The imam of a Stuttgart Ditib mosque has praised a founder and former spiritual leader of the Islamist terror organisation Hamas in a Facebook post. In the post dated April 18, which has since been deleted, Imam Hasan Caglayan described Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, who was killed by the Israeli military in 2004, as one of “five beautiful people” with “messages and teachings for all those who care about the Jerusalem issue”.
Ahmad Yasin was one of the founding members of Hamas, its spiritual leader until his death, and a proponent of suicide bombings and military attacks on Israel. After an accident as a teenager, Yasin was rendered paraplegic from the waist down.
Hasan Caglayan, Imam of the Ditib mosque in the Stuttgart district of Feuerbach, posted on his Facebook page on April 18 that Yasin had become a “fighter for the Palestinian cause”. Those who have an internal faith can defy the whole world despite disabilities, he said. “If you want Jerusalem, there are no excuses and obstacles,” the imam wrote, referring to the Hamas founder.
After an enquiry by RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND), Caglayan first deleted the post last weekend and then deactivated his entire Facebook profile. The imam did not answer the question why he considers the spiritual leader of a terrorist organisation worthy of praise. Ditib also left the question unanswered as to whether the statement was in line with the mosque association’s position. According to Ditib, Caglayan had previously served as imam at the Sehitlik mosque in Berlin.
In May, the religious authority subordinate to President Erdogan positioned itself in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The head of the authority, Ali Erbas, called Israel a “baby killer” that had to be “stopped as soon as possible”. In a Friday sermon given by the authority to the German Ditib mosques on May 21, the Israeli state is called a “tyrant” and its ruin by Allah is announced.
From 2016, Ditib also came under criticism because imams in Germany had spied on opponents of the Turkish government for the Turkish secret service. The secret service was particularly targeting followers of the US-based preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government holds responsible for the failed coup attempt in 2016.