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Almost one in two, or 45.1 percent, of Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 hold Islamist attitudes, according to Germany’s Radicalization Monitoring System and Transfer Platform. MOTRA is run by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
MOTRA researchers revealed last month that almost half of younger Muslims in Germany hold latent or manifest Islamist-leaning views, which means they feel drawn to Islamism, prefer Sharia law over the constitution, and hold antisemitic prejudices.
Breaking this down, the researchers found manifest Islamist attitudes – meaning their radicalization toward Islamism is already evident and pronounced – to be most widespread among Muslims under 40, at 11.5%.
MOTRA found 33.6% to have latent Islamist views, where the inclination toward Islamism exists, but the radicalization is not yet openly visible. These combine to make 45.1%.
On Friday, German Parliamentary State Secretary Christoph de Vries (CDU) told Die Zeit newspaper that his party is “very concerned about this.” De Vries also cited a separate worrying figure: Antisemitism is four times as widespread among young Muslims as in the population as a whole.
Asked what had driven the rise in Islamist views, de Vries said that Islamist influencers, present in social networks and gaming platforms, have caused a surge in such views. He also said the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel’s Gaza border communities on October 7, 2023, was a “driver for Islamism as a whole.”
De Vries suggested that a social media ban for young people may be the way forward, given Germany has been seeing “13- and 14-year-old boys and girls become radicalized on social media to the point where they wanted to commit serious attacks.”
German mosques 'the long arm of Erdogan'
He also said there was a need to look more closely at what happens in mosques, especially those controlled by foreign governments.De Vries was referring to Germany’s main mosque association, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), which is subordinate to Diyanet, the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, and is also financially dependent on it.
DITIB has around 1,000 mosques in Germany, and is sometimes called “the long arm of Erdogan.”
“In Turkey, and thus indirectly also through DITIB in Germany, we see a mixture with currents of the Muslim Brotherhood and the partly antisemitic Milli Görüş, another Islamist movement. We also notice how antiSemitic the leaders of the religious authority Diyanet in Turkey are. The mood stirred up there is also reflected in Germany,” De Vries said.
All of this has an impact on Jewish life in Germany, he lamented.
“In many parts of the city, they can no longer go out with Jewish symbols such as the kippah,” he said. He added that antisemitism affects almost every major West German city.
He stressed the need for a transition in Germany's immigration policies. “For those who remain here, the fight against antisemitism must always play a role, whether in integration courses or in the naturalization process,” he explained, adding, “Anyone who lives in Germany must recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
