According to experts, the Corona pandemic has made the prevention of Islamist-based extremism much more difficult. Schools and youth facilities have hardly been able to provide any indications of radicalising youths after the discontinuation of classroom events, explained the chairperson of the board of the Federal Working Group on Religious-Based Extremism, Friederike Müller, in an online meeting on Wednesday. At the same time, she said, Islamists had spread “attractively presented” conspiracy theories on the internet about the causes of the pandemic and vaccination, some of which were also anti-Semitic.
Deputy CEO Thomas Mücke emphasised that the consequences of this development for the terrorist threat are still unmistakable. The attack on November 2, 2020 in Vienna showed how terrorists took advantage of the pandemic situation. On the eve of a nationwide lockdown, a lone perpetrator had presumably killed four people and injured 23 others, some seriously, in a rampage. Islamists tried to motivate individuals to commit such attacks, Mücke said. The increased use of the internet in the time of the pandemic, which promotes isolation and a lack of perspective, could help them in this.
Jamuna Oehlmann, an extremism expert who is also involved in the federal working group, warned against cutting funding for prevention work as a result of the financial problems caused by the pandemic. She said that the pluralistic prevention landscape in Germany must be preserved in order to be able to react in a targeted manner to the recruitment attempts of religiously motivated extremists.
The Federal Working Group on Religiously Based Extremism is an umbrella organisation of 33 providers of prevention services. They provide general prevention measures and individual exit assistance from an extremist environment.
https://www.audiatur-online.ch/2021/06/09/experten-pandemie-erschwert-islamismuspraevention/