxwell The carcass is standing, that means you can now see a still relatively provisional skeleton. But the construction works are actually now in the final phase. Above all, according to the municipality, it is now hardly necessary to rely on external companies. That is, for example, the minaret, which is not yet standing, and the dome, which is not yet finished, are made by the community in their own work. Since then nothing should interfere, because the community is then dependent on no other companies. And at the moment, they expect that within the next few months, over the winter, the mosque will actually be finished. In the spring of 2020, she should then be ready. When it is initiated depends also on when, for example, the caliph, the leader of the Ahmadiyya community, can come to Erfurt for initiation. And that will be at some point in the coming year so far.
[00:19:30] Matthias Kirsch An important point that the opponents and critics of this mosque building have repeatedly pointed out is that this mosque would somehow change the image of the neighborhood. What is that really a place? Is it really the case that this mosque construction somehow stands in a neighborhood that people almost have on their doorstep?
[00:19:51] Peter Maxwell It's curious that this kind of, yes, that's what you have to call propaganda, actually pulls and that it works and mobilizes people. This is a commercial area. This is a commercial area - this belongs to the remote, somewhat remote district Marbach of Erfurt. This is nothing, so to speak, between the district and the university campus. And the mosque stands there in sight of grain silos behind such a car repair shop. I would say, at least 50 meters from the road, surrounded by a fire station, garages and other companies and companies that are there. So no resident houses. There is a dwelling house that, when you go to the roof of the mosque - which of course you will not be able to do in the future - you can see a single dwelling. Otherwise nothing at all. There is no one who is actually disturbed as a local resident.
[00:20:41] Matthias Kirsch Okay. You visited the site with Suleman Malik, whom we already heard. Are he and the Ahmadiyya community optimistic or more cautiously optimistic about what the future of the project will be when it is completed?
[00:20:56] Peter Maxwell It is amazing how great the optimism that Mr. Malik and the community radiates in this way. When I was there last year, when the foundation stone was laid, I was told that so far it has always been like that, when the community builds a new mosque somewhere in Germany, that at the beginning there are protests and criticism and skepticism in Germany the population and that later would have flown away and it would have developed into a good neighborly community thing. The question is a bit of a question, if that's exactly what it is now, because such angry protests and such ugly actions - be it in social media or for example this pig's head action - are very rare when mosques are built. And the mosque, which is now being built in Erfurt, is just the first in the new federal states outside of Berlin. You have to see that then how it will actually be. But the optimism is there.
[00:21:51] Matthias Kirsch Peter, thank you for your assessment.
[00:21:52] Peter Maxwell With pleasure.
[00:21:53] Matthias Kirsch For more than three years now, mosque construction in Erfurt has been dealing with both supporters and opponents. And above all, the AfD can not just conclude with this topic. In the Thuringian election campaign, it keeps flaring up - even if the occasion has nothing to do with it. In the week before the election, AfD man Stefan Möller, whom we have heard several times in this episode, publishes a photo on his social media. To see: an election stand of the CDU with few visitors. And Möller writes without context: "Even with the guys from the Ahmadiyya is more going on ..."
[00:22:31] That was votes, the politics podcast from SPIEGEL. As usual, the next episode of the poll will be available on spiegel.de, on Spotify and in all popular podcast apps. If you would like to send us feedback, just write an e-mail to Stimmfang@spiegel.de or use our voice mailbox on 040 380 80 400. You can also send us a WhatsApp number to the same number, ie 040 380 80 400. Send Message. This episode was produced by Sandra Sperber, Yasemin Yüksel and me, Matthias Kirsch. Thanks for supporting Philipp Fackler, Sebastian Fischer, Johannes Kükens, Wiebke Rasmussen, Thorsten Rejtzek and Matthias Streitz. The vocal music comes as always from Davide Russo.
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