It is a shocking example of failed integration: an avowed supporter of the Iranian mullah regime and speaker at the now closed Blue Mosque in Hamburg worked as a teacher at a vocational college in Wuppertal ( North Rhine-Westphalia). A year ago, he even became a civil servant.
Now he has been suspended from his job!
WDR had followed Ali Fakih on camera for over four years – until he broke off contact this year. The teacher of economics and Islamic religion fled to Germany with his parents from Lebanon 18 years ago.
In Germany, Fakih made it to the civil service as a teacher at the vocational college in Wuppertal-Barmen. He was held in high esteem by the pupils and in the staff room and seemed like a prime example of successful integration, but he told the German broadcaster WDR about the Hamas massacre at the Nova Festival of October 7, 2023 on camera: ‘I have to be honest, I wasn’t surprised. They were celebrating next to a prison of 2.2 million people (meaning the Gaza Strip, the ed.). I would be ashamed to celebrate next to a prison.’
It gradually emerged that Fakih was a regular guest at the ‘Blue Mosque’ in Hamburg, where he also gave speeches. In the footage, he calls it his ‘favourite place in Germany’.
The association, which runs the ‘Blue Mosque’, was banned in July by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (54, SPD) for spreading anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli hate speech.
Teacher Fakih openly admitted to worshipping the Iranian religious leader Ali Khamenei (85). He gave lectures in a backyard mosque and allowed himself to be filmed as a co-organiser of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Düsseldorf at which Israel’s right to exist was called into question.
The district government relieved Ali Fakih of his official duties immediately after the report was broadcast. Disciplinary proceedings will be initiated and he will remain suspended until the matter has been clarified.
AND: ‘The Düsseldorf district government strongly condemns the statements and behaviour portrayed in the film and expressly distances itself from them. They violate the values of our free and democratic basic order and blatantly violate the duties of a civil servant.’