Federal Ministry of the Interior bans Hamburg Islamic Center

The Federal Ministry of the Interior has banned the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH). As the ministry explained on Wednesday morning, the association’s affiliated organizations are also affected. As a result, searches are currently underway at 53 properties in eight federal states – in addition to Hamburg, these also include Bremen, Lower Saxony and Bavaria. The Ministry of the Interior also stated that the assets of the IZH will be confiscated.

“As a direct representative of the Iranian ‘leader of the revolution’, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is spreading the ideology of the so-called ‘Islamic Revolution’ in the Federal Republic of Germany in an aggressive and combative manner and hopes to achieve this goal,” the ministry continued.

In the early hours of this morning, dozens of police officers cordoned off the Blue Mosque in Hamburg. According to a DPA reporter, they began searching the Shia church. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has listed the association that runs the mosque as an extremist organization and is controlled by Iran.

At about the same time in Berlin, several police officers stormed the Shiite club building in the Neukölln district, according to a DPA reporter.

The ministry had already searched 54 properties across the country in November last year, including the Blue Mosque and dozens of other properties in the Hanseatic city. At the time, raids also took place in Lower Saxony, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia. At the time, a large amount of material was confiscated.

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Fesser (SPD) explained that the material confirmed “serious suspicions” and that the ban had now been imposed.

Feser went on to say that the IZH is promoting an Islamist, totalitarian ideology in Germany that is against human dignity, against women’s rights, against an independent judiciary and against our democracies.

According to Feiser, IZH and its affiliated organizations also support Hezbollah and spread “radical anti-Semitism.” Feiser stressed that “the peaceful practice of faith and religion by Shiites” is “clearly not affected by our ban.”

The Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been monitoring it since the early 1990s. There have been calls for its closure for years. The German Bundestag has also called on the federal government to study “whether and how to close the Hamburg Islamic Center as a hub for the Iranian regime’s activities in Germany”. The citizens of Hamburg have also called for the closure of the center. “Closing this outpost of the inhumane Iranian regime is a real blow to Islamic extremism,” explained Hamburg Interior Senator Andy Grote (Social Democratic Party).

The Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution said that IZH represents the goals of the Islamic Revolution, which is diametrically opposed to the free and democratic basic order stipulated in the Basic Law. It is alleged that in recent years, IZH has established a nationwide network of contacts through which it exerts influence on Shiites of different nationalities, as well as Shiite mosques and clubs, and even completely controls them.