Berlin Integration Officer Alleges City’s Social Democrats Infiltrated by Islamists

Berlin’s Neukölln dis­trict inte­gra­tion com­mis­sion­er has alleged Mus­lim Broth­er­hood infil­tra­tion of Ger­many’s Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. On 13 Novem­ber 2025, Berlin­er Mor­gen­post report­ed that Gün­er Bal­ci accused Islamist actors of infil­trat­ing the SPD and admin­is­tra­tion through sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent NGOs mon­i­tored by intel­li­gence ser­vices. The arti­cle begins:

After the announced with­draw­al of Dis­trict May­or Mar­tin Hikel, his clos­est polit­i­cal com­pan­ion, the dis­tric­t’s Inte­gra­tion Com­mis­sion­er Gün­er Bal­ci, makes seri­ous alle­ga­tions against the SPD. In an inter­view with “Spiegel,” Bal­ci speaks of a tar­get­ed cam­paign against the dis­trict may­or that has been con­duct­ed over years. “Mar­tin Hikel has been fought by a small left wing for the last ten years. After the depar­ture of for­mer state chair­man Raed Saleh, this increased; from then on, mas­sive pres­sure was exert­ed from state pol­i­tics. It’s like a crime thriller,” Bal­ci tells the mag­a­zine. [trans­la­tion from orig­i­nal Ger­man by Claude AI)

Read more: https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article410446069/neukoellns-integrationsbeauftragte-erhebt-schwere-vorwuerfe-gegen-die-spd.html

Key Points

• Inte­gra­tion Com­mis­sion­er Gün­er Bal­ci stat­ed that Islamist actors and activists have infil­trat­ed parts of pol­i­tics, the SPD, and the admin­is­tra­tion, describ­ing it as a per­fid­i­ous strat­e­gy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hid­ing behind sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent NGOs.
• Bal­ci claimed that Ger­many’s Office part­ly mon­i­tors these orga­ni­za­tions for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion and that, with the sup­port of a spe­cif­ic left-wing clien­tele, they suc­cess­ful­ly brought down Dis­trict May­or Mar­tin Hikel.
• Bal­ci sharply crit­i­cized the SPD’s han­dling of the term anti-Mus­lim racism, call­ing it a fight­ing term used to rel­a­tivize ram­pant anti­semitism and Islamism, part of a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign con­duct­ed over the years.
• Accord­ing to Bal­ci, Hikel faced a tar­get­ed cam­paign because he refused pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties with Islamists or Turk­ish nation­al­ists, unlike oth­er SPD rep­re­sen­ta­tives, main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent line against crim­i­nal Arab clans in Neukölln.

Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Net­works and Polit­i­cal Influ­ence in Germany

Ger­many con­fronts exten­sive net­works of Islamist orga­ni­za­tions that have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sought influ­ence with­in polit­i­cal par­ties, pub­lic insti­tu­tions, and Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties. Ger­man intel­li­gence iden­ti­fied the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s wide­ly devel­oped orga­ni­za­tion­al infra­struc­ture, includ­ing the Deutsche Mus­lim­is­che Gemein­schaft head­quar­tered in Berlin. These net­works oper­ate through transna­tion­al struc­tures attempt­ing to gain legit­i­ma­cy as the sole voice of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties while exert­ing con­trol in ser­vice of an Islamist agenda.

Qatari fund­ing has reached Berlin mosques includ­ing the Neuköll­ner Begeg­nungsstätte, which Berlin’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency iden­ti­fied as tied to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Turk­ish-ori­gin orga­ni­za­tions DITIB and IGMG shape Mus­lim reli­gious life in Ger­many through exten­sive infra­struc­ture and direct ties to Ankara, with IGMG clas­si­fied as an Islamist orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing the cre­ation of Islamist milieus, while DITIB man­ages over 900 mosques despite con­cerns about Turk­ish gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance oper­a­tions and polit­i­cal influ­ence chan­neled through reli­gious net­works. Berlin’s estab­lish­ment of an expert com­mis­sion on anti-Mus­lim racism drew con­tro­ver­sy after the city appoint­ed indi­vid­u­als with ties to Islamist networks.

Ger­man author­i­ties banned Mus­lim Inter­ak­tiv in Novem­ber 2025 and searched prop­er­ties in Berlin, Ham­burg, and Hesse con­nect­ed to groups Gen­er­a­tion Islam and Real­i­taet Islam, after the orga­ni­za­tion drew nation­al atten­tion over a demon­stra­tion in Ham­burg with 1,000 atten­dees that called for the cre­ation of a caliphate in Germany.

Tac­ti­cal alliances between Islamist groups and left-wing polit­i­cal move­ments have emerged across Europe and the Unit­ed States, with the rise of New York City’s first Mus­lim may­or, Zohran K. Mam­dani, exem­pli­fy­ing this Red-Green coali­tion strat­e­gy. Mam­dani, a self-described demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, rose to office through strate­gic con­ver­gence between pro­gres­sive-left move­ments and Mus­lim civic orga­ni­za­tions linked to Islamist polit­i­cal tra­di­tions, receiv­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port from CAIR (which became the largest insti­tu­tion­al donor to his cam­paign through a Super PAC), ICNA, and the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety. His cam­paign demon­strates how shared oppo­si­tion to West­ern for­eign pol­i­cy, anti-Islam­o­pho­bia advo­ca­cy, and Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty can sus­tain coop­er­a­tion even when long-term polit­i­cal objec­tives diverge, mir­ror­ing the UK’s ear­li­er Red-Green alliance that pro­duced the Respect Par­ty and Stop the War Coalition.

Exter­nal references:

• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s Pan-Euro­pean Struc­ture — Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­tre Polit­i­cal Islam
• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe — ECR Group Euro­pean Parliament
• The Turk­ish Effect in Ger­man Pol­i­tics — Aspen Insti­tute Cen­tral Europe
• Zohran K. Mam­dani & The Emerg­ing US Red-Green Alliance — Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report