Sigrid Herrmann (SPD) is an expert on political Islam and publishes the blog “Islamism and Society,” where she provides well-founded reports on the main actors and activities of radical Islam in Germany. Herrmann helped reveal the connections between the “charitable organization” Islamic Relief, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gaza affiliate, Hamas.
Islamic Relief is banned in Israel and the UAE for its terror ties, but was funded by the German government, advertised by German public broadcasters and supported by major German political figures such as President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Bundestag Vice-President Aydan Özoguz, until Herrmann’s revelations in 2021, when they had to shelve the collaboration.
Since 2017, Herrmann had been exposing the anti-Semitic attitudes within the leadership of Islamic Relief Worldwide, which were published by the London Times and led to the entire leadership resigning in 2020.
At the end of July, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser released a 400-page report on alleged “Anti-Muslim Sentiment,” in which critics of political Islam like Herrmann are defamed, using taxpaer funds. In the report, to which Faeser contributed the Foreword, the Interior Ministry accuses leading German Islamism expert Herrmann, of all people, of “lack of expertise.”
The report accuses Herrmann of “scouring social media profiles of Muslims in order to reveal connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Semitic beliefs, and infiltration strategies.”
Soros- and German-government-funded “Hate speech watchdogs” regularly “scour the social media profiles” of right-wingers, including pro-Israel conservatives in Germany, as I recently described on Arutz Sheva. Apparently, Faeser’s Interior Ministry only criticizes these methods when the Muslim Brotherhood is the target.
Faeser’s Interior Ministry takes issue with Herrmann’s research on radical Islam being published in “right-wing conservative and anti-Islamic blogs like Henryk M. Broder’s ‘The Axis of Good’ or the ‘Jüdische Rundschau.‘ “The Axis of Good” has been under attack by antisemitic trolls, supported by German government-financed “Hate Speech” NGOs, as Eoin Lenihan described on Arutz Sheva. The “Jüdische Rundschau” is Germany’s largest independent Jewish newspaper.
The Interior Ministry goes on to complain that even “reputable media” like Deutsche Welle and Welt quote Herrmann. Furthermore, she was invited by the Christian Democrats’ “Berlin Circle” along with former domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the conservative Values Union caucus. Additionally, the Interior Ministry falsely claims that Herrmann was invited to the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament for the right-wing AfD.
What is wrong with all this is the Interior Ministry’s outlook, however, which seems to view its role in harassing critics of radical Islam rather than monitoring the radicals themselves.
Herrmann calls the charge of “Islamophobia” “absurd,” noting that she has “always made a clear distinction between extremists and harmless practice of religion.”
From 2012 to 2016, for example, Herrmann “carried out a street campaign in Frankfurt to draw attention to the danger of the Koran distribution campaign “LIES!” (Read!). During this dangerous action in public I was under police protection. In those years, I didn’t see any of those Islamist officials, who like to pretend to be representatives of all Muslims, risking anything to protect young Muslims. “LIES!” was banned in Germany at the end of 2016,” Herrmann said.
Instead of going after radical Islamists, Herrmann said, the Interior Ministry prefers to make “false and defamatory statements” about her with the aim of “discrediting … my entire work”.
“Strikingly”, the German Interior Ministry uses “the same arguments, sometimes with the same wording,” as the Islamists she has exposed, Herrmann says. “So it’s no surprise that Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood and Turkish nationalists are now applauding. And it doesn’t matter who copied from which Islamists here, because the report was commissioned by the Interior Ministry. The supposedly independent “experts” were selected by the ministry. And now the report is being published and distributed by the Interior Ministry. It is therefore the German Federal Ministry of the Interior that is responsible for the claims made in this report.”
Writing in Welt newspaper, Lennart Pfahler revealed how Islamist organizations contributed to the German Interior Ministry’s “Islamophobia” report, including the Islamic League of Shiite Communities in Germany (IGS), which is controlled by the Tehran- and Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution; and Cologne-based Fair International, which is affiliated with the Erdogan-controlled Islamic Community Milli Görüs (IGMG), founded by Turkish Islamist Necmettin Erbakan.
Now, Herrmann is suing the Interior Ministry for defamation, and is raising funds for her legal expenses on GoFundMe. Time will tell.