Young Muslim men in Germany are systematically trying to recruit their peers for jihad using sophisticated rhetoric and psychology and by targeting vulnerable youths who are searching for direction in life. Two men who have quit the scene tell their story to SPIEGEL, providing a rare look into a dangerous underground.
He worked at his uncle’s falafel stand and read Immanuel Kant, and later Plato and Nietzsche. In the end, he became a radical Islamist, recruiting new talent for a Muslim holy war in the middle of the German city of Hamburg. Djamal was the hunter.
Djamal is sitting on a cushion in the dim light of a basement bar in Hamburg. He sucks on a plastic tube, causing the water to bubble in his hookah, a water pipe made of delicate glass decorated with gold paint. His head is shaved, he has the broad back of someone who lifts weights, and he keeps his beard neatly trimmed. He blows the smoke from the orange-mint tobacco into the air above his head and passes the tube to Bora, a quiet young man sitting next to him.
Bora, 23, grew up on the Reeperbahn, a street in Hamburg’s entertainment and red-light district. His parents are from Turkey. His mother sells Tupperware and his father has a store. For a long time, Bora didn’t know what to do with himself. He wanted to have fun, but he was always searching for something meaningful. Then he met radical Islamists. Bora was the prey.
The basement bar where they are now sitting was their common territory for about a year. It was a place where hunters could find their prey.
The bar used to be a hangout for radical leftists called “Hinkelstein.” First-year students would go there to listen to radical leaders, and it was a gateway of sorts on the path to the left-wing extremist milieu.
By the time Djamal had hit upon this basement bar as a place where he could do his work — namely separating his prey from German society — the leftists were long gone. The bar’s new clientele were also looking for answers, but in the Koran instead of in the writings of Marx and Lenin.
A Real Mission
Djamal, who had no idea what to do after finishing high school, had, for the first time in his life, a real mission: recruiting young men for the Hamburg branch of the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. The group has been banned in Germany since 2003, but its members are still active underground. They spread Salafist Islam and want to establish a theocracy. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s “catchers” are young, educated and, most of all, articulate. They are people like Djamal.
It was a time when Djamal was looking for “mistakes,” as he called it, in the Bible and the Torah. He memorized verses from the Koran. His only rule was that he had to come across as omniscient. He was determined to prevail over the infidels. At first, he says, sitting on a pillow in the basement bar, his goal wasn’t to spread Islam, but rather to silence the others.
“The Germans have no religious foundation, and yet they like to philosophize,” says Djamal, noting that their most common argument is: “I can’t see God; therefore, he doesn’t exist.” Then Djamal would show up with his talk about Immanuel Kant and his conclusions about the limitations of man. “You just have to be creative. Then you can tell them anything.”
His listeners, young men between 15 and 25, were fascinated, even if they didn’t understand half of what he was saying — but that too was part of the principle. Djamal’s words conveyed the impression of knowledge, direction and meaning.
A Kind of Street Gang
Back in Hamburg, he returned to the hookah café and watched videos on YouTube. He began to hate the infidels who had allowed the Muhammad caricatures to be shown. He watched documentaries on the flat-screen TVs that portrayed Sept. 11, 2001 as an American conspiracy.
Then preparations began for Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. “The month in which the devil is shackled and the mosques are full,” as Djamal describes it. His responsibility was in fact to deliver the prey to the Taiba mosque on the Steindamm. Regarded by authorities as a focal point of the jihadist scene, it was the same mosque that was frequented by some of the Sept. 11 conspirators and which has been shut down in the meantime. Djamal chose not to accompany the recruits, because he knew that those who spent too much time at the mosque ended up attracting the attention of the authorities.
He enjoyed the game of hide-and-seek. He felt a little like James Bond. Djamal sent a message to a Turk from the mosque to let him know which recruits he was going to send. Recruiters like him were part of a street gang of sorts, says Djamal, doing grassroots work with the aim of building critical mass. Their job was to fill the pool from which recruits would later be drawn for jihad. The question as to which of the recruits would later embark on holy war mainly depended on chance, says Djamal, noting that he had nothing to do with it.
Spiegel has the full article, quite extensive
