There is no more complex stress test for freedom of expression than the pro-Gaza demonstrations taking place around the world. The violence between the police and the demonstrators in Western squares and universities is making headlines, and the Palestinian flag replacing the stars and stripes on the Harvard campus is causing quite a stir. Forty-eight hours after the Islamist demonstration in Hamburg, where signs appeared with slogans such as “‘Germany = dictatorship of values” and “The Caliphate is the solution”, nothing else is being talked about in the German media. To the point that even Chancellor Olaf Scholz had to intervene. “Clearly, everything that is happening in Islamist activities must be addressed using the options available to us in our rule of law, which is why the Home Secretary has my full support in her statements, which so far have hit the mark” , said Scholz, when asked about the issue during a press conference. “I think we need to carefully examine what concrete consequences can be drawn from what we have seen. It must be clear that all criminal crimes, wherever they were committed in the Federal Republic of Germany, must be prosecuted.”
The comment by Minister Nancy Faeser which, according to Scholz, “hit the mark” is a post entrusted to . As hard as it may be to believe, this is exactly the provocation launched by the demonstrators who in the St. Georg neighborhood put together a cocktail of topics ranging from the “genocide of Gaza” to the “Islamophobic drifts” of a part of German politics. The government, after being caught by surprise by an evidently underestimated phenomenon, promised to take action. Faeser underlined the need for “tough intervention” by the state regarding this type of event and praised the work of the police. “Seeing such a demonstration in our streets is difficult to bear. It is positive that the Hamburg police fought the crimes with a large contingent,” she told the daily Der Tagesspiegel. And again: “The red lines must be very clear: no terrorist propaganda for Hamas, no hate speech against Jews, no violence. If such crimes occur, there must be immediate and harsh intervention in the demonstrations. This is the line red beyond which the broad protection of freedom of association and freedom of expression ends”, continued the owner of the Interior.
The Hamburg police will launch an investigation to examine the criminal relevance of the individual slogans and banners that appeared in the square. As police chief Falk Schnabel admitted, it is a question of balancing something unacceptable – such as the invocation of the caliphate and sharia over faithful law – with the broad protection of freedom of expression and assembly provided by the German Constitution . Schnabel then recalled that “the law is neutral” and that it is not up to the police to authorize or deny the expression of certain opinions, as long as this is done peacefully. But it is clear that here we are faced with something more complex. Because it is one thing to protest to ask for a ceasefire in Gaza, it is another thing to propagandize terrorism or praise a theocratic monarchy where there is no place for the most basic values of democracy.
The authorities are now working to clarify the role of the group that officially organized the demonstration. This would be a collective called Muslim Interaktiv, which also published a video of the march on its X account with the slogan “Don’t obey liars! Impressions from today’s demonstration”. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Hamburg, quoted by the newspaper Die Welt, the group is an affiliate of Hizb al-Tahrir (“Liberation Party”), an international pan-Islamic political organization and fundamentalist whose goal is to re-establish an Islamic caliphate that unites the entire Muslim community in the so-called Umma and implements sharia. This political organization is banned from operating in Germany, according to the Hamburg office, while Muslim Interaktiv – despite being classified. as an extremist – is not currently outlawed. The scenes in Hamburg have caused a lot of discussion not only in Germany, but also in Israel, where there is increasing concern about growing incidents of anti-Semitism, fueled by disinformation. According to Ynet and the German media, one of the leaders of Muslim Interaktiv is 26-year-old Joe Adade Boateng, also known as Raheem Boateng, a sort of Islamist influencer with a large following on Instagram and TikTok, where he shares (among other things) content about the war between Israel and Hamas.
Federico Niglia, professor of International Relations at the University for Foreigners of Perugia and expert on German politics, explains to HuffPost how these speeches fit into the more general framework of a pre-election reaction to the rise of the AfD. “The far-right party has further raised its tone in the proximity of the European elections, making the situation more explosive. AfD says that there is an unabsorbable radical world, so much so that it talks about remigration: the idea is that these people should be sent back to where they come from”. According to the teacher, there are two reading levels. “The first is that there is a radicalization of the political confrontation in broader terms, so this event can be read as an act of discontent towards a Germany that is moving to the right, with the German elections that are showing Europe a shift to the extreme wings of comparison to which we were no longer accustomed”.
The other aspect brings us to the theme of the radical reaction of worlds that do not feel and are not fully integrated. “Germany has traditionally been a place of immigration of different origins, but all this happened within a context that we can define as virtuous,” recalls Niglia. “The German strength also developed thanks to an immigration that was not only Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, but was also the place of entry of two different subjects: firstly, that whole world of discontent from Eastern Europe; secondly, Turkish immigration. This historical immigration, in the end, had produced strong integration processes: the Turks in Germany now represented a stable reality. This discourse on Germany, the homeland of immigration, began to alter, in my opinion, with the Syrian civil war, which was the moment of greatest tension of Chancellor Merkel, with her own party not fully in agreement with the open-minded approach. In the last decade there has been a problem of lack of acceptance, but also of failure to fully integrate that immigration. This was the AfD’s electoral fortune, but there is objectively a problematic fact linked to the difficulties of integration. Germany has always presented itself as a reality capable of neutralizing radicalism. It is something that is perhaps starting to disappear, due to circumstances linked to the political leadership but also due to objective considerations. A country that has shown more limits on this is France, for example, which has had a series of security but also political problems linked to the lack of integration and the lack of valorisation of second and third generation immigrants. Germany has often considered itself immune from all this, attributing terrorism to external dynamics. It is not a slogan that denotes this risk, but it is certainly a signal that should lead us to reflect on the climate.”
Muslim Interaktiv had already organized a demonstration in St. Georg at the end of October last year, despite a ban. In February 2023 the group mobilized 3,500 people in a demonstration against a burning of the Koran in Sweden. In a post last December, the collective wrote: “Our main account has been blocked due to censorship surrounding the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The government is trying to stop our activities using all possible means.” German intelligence is monitoring the profiles of Boateng, officially enrolled at the University of Hamburg, to understand to what extent he and his followers could represent a threat. Since the war began, his group has attracted tens of thousands of followers. Officials who monitor the network refer to its followers as “pop Islamists,” indicating that they are seemingly ordinary Germans who move confidently through the social media landscape, dress Western-style and are familiar with the hip-hop scene. Boateng, who converted to Islam in 2015, increased his visibility on social media during the Ramadan period, denouncing the suffering of the people of Gaza.
But the Middle East – Niglia explains well – has to do with the anger of second and third generation immigrants up to a certain point. “In this perspective, Gaza is the magnifying glass through which the sun passes: it becomes an emphasis, a megaphone to express the anger of a part of society that has never integrated. The paradox is that the Palestinian question ends up in the background : Gaza is the instrument that says that the Islamic world, in some way, is destined to oppose others. Many people of the Muslim religion see Gaza as wrong, with governments that support a repressive policy towards the Palestinians people have nothing to do with the Palestinians, who however become the argument through which to mark a difference and a distance”. This is a theme that is emerging in all Western democracies, highlighting once again the importance of a concept that is too often rejected or used as a slogan: that of integration.
