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September 8, 2006

Germany: Mosque "Hate-Preacher" Accepts Deportation

Deutsche Presse Agentur via Expatica today reports that a Turkish-born imam, whom they do not name for some reason, has agreed not to challenge his deportation order.

After a little research, WR can now give an account of what is going on. The preacher in question is Imam Yakub Tasci, or Yakup Tasci (pictured) who was the imam at the Mevlana Mosque in Kreuzberg, a suburb of Berlin. The mosque is situated in Kottbusser Tor, Kreuzberg's main square. In November 2004, the television company ZDF TV secretly filmed the imam preaching to his Turkish congregation. The subsequent broadcast caused national outrage.

Tasci said: "Those Germans, those atheists, they don't shave their armpits. Their sweat spreads evil smells, they stink. They are atheists, what good do they do to us? And since they are unbelievers, in the afterlife they can only burn in hell."

Later he made a speech to the Milli Gorus militant group, in which he said that suicide bombers in Jerusalem and Iraq were "martyrs". After Tasci's sermon was broadcast, a spokesman for the mosque had asked for forgiveness and claimed that the imam had spoken in error.

However, the Mevlana Mosque is run jointly by the Islamic Federation of Berlin (IFB) and also the Milli Gorus organisation. As we reported on May 22, Milli Gorus is a radical Islamist group. The name means "national vision" and it opposes integration into European society. Active in the Netherlands and Germany, Milli Gorus controls 500 mosques. It has been described by Germany's domestic security agency, Verfassungsschutz as a "foreign extremist organization". In 1996, a court in Hamburg described Milli Gorus as a "threat to the democratic order in Germany".

So Tasci, who had preached at the Mevlana Mosque for twenty years, was really stating Milli Gorus policy when he vilified German nationals. According to rather PC document by Liz Fekete entitled Speech crime and deportation, available in pdf format, "The Berlin constitutional court ordered that Yakup Tasci, imam of the Mevlana mosque in the Kreuzberg district, should be deported on the grounds that he represented a serious danger to public safety. It cited a public speech in which he was said to have glorified Islamic martyrs in Iraq and Jerusalem and in the form of a poem, suggested suicide attacks in Germany."

Fekete suggested that the senator for internal affairs supported Tasci's deportation for 'seriously endangering public safety and order' and threatening the 'peaceful coexistence between Germans and non-Germans' after the broadcast by ZDF TV.

As described by Islam OnLine, on Tuesday March 22, 2005, the judge at Berlin's Federal Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling that Tasci should be expelled. The reasons given were that Tasci "is preaching violence at his sermons, a matter that poses a threat to national security and discipline in Berlin, and contravenes freedom of religion and speech. The imam has done too much harm to tranquil and peaceful Berlin, which is melting pot for people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds."

After the broadcast on ADF TV, the IFB, which runs 12 mosques in Berlin, had sacked Tasci. After the decision in March, Tasci's attorney said that he would not appeal the ruling. He did appeal against the ruling.

According to Uni-Banburg, the State Constitutional Court issued a ruling on 14 April, 2005, ordering Tasci's deportation. Tasci lodged an appeal against the Federal court ruling of March. The appeal was then to be heard in May.

Under the Immigration Act of 1 January 2005, section 55, paragraph 1 (Residence Law), a foreign national can be expelled "if his or her residence constitutes an impairment of the public security and order or of other substantial interests of the Federal Republic of Germany."

Amazingly, the controversial imam, who had entered the country in 1971, had managed to win a court case against ZDF TV for calling him a "hate-preacher", and barred the media from using that term to describe him.

Expatica states that the state interior ministry (Berlin is a state in its own right) today announced that Tasci jad withdrawn a demand that the city Aliens' Office review his case. With the withdrawal of this last ploy to delay deportation, Tasci's expulsion is now legally finalised. He is expected to leave voluntarily. However, he was expected to leave voluntarily in March, and six months later, he is still in Berlin.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 8, 2006 8:25 PM

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