Local DITIB Head Charged With Incitement

Ger­man media is report­ing that a local head of DITIB has been indict­ed for incite­ment. Accord­ing to the NDR report: 

June 30, 2021, The Göt­tin­gen pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor’s office has brought charges against the for­mer DITIB chair­man Mustafa Keskin. It accus­es the ex-func­tionary of the mosque asso­ci­a­tion of incite­ment of the mass­es on four counts. In addi­tion, Keskin endorsed a crim­i­nal act in one case, an author­i­ty spokesman announced. He is alleged to have spread at least four mes­sages on Face­book and What­sApp in the peri­od between May 2015 and Feb­ru­ary 2021, in which Jews and Arme­ni­ans are insult­ed and con­spir­a­cy myths are spread. The social­ist youth asso­ci­a­tion “Die Falken” had dis­cov­ered the hate mes­sages at the begin­ning of the year and made them pub­lic. As a result, Keskin resigned from his post on Feb­ru­ary 8. The for­mer DITIB chair­man denies hav­ing sent anti-Semit­ic mes­sages. In his for­mer office, he said, he was com­mit­ted to inter­re­li­gious dia­logue. Among oth­er things, Keskin was involved in the Round Table of the Abra­ham­ic Reli­gions in Göt­tin­gen. The fed­er­al DITIB asso­ci­a­tion announced in March that it would inves­ti­gate the anti-Semi­tism alle­ga­tions against him. [Trans­lat­ed by DeepL with edits]

Read the rest here.

The GIOR report­ed on the case in March, with exam­ples of Keskin’s anti-Semit­ic con­tent described as follows:

Keskin is said to have referred to Israeli sol­diers as “Jew­ish dogs,” for exam­ple. Some of his posts sug­gest­ed that Jews and Israelis were delib­er­ate­ly killing chil­dren. He also alleged­ly used the iden­ti­fy­ing sym­bol of the Islamist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on sev­er­al occa­sions. In his What­sApp pro­file, the ex-Ditib exec­u­tive had used a pic­ture depict­ing Don­ald Trump and Joe Biden as pup­pets of invest­ment banker Jacob Roth­schild. In anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy myths, the Roth­schild fam­i­ly serves as a place­hold­er for “the Jews,” who are sup­posed to con­trol finan­cial mar­kets and governments.

The Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs, also known as DITIB, man­ages over 900 mosques in Ger­many. The Turk­ish Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs (Diyanet) deter­mines the the­o­log­i­cal guide­lines for the imams’ ser­mons, and the Turk­ish con­sulate pays their salaries. As GIOR report­ed in March, DITIB dis­tanced itself from Keskin fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion of his state­ments. Oth­er GIOR report­ing on DITIB has included:

• In July, we report­ed that DITIB chose not to par­tic­i­pate in cre­at­ing an imam train­ing cen­ter financed by the Ger­man state.

• In July, we report­ed that the chair­man of anoth­er DITIB branch has said that the group only can­celed an event fea­tur­ing a Turk­ish his­to­ri­an known for homo­pho­bic and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries because of out­side pressure.

• In May, we report­ed that DTIB would remain part of an Islam­ic edu­ca­tion advi­so­ry board in the Ger­man state of North-Rhine Westphalia.