On July 24, a long line of patrol cars winds its way through Uhlenhorst, a district on the shore of Hamburg’s Outer Alster Lake. They stop at the address Schöne Aussicht 36. Uniformed officers, wearing black balaclavas, get out and open the low gate, behind which two minarets and a massive blue dome rise into the sky.
The Imam Ali Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, is an equally magnificent and politically controversial Shia place of worship. Shortly before six o’clock, the officers begin their operation. They carry boxes, a chainsaw, and a battering ram. “Police!” shouts echo across the mosque’s forecourt. When the officers leave, a police seal will likely be affixed to the building’s entrance, prohibiting entry. This is known from other prohibition proceedings.
The operator of the mosque, the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), is now banned, as is the Islamic Academy of Germany based there, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior confirmed in the morning. “The anti-constitutional activities of the Islamic Center Hamburg were ended today,” said Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) in a statement: “Radical Islamism and anti-Semitism have no place in an open, democratic, and free Hanseatic city.”
Simultaneously with the raid on the Blue Mosque, police searched more than 50 other buildings in seven federal states, as other pro-Iranian associations were also banned, including the Center for Islamic Culture in Frankfurt am Main, the Islamic Center Berlin, and the Islamic Association of Bavaria in Munich.
In Hamburg, the dispute over the IZH has been ongoing for almost three decades. Since 1993, the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution has reported annually on the activities of the association. Essentially, the intelligence service views the IZH as “an important instrument of the Tehran regime” to spread an anti-democratic and anti-Semitic Islam in Europe. This is stated in the current report from last year. The IZH is also said to have supported the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is banned in Germany.
The operators of the Blue Mosque dispute this portrayal: they present themselves as moderate and claimed in an interview last week that they only run a Shia mosque and its community.
“The IZH is an important, clearly Tehran-controlled representative of the Iranian regime in Europe,” says Torsten Voß, President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He points out, for example, that the IZH distributes the book “The Islamic State” by Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and ruled Iran as a dictator until his death ten years later. His book is still a “binding ideological cornerstone” of the regime there and advocates the stoning of women, the flogging of religious dissenters, and the killing of homosexuals. It stands in “diametric opposition to the free democratic basic order of the Basic Law.”
The fact that the Blue Mosque not only sympathizes with the Islamist regime but is also its outpost in Germany is shown by a letter intercepted by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It describes the head of the IZH, Mohammad Hadi Mofatteh, as a representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader and head of state Ali Khamenei. Voß describes him as a “well-trained representative of the Iranian regime and a subordinate of the revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei.”
Criticism of the Blue Mosque gained momentum in September 2022. At that time, Jina Mahsa Amini, an Iranian of Kurdish descent, was arrested in Tehran by the so-called morality police. She allegedly did not wear her headscarf properly. On the way to the police station, she was beaten. Shortly afterward, she collapsed and died.
Her death sparked one of the largest waves of protest in Iran since the country’s founding in 1979. Young Iranians, in particular, took to the streets to protest for more freedom and against the religious regime. A movement also emerged in Germany: artists and scientists wrote protest letters, women cut their hair in solidarity, and around 80,000 people demonstrated in Berlin against the rulers in Iran.
On November 9, 2022, politicians in Germany responded. Members of the Bundestag approved a motion by the “traffic light” coalition entitled “Support the protest movement in Iran – Increase pressure on the regime in Tehran.” In it, the parliamentarians demanded that the government examine how the IZH in Hamburg could be closed. Thus, the IZH also engaged Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) and her department. Officials investigated the suspicion of whether and how the activities of the IZH might violate Germany’s constitutional order and the principle of international understanding. Hamburg’s head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Torsten Voß, put it this way: “The brutal actions of the Iranian regime against peaceful protest movements, the disregard for human rights, and Iran’s role in international conflicts” had brought the IZH as Iran’s representative “more into the political consciousness.”
In Hamburg, Second Mayor Katharina Fegebank (Greens) described the operators of the Blue Mosque as “opposed to our liberal-democratic basic order,” as they stand for “repression and disregard for human rights.” This aligned her with the debate around the Islamic association Schura, in which the IZH was a member at the time.
Schura is the most important voice for Muslims in Hamburg, and since 2012, Schura and the city have been connected by a state treaty. This treaty allows Schura, for example, to have a say in what is taught in religious education classes in Hamburg schools. The fact that the IZH was a member of Schura drew criticism from all parties in the Hamburg state parliament. The IZH then voluntarily left Schura, apparently to preempt being expelled, as the association had said at the time.
Up until November 16, 2023, nothing happened. On the morning of that day, around 800 police officers moved in on the IZH and five other associations for a raid. A total of 54 apartments, houses, and mosques were searched across seven federal states. Officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police also participated in the search. They seized large amounts of cash, mobile phones, laptops, and USB sticks. Trucks were seen in front of the Blue Mosque at the time, transporting the confiscated material away.
Since that day, many observers in Hamburg have wondered what the officials from the Federal Ministry of the Interior found. Today, speculation on this question ends. Intelligence officer Voß said that his agency had contributed “new findings” to ensure that the ban proceedings were “now successful.” He referred to incriminating letters, which were, however, found several years ago.
Whether the IZH will legally challenge the ban is not yet known. They could file a lawsuit against the state in the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. Later, they could even take the case to the Constitutional Court.
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