Germany classifies 1,040 Muslim Brotherhood followers as terrorists

CAIRO - 29 October 2018: The German Ministry of the Interior, Building, and Community released in July 2018 the “Brief summary 2017 Report on the Protection of the Constitution: Facts and Trends” offering figures on “politically motivated crimes” and on groups adopting extremist doctrines and posing threats to the country’s security.

In the section titled “Islamism/Islamist terrorism,” the report indicated that the number of individuals living in Germany and falling under that category in 2017 is 25,810. Those include 1,040 members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The number of politically motivated crimes recorded 39,505 in 2017 and 41,549 in 2016. The report assigns those into two main categories which are propaganda offences and criminal offences. The latter accounted for 4,311 in 2016 to 3,754 in 2017. The former accounted for 13,406 in 2016, and 13,923 in 2017.

For criminal offences perpetrators, 75.6 percent in 2017 and 74.5 percent in 2016 had an extremist background. The figures reveal that although the number of politically motivated crimes decreased in 2017 compared to 2016, the number of crimes driven by extremism increased. Extremism is categorized into left-wing, right-wing, religious ideology by foreigners, and political ideology by foreigners.

The number of crimes committed by foreigners and driven by religious ideology is 907 for the year 2017. “The majority (885 cases) had an Islamist/fundamentalist background, including 60 violent crimes, three of which were homicides (two actual and one attempted) and 48 were cases of bodily injury. A total of 112 extremist offences based on religious ideology were categorized as preparations for acts of violence constituting a serious threat to the state and 310 as membership of or supporting a foreign terrorist organisation,” the

report

stated.

The number of Islamist terrorists exceed the number of extremists in the categories of right-wing (24,000), and left-wing (22,600), but it is less than those in the foreign political ideology category (30,550). Nevertheless, the number of individuals within all those categories increased compared to 2016.