Source: BR
Muslims defend Sharia law and ‘honour killings’ on television: in her programme ‘Klar’, journalist Julia Ruhs examines the spread of Islamism. A visit to Berlin-Neukölln offers insights into the fundamentalist milieu.
‘If the Basic Law and German laws conflict with Sharia law, which takes precedence? Sharia or German laws?” This was the question posed by the Syrian Sami Alkomi to Arab men in Berlin – on camera for the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation’s programme “Klar” with journalist Julia Ruhs. Alkomi is involved in an organisation called Demokratielotsen, which campaigns against Islamism. He is one of the protagonists of the new episode of “Klar”.
The programme is titled “Where Islamists are infiltrating Germany”. It is likely to spark debate. Ruhs gives a voice to Berlin primary school pupils whose Islamist-minded classmates tried to ban them from eating during break times during the fasting month of Ramadan. She investigates Islamist organisations that award the “halal” seal to food products sold in supermarkets. In the Berlin district of Neukölln, she filmed in shops with a hidden camera and bought books and accessories that openly glorify violence.
The programme draws a strict distinction between Islam as a religion and extremist Islamism – not only through explanations, but also through the choice of participants: almost all of them are Muslims themselves who have either been threatened or attacked by Islamists, or who, as Muslims, see through the extremists’ methods – such as Sami Alkomi.
When asked whether German law or Sharia law applies to him, a man replies: “Sharia, of course.”
Alkomi asks further: What if his sister were to live with her boyfriend without being married to him? The man replies: “Adulterers are stoned to death. Unmarried couples are flogged. 900 lashes.” Then he qualifies this: “I exaggerated that,” meaning the number of lashes. Alkomi presses him: “How many?” The man replies: “It’s 99. But I’ll add one more.”
Another man interjects. “Her brother should kill her,” he says. The questioner asks: “Why should her brother kill her? We’re in Germany.”
The man replies, referring to the global Muslim community: “She would dishonour the entire Ummah. That is haram. I’ll kill her.” – “Here in Germany?” – “Yes, I swear by God.”
The starting point is Hermannplatz on the border between the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg and Neukölln. There, Ruhs interviewed the political scientist Gülden Hennemann, who sees the square as a “dividing line” between the part of Berlin “that is still very democratic in character, and a part that unfortunately harbours groups of people and ideologies that are not necessarily compatible with our democracy.” Hennemann is herself Muslim.
Islamism starts as early as in schools, she says. It is Islamist, she explains, when pupils act as religious enforcers and, during the fasting month of Ramadan, forbid other pupils from eating during break times. This is exactly what happened at the Elbe Primary School in Berlin, says its headteacher, Deniz Taner. She, too, says she has her roots “in the Islamic cultural sphere”.
For the “Klar” report, she reads out a letter she sent to parents at the school. “During Ramadan, we are seeing worrying developments,” it states. “Parents, and pupils too, are complaining that some children who are fasting are telling other pupils not to eat during break times.”
Several pupils confirm this on screen. One girl says: “That felt uncomfortable. Quite a lot of people in our class are fasting, and when you’re told things like that – that it’s stupid if you’re not fasting – it feels a bit odd.”
While shopping in Neukölln’s shops with a hidden camera, Ruhs’ team bought a scarf embroidered with the silhouettes of three men on paragliders.
“The image is very strongly reminiscent of the attack on October 7,” says political scientist Hennemann, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, in which around 1,200 people were murdered and hundreds were abducted to the Gaza Strip. “This scarf looks like a trophy of horror and is being sold right in the heart of Berlin,” the editorial team has the voice-over narrator explain. In the same shop, there was also a necklace featuring the outline of a map of Palestine without Israel and a bullet as a pendant.
The selection also included books, among them a standard work by the Iraqi Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is generally regarded as moderate. It is entitled “Fiqh for Muslims in the West” – fiqh being Islamic jurisprudence. “I believe it is not enough to focus solely on aspects of violence in the context of Islamism,” says political scientist Hennemann as she leafs through the pages. “We need to look at what the ideological basis is.” The image shows a highlighted sentence that does, after all, sound prone to violence: “Jihad also involves taking up arms to defend Islam or a Muslim country.”
As evidence of increasing infiltration by Islamists, Ruhs cites the certification of food as “halal”, i.e. permissible under Islamic law. Such products have long been common in supermarkets. According to research by “Klar”, certification is mainly offered by organisations that are not under suspicion, but also by extremists such as the “Islamic Centre Munich”, which is monitored by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or the group Milli Görüs, which is classified as extremist nationwide.
Ruhs illustrates the deadly side of Islamism using the example of the attack on a group of striking members of the Verdi trade union in Munich in February 2025. Farhad N., an Afghan man aged 24 at the time, had driven a car into the group. “Who actually died in the end?” asks one of the participants on camera, answering his own question: “A Muslim woman, my colleague. Her Muslim child.” And he continues: “Who is the injured one? Me, the Muslim.”
Farhad N. is currently on trial in Munich. The eyewitness recalls the moment immediately after the attack, when the perpetrator was lying on the ground: “He was talking to himself. To me, what he was saying sounded more like a prayer. I recognise that from our own practice when I attend the mosque.”