They spread anti-Semitic and Islamist agitation – and now representatives of these associations are to control the broadcaster NDR?
The government factions of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party (Grüne) have made a motion in Hamburg’s state parliament demanding that the “NDR Broadcasting Council should be even more strongly oriented towards the diversity of society”.
The motion states that the city of Hamburg has already committed itself in contracts with the regional DITIB association of Hamburg and the Shura to “advocate in negotiations on the media state treaties that these religious communities are appropriately represented in the supervisory bodies such as the NDR Broadcasting Council”.
The Broadcasting Council is the highest supervisory body of the North German Broadcasting Corporation. Islamists are now supposed to gain a foothold here, of all places?
Ditib, the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion, is subordinate to the Turkish religious authority Diyanet. Its representatives repeatedly attract attention with anti-Semitic outbursts: for example, the Diyanet recently tweeted, while Hamas was terrorising Israeli civilians with rockets: “The baby-killer Israel must be stopped as soon as possible.”
The “Islamic Centre Hamburg” (IZH) is also represented in the Shura, the “Council of Islamic Communities in Hamburg”. According to the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the IZH is an important institution of the Iranian mullah regime. “The position of the IZH director is traditionally filled by a follower of the Iranian state doctrine and the Islamic revolutionary goals who is loyal to the line. He is considered the representative of the revolutionary leader Khamenei in Europe.”
Mohammad Hadi Mofateh (55), the current leader, is a “savvy trained representative of the current regime in Tehran” who served in the terrorist Revolutionary Guards, according to the investigators.
While IZH officials used to support the anti-Semitic Quds March calling for the destruction of Israel, it was cancelled last year because of the Corona situation. Instead, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a “Shiite extremist with close ties to the IZH” held an online event for Quds Day. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) in Hamburg has now been reporting on the IZH for three decades because of “findings about efforts against the basic order”.
And such Islamists are now supposed to control the NDR channel via the Broadcasting Council?
“We are very irritated by these efforts of the state government in Hamburg,” says Remko Leemhuis, head of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Berlin. “Of course it is welcome if the Broadcasting Council wants to reflect social diversity. However, this must not mean that organisations such as the IZH or DITIB are involved,” Leemhuis told the newspaper BILD.
“After all, the institutions and organisations do not represent the interests of Hamburg’s Muslims, but those of the anti-Semitic regime in Tehran and Erdoğan’s dictatorship. It is simply scandalous that regimes that imprison or even execute journalists, of all people, should be granted influence over the shaping of public broadcasting in this country via their representatives. We strongly warn against involving these extremists.”
Christoph de Vries (46), a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member of parliament in Hamburg, also sharply criticises the decision. “With this demand, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens are taking their cuddling of Islamists and representatives of political Islam in Hamburg to the extreme,” the interior expert told BILD. “It is madness to want to fill the broadcasting council with a representative of the Shura, whose member IZH has been observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for decades and is directly controlled by the Iranian Mullah regime. The same applies to the mosque association Ditib, which is subordinate to the Turkish President Erdogan.” He added that it was also inappropriate that Islamic religious communities should be more strongly represented on the Broadcasting Council than the churches, with three representatives from the associations.
“If the SPD and the Greens are even remotely serious about fighting for our liberal democracy and against anti-Semitism, then they must reverse this parliamentary decision immediately.”