It sounds like Cairo, Fallujah or Istanbul – but it is in North Rhine-Westphalia. A video showing a school enrolment ceremony at a comprehensive school in Dortmund is currently circulating on the internet. During the ceremony in the assembly hall, an imam sings an Islamic prayer. It is said to be a “first-time interreligious school enrolment service”.
Apollo News was able to research the source of the video and when it was recorded. The clip does indeed show a school enrolment ceremony in Dortmund on August 7. The authenticity of the video is confirmed to Apollo News. “The video does not fully reflect the course of the event,” a spokesperson for the Arnsberg district government explained when asked. The school had invited representatives of both major Christian denominations and an imam to the enrolment ceremony. “Sixty per cent of the pupils” were Muslims, they explained. The prayer was also translated into German for all present, but this is not shown in the video.
On its website, the school describes itself as a place where “children and young people of different cultural affiliations, talents and abilities learn successfully with and from each other to shape their lives independently in a democratic society”. The school has “already been involved for decades in the areas of human rights education and democracy education, intercultural learning, environmental education and global learning”. In regional reporting, the school is associated with terms such as “colourful diversity”.
However, a rabbi is not to be seen in the “intercultural” ceremony. Instead, there is an imam – with a questionable background.
The imam in the video is the head of a mosque of the Turkish state mosque association Ditib in the small town of Altena in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the local press he is presented as a German who also speaks German. Born in Krefeld, he studied Islamic theology in Ankara. The Ditib has been criticised for years because the boundaries to radical Islam are repeatedly blurred in the organisation. In the past, Ditib imams prayed for the victory of Turkish troops and Islamist militias during their invasion of Syria. The association’s mosques have also been used to spy on opponents of the Erdogan regime.
Dortmund: Imam singt bei Einschulungs-Feier – Apollo News (apollo-news.net)
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