German police have seized laptops and cash during raids on a recently banned Islamic association outside Berlin.
According to Brandenburg State Interior Minister Michael Stübgen, “a significant amount of cash” was seized.
Stübgen announced Thursday that he has banned the Islamic Center in Fürstenwalde in eastern Brandenburg because it has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. The center also promotes anti-Semitism on social media, authorities said.
In a statement released Thursday, Stübgen said: “We cannot tolerate associations that oppose the constitutional order or the idea of harmony between nations.”
About 70 police officers have been searching the Islamic Center in Fürstenwalde, about 40 kilometers southeast of Berlin, since this morning.
There was also a raid in Berlin, where the mosque’s imam lives, Stübgen said. The association’s buildings were sealed, he added.
The announcement comes about 10 days before state elections in Brandenburg on September 22. Migration and religious extremism are among voters’ top concerns, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leading in the polls.
Migration policy has been the main topic of political debate in Germany since a knife-wielding attacker killed three people and injured eight others in the western German city of Solingen, near Düsseldorf, last month.
The suspected attacker is a 26-year-old Syrian man who had evaded a deportation order from Germany to Bulgaria, where he was previously registered in the European Union.
Stübgen had already announced months ago that he would take measures against the Islamic association, which is active nationwide.
The interior minister said the Brandenburg center has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement founded in Egypt in 1928 and banned there.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militia that invaded Israel on October 7, sparking the current war in Gaza, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch on Palestinian territory.
In July 2023, the Islamic Center was classified by Brandenburg’s domestic intelligence service as a center with a confirmed extremist purpose.
Stübgen said at the time: “The association acts against the liberal-democratic basic order, spreads anti-Semitic stories and denies Israel’s right to exist. We must not tolerate this.”
Security authorities warn that young people in particular can be indoctrinated and radicalised with extremist ideologies.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the association was founded in 2018 in Fürstenwalde and operates the al-Salam mosque there.
In addition to the Friday sermons, recreational and educational activities are also organized for women, children and young people.
Religious education classes were also given during children’s holiday camps.
According to assessments by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for Constitutional Protection, the association’s extremist agenda is visible through its activities and social media posts.
