The Salafists are distributing copies of the Quran in Germany and making a big noise on the Internet about converting new followers to their cause. The country is now high up on the list of priorities for the Salafist movement, writes Josef Croitoru
Three hundred years ago, the Germans developed a custom of hailing the conversion of Muslims to the Christian faith with public church ceremonies. Today, the Salafists are doing the same thing – but the other way round: They are filming the conversion of Germans to Islam and posting the videos on the Internet as a sign of the victory of the “only true religion.” That’s what happened a few weeks ago in the Tauhid Mosque in the German town of Wiesbaden.
A number of Salafist preachers from Egypt and Kuwait traveled there to take part in a conference entitled, “Youth in the West: Hopes and fears.”
One of the high points from the hour-long YouTube video of the occasion is the conversion of a 26-year-old “German brother,” Fabian – it’s unclear whether or not he belonged to any faith beforehand. Fabian was apparently moved to convert by a book he’d been given about the prophets. He took the Islamic statement of faith from none other than Muhammad al Zoghby.
The Egyptian religious scholar is one of the most influential Salafist preachers. He travels constantly around the Gulf States and other Arab countries, and he presents his own show on the conservative Saudi religious channel “Al-Khalijia”. He also regularly visits the west. On his website he writes about his latest European tour, which took him to Frankfurt and to Barcelona, and he claims to have converted “numerous Christians” along the way.
