Germany

Muslim religious leaders trained in Germany

Osman Soyer is a religious affairs officer who was sworn into office this month in the Sehitlik Mosque in Berlin’s Neukölln district. He is one of 28 young men and women who have been trained as “religious representatives” by DITIB, Germany’s largest Islamic organization. They are involved in a variety of pastoral duties; this can also include acting as imams, but the job description is broader.

Soyer has been working as an Islamic religious representative in Alfter, a town near Bonn in western Germany, for a few months now. Community outreach, he says, is his top priority. It includes a wide range of activities: “I teach pupils, I’m a prayer leader, preacher and pastor. We also go to weddings, I do funerals.”

The German left is so terrified of the AfD’s rise that there are calls to ban the party much like Hitler banned the opposition because it’s the AfD who are the fascists and these are entirely spontaneous demonstrations.

Germany sees second day of large anti far-right protests

After two days of mass protests, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its anti-immigration agenda.

From Friday through the weekend, demonstrations were called in about 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies were held in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, also planned to hold demonstrations.

Police in Munich said that some 80,000 people participated in the march, while organizers put the figure at 200,000. The march had to be called off due to overcrowding.