Stoiber pledges deportation of 4000 Islamic Militants from Germany

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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I think this is the first call to expel muslims from Europe by an established and leading poltical party. I don’t think it is going to be the last. I predict, laws in UK will change to expel quite a few HT and Mahajorouin members.
I just hope it does not get out of hand.

Immigrants linked to terror in German poll

John Hooper in Werne, western Germany
Thursday September 19, 2002
The Guardian

Germany’s knife-edge general election campaign took an extraordinary new turn yesterday when the conservative candidate, Edmund Stoiber, pledged himself to the deportation of 4,000 alleged Islamic militants if he is voted in as chancellor on Sunday.
“There always has to be a difference between tolerance and stupidity,” he declared.

Behind in most polls, the Bavarian governor - a hard-liner on law and order - appeared to be making a last-gasp effort to tap into fears over a link between immigration and terrorism in Europe. He told a rowdy crowd, packed into the market square of Werne, on the edge of the Ruhr district, that there were 30,000 identified Muslim fundamentalist extremists in Germany.

Mr Stoiber added: “Among these 30,000 so-called Islamists, there are 4,000 who are ready for violence. The police know that; 4,000 are known by name as being disposed to violence and are suspected of belonging to foreign terrorist organisations such as the Algerian GIA. I say to you: these 4,000 - I will expel them from the country.”

Mr Stoiber made no reference in his speech to any kind of judicial process, and it was not clear how he intended to carry out the deportations under existing laws. Legislation that came into effect last December abolished a ban on the investigation of foreigners based in Germany and considered to be terrorist suspects by other states. But the law as it stands does not allow the authorities to deport anyone on mere suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Mr Stoiber’s undertaking can be expected to provoke indignant criticism from representatives of Germany’s Muslim minority, coming as it does only two days after he and his lieutenants pulled the issues of race and immigration into the election for the first time.

The Bavarian governor, who is trailing by up to three points in the polls after Gerhard Schröder staged a remarkable comeback, said that with 4 million unemployed it would be “irresponsible to open the market to everyone”.

Mr Stoiber’s home affairs spokesman went much further, declaring that immigrants should not only be made to take integration courses, but they should also be made to pay for them. Günther Beckstein added that foreigners intending to live in Germany should recognise underlying values “moulded by Christianity”.

Yesterday’s pledge is likely to be depicted by Mr Stoiber’s opponents as an attempt to jump on the rightwing populist bandwagon that has rolled successfully through the Netherlands, where followers of the late Pim Fortuyn are installed in government.

But the governing Social Democrat-led coalition is nevertheless vulnerable to charges of being soft on security. Though it has passed legisla tion to put fingerprints on passports and ID cards, it has shied away from implementing it because of opposition from the Greens, the junior partners in the alliance.

The issue of security versus civil liberties had already been put on the election agenda by the September 11 anniversary and the discovery in Heidelberg of a suspected plot to blow up a US forces’ supermarket a year after the attacks.

Mr Stoiber said afterwards that suspicion of belonging to an illegal organisation should be enough to justify the expulsion of foreigners from the country. But his remarks yesterday went beyond anything he had so far urged.

The conservative challenger for the chancellorship reminded his audience that the attacks in the US last year had been planned in Hamburg where Mohammed Atta, the operational leader of the plot, and two of the other pilots studied at university.

“Atta and his friends who steered the aircraft on the orders of Osama bin Laden took advantage of German liberalism - others would say German somnolence - to operate undisturbed in a way they could not in any other European country,” Mr Stoiber said.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was seized by Pakistani police at the weekend, was one of three members of the “Hamburg cell” who did not take part in the operation itself and fled Germany shortly before September 11. A fourth alleged conspirator was arrested and charged in Hamburg last month.

Germans have already been on the receiving end of a post-September 11 Islamist attack, on the holiday island of Djerba in April.

Recent security alerts and the arrest of terrorist suspects have focused public attention on the threat. Earlier this month, police raided the warehouse of a textile company and questioned its Syrian-born owner and his family on suspicion of harbouring Islamic extremists.

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And then you have this in the AP. After sounding reasonable all the way through then you run into the last sentence which seems to come from nowhere. As far as an american is concerned, it negates any feeling of sympathy or injustice that might be being done. It simply leaves the vague feeling of “here go the mooslims with their pat victimhood whine”. Why do the spokespeople feel the need to do that?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Muslims.html

Muslim Bias Up Since 9 / 11
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:43 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) – Discrimination against Muslims has increased sharply across Europe since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, isolating many Islamic communities and undermining efforts to build harmonious multiethnic societies, the leader of a British Muslim group said Thursday.

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the year since the attacks had also brought infringements of civil liberties in Britain.

Sacranie said European Muslims had been unfairly demonized in the media and urged Britain’s government to give them more protection.

The terrorists of Sept. 11 ... also hit our high towers of equal rights and equal inclusion, especially with respect to the British Muslim community,'' he said. The community thought it was moving forward with inclusion and integration, but now it simply didn’t know where it stood.‘’

The high media profile of British-based extremists added to the problem by worsening the general public’s perception of Muslims, he said. Several radical clerics make frequent appearances on television and in newspapers with statements defending the attacks and calling for the establishment of Islamic law in Britain.

The Muslim Council released a collection of articles on the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks entitled ``The Quest for Sanity.‘’ One article accused Britain of violating civil rights with a law that allows authorities to detain suspected foreign terrorists without charge or trial. Nine people are being held under the statute.

Christopher Allen, a researcher at the University of Birmingham who wrote one of the book’s articles, told reporters Thursday that discrimination against Muslims had increased sharply throughout the European Union over the past year, even in places where they had lived for decades with little tension.

Muslims were being abused, spat on, and Muslim women in particular (have) become a target,'' he said. Everything about Muslims is distorted and exaggerated … This has fed the flames of Islamophobia.‘’

Sacranie said British Muslims did not want special treatment, but sought the same protection afforded to other minorities, which he said Muslims are denied because they do not constitute a racial group.

He called the Sept. 11 attacks ``evil and criminal’’ but added that they had prompted a destructive chain of events.

Regrettably, (terrorism) has been used to set a global course of action with little respect for human life, national sovereignty and the rule of law,'' he said. ** He accused Britain and the United States of honoring no frontiers, no laws and no scruples’’ in their fight.**

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My pakistani comrade in another day and age this would be consider racist policies. But this is expected of Stoiber. He a year ago accused the Jews of bleeding the country, and that germans should be proud of themselves and the holocaust was in the past and it is time to forget that and move on. No more feeling guilt for the past. Now the Jews jumped on that with the Economist covering 2 articles in 1 week to the issue. The Swiss newspapers were supporting him and so were many europeans tacitly. The problem with Stoibers remarks is that it is ill-founded in reality. They need cheap labor which muslims fulfill. Show me a European who would be a garbage collector. He also using this as an election ploy as the unemployment in Germany has risen and the whites feel that the immigrants are taking their jobs. After Sept 11th, muslim groups are the first target. But i highly doubt any of this will turn into action.

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Its very interesting to see these developments … as germany has about 2-3% Muslims.

Germany bans ‘militant’ groups

Germany’s Interior Minister, Otto Schily, has banned 16 organisations linked to a jailed Turkish militant once known as the Caliph of Cologne.

The authorities used new anti-terror legislation passed after 11 September.

The move follows a series of raids nationwide in five federal states across Germany.

Over 100 properties were searched, including mosques, Islamic associations and private apartments.

No arrests were reported.

The organisations’ bank accounts were frozen as the ban came into effect.

‘Security danger’

The Caliphate State organisation, run by Muhammad Metin Kaplan, wants to overthrow Turkey’s secular regime and impose a radical Islamic state.

It was itself banned, along with 20 affiliates, last December.

That was the first time a religious association had been closed down under the new anti-terror powers.

The leader of the 1,000-strong organisation is still in prison for his part in the murder of an opponent within the organisation.

Germany’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the group endangered Germany’s internal security and German foreign policy interests.

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Are u serious 4000 deported? Dumb decision. Financially and diplomatically.