Germany is rolling out a ‘counselling service’ to combat the surge of Islamist indoctrination across the country. The taxpayer-funded service “will mainly target Turkish and Arabic-speaking families” where children may be “flirting with extremism,” German newspapers report.
The programs comes at a time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is allocating huge sums of public money in hopes of preventing the country’s growing Muslim population from becoming more radicalized. According to the German state broadcaster MDR, the government spent nearly €100 million on Islamist ‘de-radicalization’ programs in 2018. “Nobody knows if the money is put to meaningful use,” the broadcaster noted.
The state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported the details of the program:
A new prototype project was launched in Germany on Wednesday, aimed at counselling parents who are concerned their children may be flirting with extremism. The Turkish Community in Germany (TGD) non-profit established the service primarily for Turkish and Arabic-speaking parents, but said that German native speakers would be able to receive help as well. (…)Funded partly the European Union and Germany’s Ministry for Families, counseling is set to be available through at least the end of 2019, although founders hope they will receive the budget to continue the service indefinitely.For years, German authorities have warned about an uptick of young people in Germany becoming radicalized online. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of people considered extreme Islamists in Germany rose from 100 to at least 1,600, and an average of around four credible tips about planned terrorist activities are received on a daily basis.
According to the German domestic intelligence agency (BfV), the number of Islamists in the country is much higher. That figure is around 10,800, a two-fold increase in past five years. Thanks to Chancellor Merkel’s open borders policies, young immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries are bolstering the ranks of jihadis operating on German soil. Since the onset of the migrant crisis in the autumn of 2015, German Islamists have been attempting to recruit asylum seekers for the cause of jihad, police reports say.
German schools, prisons and even military are becoming fishing grounds for these Islamist recruiters.
German authorities are alarmed by the what they dub as “kindergarten jihadists.” The outgoing German intelligence chief, Hans-Georg Maassen, warned about the “new generation of jihadists being raised in Germany.” Adding that “Islamic State uses headhunters who scour the internet for children who can be approached and tries to radicalize these children, or recruit these children for terrorist attacks.”
In recent years, the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have unmasked 24 jihadis within their ranks. According to newspaper reports, at least 29 Bundeswehr soldiers have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight on behalf of the Islamic State.
Germany’s open borders have allowed the ISIS fighters to return home with ease as well. Out of nearly a thousand German nationals who had joined the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, over three hundred have come back home. Most of these returnees — war criminals to be more precise — are now walking free on German streets. Given their level of Islamist indoctrination and combat experience, they will take up the roles of operatives and masterminds of jihad in Europe for years to come.
Despite countless warnings, the Chancellor Merkel-led government has failed to make the obvious connection between its open borders policy and rising threat of Islamic radicalization. The German government would be well advised to use its funds to secure national borders and curb illegal immigration, instead of wasting them on aimless ‘de-radicalization’ programs.
Germany’s growing Salafist Islamic community
[Cover image via YouTube]
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