Translation:
Essen’s mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU) reacts with horror to a demonstration in his city on Friday evening. 3,000 people, including many Islamists, marched through the Ruhr metropolis.
Essen’s mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU) reacted with outrage and incomprehension to an anti-Israel demonstration that marched through the Ruhr metropolis on Friday evening. Several of the approximately 3,000 participants chanted slogans and held up posters calling for a “Khilafah” (caliphate) in Germany. The three-hour procession on the edge of the city center was accompanied by 450 police officers and observed by state security.
According to the Essen police, the demonstration was registered by a private individual. However, the main organizer was apparently the “Generation Islam” group, which security experts consider to be part of the pan-Islamist movement “Hizb ut-Tahrir” (HuT) . HuT has been banned in Germany since 2003. The main speaker at the final rally in Essen was the activist Ahmad Tamim, the head of “Generation Islam.” The Islamic scholar Ahmad Omeirate told WAZ that Tamim was “using the Middle East conflict for mobilization and radicalization.”
Mayor Kufen regretted on Saturday morning that “Islamists, anti-democrats and Jew-haters” were allowed to parade through Essen protected by the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Basic Law: “That is difficult to bear.” The CDU politician, who was the North Rhine-Westphalia state government’s integration officer from 2005 to 2010, called for consequences: “The Office for the Protection of the Constitution must take a closer look at Hizb ut-Tahrir’s splinter and successor groups. Bans must be an option.”
The demonstrators shouted slogans in Arabic and German on Friday evening. Posters condemned the Israeli military operation in Gaza (“Stop the genocide”) after the terrorist attack by the Palestinian Hamas, and one sign read: “German raison d’état calls for the killing of children.” The organizers initially used loudspeakers to remind people of the police requirement that no participant should question Israel’s right to exist. The tip-off was met with loud boos from the crowd.
At the beginning of the march, participants were also asked over loudspeakers to separate men and women. So it happened that most of the female demonstrators marched through the city behind the male participants. They repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and held up signs calling for the unity of all Muslim believers and the establishment of a caliphate in Germany. Individual demonstrators stuck their right index fingers in the air; This gesture is intended to symbolize belief in the “one God”, but is also seen as a symbol of the terrorist organization “Islamic State”. The design of several black and white banners and flags also resembled depictions of IS.
The Essen police announced on Saturday that they would subsequently analyze the Friday demonstration and examine its “criminal relevance”. It turned out that the motive for a pro-Palestine meeting was only a pretext. Instead, the organizers held a religious event.
Not sure why you are down-voted but Islam is as any other religion rather political and therefore influences society. Modern Islam is rather conservative and anti-democratic in its’ core - so a big proportion of Muslim population is problematic if one wants to live in a modern, humanist and democratic society.
One solution is to create a more modern, European version of Islam - which is rather possible since Islam is rather decentralized.
You haven’t been to the USA or to any European country before the 80s to see that Christianity can be just as political and just as conservative.
So how many liberal, democratic, majority Muslim countries are out there? And yes conservative Christianity is also pushing for a less liberal society - the difference is, Christianity went through reformation creating more liberal versions -peacefully coexisting together (for most part), the only liberal mosque in Germany got closed due to threats.