The top Muslim and footballer Antonio Rüdiger appears on Instagram in a white Islamic prayer robe and raises his index finger up in the air, just like his fellow believers from the ranks of the IS murder gang. After journalists such as Julian Reichelt drew attention to the IS gesture of the supposedly harmless, devout footballer and criticised him for it, Rüdiger and the German Football Association (DFB) have now filed complaints.
Antonio Rüdiger is also a peace-loving person because he is a Muslim. At least that’s the more than crude description given by his law firm in the complaint that journalist Julian Reichelt, among others, has now received because he criticised the footballer for his IS salute, which he presented on Instagram dressed in a white Muslim robe. As a “convinced believer”, he is a “peace-loving person” who rejects all forms of violence, it says. To interpret the gesture as an “Islamist salute” is “wrong, abbreviated and deliberately polarising”. It is the Tauhid gesture, which means: “There is no god but Allah”.
On Sunday, former head of the tabloid Bild Reichelt wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “For all those who don’t want to recognise the Islamist salute by Antonio Rüdiger as an Islamist salute: The Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls this gesture the “IS finger” and rates the index finger as a clear sign of Islamism.”
So far, this has been the case. Now, however, the defenders of progressive Islamisation in this country are rallying behind Rüdiger, who filed a criminal complaint against Reichelt with the Berlin public prosecutor’s office on Monday. “For insult and defamation, inciting offence and incitement of the people”, as the complaint states, according to Bild. The left-wing DFB also filed a complaint and reported the Reichelt tweet to the public prosecutor’s office as “hate speech”.
Rüdiger was absolved by Ahmad Mansour, who noted that the gesture was not Islamist but purely religious, but was being appropriated by extremists such as Salafists. He says of Antonio Rüdiger’s behaviour: “This image is associated with things that Antonio Rüdiger certainly did not intend. The effect on young people is enormous. I believe that the DFB needs to do its homework when it comes to sensitising players to certain topics.”
Islamic scholar Abdel-Hakim Ourghi takes a more critical view: “Not everyone who does this is automatically an extremist or a Salafist.” But: “Since the rise of IS, this gesture has been publicly presented by supporters of political Islam and misused by jihadists for propaganda purposes. Nowadays, a raised index finger in public is a symbol of identification with political Islam or Islamism. A public figure must know that a raised index finger is now often associated with Islamism. Their public messages can influence many people.”
Ethnologist Susanne Schröter from the University of Frankfurt argues in a similar vein and reminds us what a “harmless” Muslim Rüdiger is. However, she is highly critical of Rüdiger’s gesture and writes: “The pointing finger demonstrated to the other person has clearly become a recognisable sign of Salafists in recent years – and this is probably how Rüdiger’s staging should be understood. There was already a scandal three years ago because of having posted an Islamist Like on Twitter, for which he then apologised. That was clearly not meant seriously at the time, but just a deception so as not to jeopardise his career.”
Reichelt comments on X about the DFB’s current attempt at intimidation and the charges brought against him:
“I have just learnt from the media that Antonio Rüdiger and the DFB have charged me because I pointed out here that Rüdiger shows the Islamists’ salute on an Instagram post. This gesture has been completely appropriated by terrorists over the last two decades. It has indisputably become the gesture of ISIS and Islamist murderers all over the world, of people who have also committed murder in Berlin and are bringing disaster and immeasurable suffering to the world. Anyone who uses this gesture as an adult and has liked posts by Islamists at least once in the past knows this very well. The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution and its state offices regard the raised finger as a sign of Islamist radicalisation. The Interior Minister calls the gesture “unacceptable”. Anyone who poses like this in public is deliberately giving the salute of fanatics and not making an innocent, spiritual gesture. It is a normalisation of a terrible ideology that has already conquered far too much space in this country. We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated, especially because a popular national player is involved. It must be pointed out that this political ideology goes against everything that our values stand for.
What Antonio Rüdiger and the DFB are using here are methods of intimidation. No one should dare to criticise when Islamism and its symbols are marching ahead. We must never submit to this. The raised index finger of Islamism, with which terrorists all over the world celebrate their murders, does not belong to Germany. I will never allow myself to be banned from saying that.”
Nach IS-Geste: Der gute Muslim Rüdiger und DFB erstatten Anzeigen » Journalistenwatch