Mosques in Germany, according to the anti-discrimination department of the Turkish-Islamic Religious Union (DITIB), began receiving more letters containing religious threats, Daily Sabah reported on January 18.
An avalanche of threats occurred after the start of Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, where, as the publication writes, more than 24 thousand Palestinians were killed against 1.2 thousand Israelis who were victims of Hamas.
17 threatening emails were sent to the Cologne Central Mosque alone. Threatening letters also began arriving at a mosque in the northern German city of Dinslaken. The Muslim community, the publication notes, is increasingly concerned.
In late October 2023, DITIB reported an incident in which three mosques received packages containing racist messages, burned pages of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, pork and feces. Furthermore, even before the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a mosque in the center of Duisburg also received letters containing hate threats against parishioners, containing a swastika and the signature “NSU 2.0.”
“NSU 2.0” refers to the National Socialist underground, a neo-Nazi terrorist group discovered in 2011 that killed 10 people and carried out attacks against Turkish and Muslim immigrants, Daily Sabah writes.
Please note that according to official German statistics, in the first three months of 2023 there were 124 attacks against Muslims, including verbal and physical attacks, threatening letters and burning of mosques.
In Germany, since 2017, crimes motivated by Islamophobia have been counted separately. In 2018, 910 incidents were reported, including 48 attacks on mosques alone, slightly less than the 1,095 crimes in 2017. In 2019, there were 871 attacks against the Muslim community in Germany.
Recall that Germany, with a population of more than 84 million people, has the second largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country’s almost 5.3 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish origin.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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