The “House of Integration” in Bonn-Duisdorf has served as a contact point for young people and people with a migration background since 2012. Various courses are offered, and migrant associations are also active there. However, a Salafist imam has been preaching in the associated mosque since 2017. Together with him, a nationwide known hate preacher is now giving ” lessons for young people” there.
The “House of Integration” in Bonn-Duisdorf, which also includes a mosque, has existed since 2012. Initially, it was accepted extraordinarily well by the local press. However, a specific sponsoring association is not registered for this institution. However, the association BASUG – Diaspora and Development also resides in the same building, which probably has some similarities to the “House of Integration” in terms of its active members. Since its opening, the house has been under the direction of Juboraj Talukder from Bonn, who is of Bangladeshi origin. Talukder is also president of the German-Bengali Society Cologne-Bonn, is close to the “Awami League” party and has been a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member in Bonn for many years. An office of the “German Awami League” was opened there in 2017, according to information on Talukder’s Facebook page. The Awami League is a political party in Bangladesh. Like many parties in the region, the Awami League is tribal-hierarchical and identitarian rather than democratic.
The visit of the chairman of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, one of the most important Islamic organisations in India, Maulana Arshad Madani, to the “House of Integration” in 2017 gave a first indication of the spirit in the institution. Madani is an influential Deobandi, i.e. a representative of an Islamist ideology that, mixed with some Wahhabi elements, makes up the foundation of the Taliban ideology.
The preacher Abdul Alim Hamza has been active for years in the prayer centre, which is part of the “House of Integration”. A video he himself published on the internet in 2012 indicates that Hamza, who says he comes from Peja (Kosovo), was deported from Germany at the time. Years later, however, he returned to Germany and was active in Euskirchen, Münster and Bonn, among other places. According to his own information, he holds Friday prayers in the “Bangladesh Mosque”, which is the name of the mosque belonging to the “House of Integration”. He also calls himself the imam of this institution.
Hamza belongs to the Salafist spectrum. This is because Salafists strictly reject innovations in their religion and always refer to the so-called ancients, meaning the first three generations after Mohammed. And it is precisely this body of thought that Abdul Alim Hamza follows again and again in the video sermons he has uploaded on his own YouTube channel.
But that is not the only reason why the imam should be assigned to this spectrum. At least as serious is the fact that Hamza appears in a video from the end of September together with Said El E. from Bonn. This gentleman has been known nationwide for years as a hate preacher under the name “Abu Dujana”. He became known because he supported the Koran distribution campaign “LIES!”, which was later banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, in terms of content and organisation. For the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Abu Dujana was even “one of the most prominent preachers of the German Salafist scene” in 2018.
It is also significant that the currently penultimate joint event of Alim Hamza and Abu Dujana published on the internet, which probably took place on November 1 in the “House of Integration”, was not published on Hamza’s YouTube channel, but on that of “Habibiflo Dawah Produktion”. This is a well-known YouTube channel on which videos of radical and fundamentalist preachers from the grey area of Salafists, hardcore Salafists and Muslim Brothers have been published for years. “Normal” preachers are not involved at all. And this was not an isolated case, because on November 14, a video of a joint event by Alim Hamza and Abu Dujana in the “House of Integration” was again uploaded to “Habibiflo”. This time it was about the “honourable woman” being afraid of Allah and being obedient to her husband. “In a few years she will be rubbish,” Imam Alim Hamza said about women who appear on television and have neither husbands nor children.
According to the Salafist reading, this is not misogynistic. Within our value system, however, it is deeply misogynistic. And the really dangerous thing about these events is that Hamza and Abu Dujana are not speaking to other Salafists here, but are teaching young people. They may be sent there by gullible parents, unaware that they are being taught radical fundamentalist ideas by Salafists. And that this is taking place in an institution that calls itself a “house of integration” is bizarre. According to Hamza, more than 70 young people were present at one of these “teaching sessions”. There are also conversions on his YouTube channel, evidence of the imam’s missionary activities. It seems to me that this institution will have to be looked into more closely by the authorities, especially those responsible for the protection of minors.
https://hpd.de/artikel/bonner-haus-integration-salafisten-treff-19900