display
Berlin (dpa) - The organization Islamic Relief Germany (IRD), a long-term partner of German humanitarian aid, is concerned about its reputation.
After extreme statements by some board members, the German association has partially replaced its top management.
According to his own statements, he is also interested in refuting the allegation of belonging to the networks of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
However, this reform process has not yet convinced the constitution protection.
For this reason, the Federal Government is probably not expected to support new projects of the organization, as can be seen from a response from the Interior Ministry to a request from the FDP parliamentary group.
The alliance “Aktion Deutschland Hilft” has suspended IRD membership until the end of 2021.
A ministry spokesman informed the German Press Agency on request that, to the knowledge of the Interior Ministry, both Islamic Relief Worldwide in Birmingham, UK and the association Islamic Relief Germany (IRD) have "significant personal connections to the Muslim Brotherhood or related organizations".
display
The members of the Cologne-based association are meanwhile continuing to try to allay the concerns of institutional donors.
"We hope that in the future we will be able to carry out projects such as the health project in north-west Syria with the support of the Federal Foreign Office", says the managing director of IRD, Tarek Abdelalem, of the German press agency.
His deputy, Nuri Köseli, refers to a joint project with the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) that aims to protect girls in Mali from genital mutilation.
And he points to an examination that Islamic Relief Worldwide had commissioned and the result of which is expected in January.
This should involve a security check and the enforcement of rules of conduct.
"We are doing everything we can to create clarity and hope for the support of the federal government," says Abdelalem.
For example, a new board was elected in October.
Abdelalem explains that a former board member who made anti-Semitic statements on a private account on social media "without our knowledge" left in the summer.
Another member, who in 2017 also spread “anti-Western content” via a private account and praised the former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi - a member of the Muslim Brotherhood - was also no longer there.
"We only became aware of these two incidents through inquiries from the press," says Abdelalem.
Meanwhile, a social media code of conduct applies to the functionaries of the association.
The association also made a request to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
However, the authority only informed that the association was not being observed by it and pointed out that the protection of the constitution was not allowed to provide any information about individual members.
display
The answer to the FDP inquiry states that the Foreign Office arranged for the last payment to Islamic Relief Germany in January, in accordance with the contract, “in order to be able to guarantee the delivery of urgently needed medicines” to hospitals in Syria.
The fact that the federal government is still assuming significant personal connections between Islamic Relief and the Muslim Brotherhood or its related organizations shows that Islamic Relief is "still at the beginning" with its efforts to distinguish itself, says FDP parliamentary deputy Stephan Thomae.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, strives for a social order based on Islamic law (“Sharia”).
According to the protection of the constitution, the extremist group in Germany had around 1,350 supporters in 2019.
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, regional focal points of the German Muslim Community (DMG), which the domestic secret service assigns to the spectrum of the Muslim Brotherhood, can be found in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, the Rhine-Main area and - with a decreasing trend - in Saxony.
According to the Federal Government, the Muslim Brotherhood has not been able to recruit any new members from among the Muslim refugees who have come to Germany since 2015.
Although individual cases cannot be ruled out, some of these may be due to the refugees' pre-existing membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
display
The aim of liberal democracy must be "to identify tendencies that disrupt the state at an early stage," says Thomae, who is a member of the parliamentary control body responsible for the secret services.
Because if the breeding ground for extremism is there, it is “only a matter of time before radicalized individual perpetrators take action”.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201122-99-420548 / 3