Two lanes are closed – for an Islamist mosque consisting of four pavilions. The Hessian Administrative Court officially allows mullah supporters to pray on the street. They are demonstrating against the German state. The state that closed their mosque because of terrorist links to the Iranian regime, and whose courts now allow the mobile tent mosque in front of the building.
From 6.30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday evening, two lanes of Eschborner Landstraße at number 79 belong to the members of the Imam Ali Mosque. The Muslims arrive in vans and cars, set up the pavilions, lay out carpets and set up huge loudspeakers. Large posters in black, red and gold hang on the walls, bearing the federal eagle and ‘Art. 4 GG’, a reference to Article 4 of the Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of religion.
Young and old men, veiled women with children arrive from all over. The prayers begin at around 7:20 p.m. Calls from the Koran and chants boom from the loudspeakers, audible several hundred metres away.
Muslims are no longer allowed to enter the mosque behind them. It is barricaded. In July 2024, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser (55, SPD), banned the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH), which also includes the Imam Ali Mosque in Frankfurt. Because it is an arm of the regime in Tehran. For a year and a half, the community members have been demonstrating against this every Thursday evening and Friday afternoon.
The city of Frankfurt did not want to grant permission for the protest event in 2026. The mullah’s supporters first took the case to the Administrative Court in Frankfurt and then to the Administrative Court of Appeal. And they were proved right.
During the prayer on the street, the newspaper BILD encounters Muhsin Abboud (aged 26), who registered the mobile mosque. He states, ‘We are relieved that we have been proven right and that we can have confidence in German courts. We demand the return of the mosque.’
Hesse’s Interior Minister (55, CDU) Roman Poseck, on the other hand, says: ‘We must not allow prohibition proceedings to be undermined under the guise of freedom of assembly. It is paradoxical that groups invoke fundamental rights while at the same time trampling on our fundamental values.’
Across the street – without a blocked lane – Iranian counter-demonstrators stand on the narrow cycle lane and pavement. Young women without headscarves with bleached hair, men who have fled the Islamist terrorist regime. They shout: ‘Mullahs, piss off, nobody misses you.’
BILD meets Elnaz Yarijoo (37), who uses a megaphone to rail against the terrorist regime. She demands that German authorities refrain from making deals with the mullahs. Yarijoo: ‘This is not a normal mosque, it is an Islamist centre. They are controlled directly by Iran.’
The counter-demonstrators wave Persian flags. Chants from the crowd: ‘You don’t care about anything except your bloody prayers. We won’t let you pray today. You have murdered 30,000 young people in Iran! You pray on the blood of our children.’