Germany: The number of salafists on the rise
Prayer during a demonstration of Salafists near Düsseldorf (west of the country), March 14, 2015.
According to a survey conducted by the German weekly Focus, and republished by the website of the Swiss Catholic Church on June 25, 2016, Salafists are on the rise in Germany’s 16 Länder, especially in the west of the country and in Berlin. In North Rhine Westphalia, they went from 1,900 in 2014 to 2,500 in 2015, and in Berlin from 70 to 630. In all of Germany, the ranks of radical Islamists have grown in one year from 6,800 to 8,200. Among them, “a few hundred” are considered by the authorities as “ready for violence.”
In the same article, the German experts consider that this rise is principally due to a “broader and more efficient propaganda”, especially on social media. The present wave of immigration from Muslim countries is “also a factor.” According to journalist Antoine Sfeir, director of the Cahiers de l’Orient, on his blog, Salafism is not “properly speaking an organization; it is more a tendency of ‘regeneration’ of faith and reislamization of society.”
(Sources: apic/antoinesfeir – DICI no.340 dated Sept. 9, 2016)
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