Like Christian Easter and Jewish Passover celebrations a few weeks ago, in Germany the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is taking place this year in the shadow of Covid-19. This means that much of the regular festive programme is falling flat: mosques have been closed since mid-March, meaning that believers cannot pray or socialise at…
North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), the most populous of Germany’s 16 federal states, has rolled out a new anti-terrorism programme: a satirical YouTube channel called Jihadi Fool. Run by the state’s domestic intelligence agency, the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the channel’s videos are supposed to “fight fire with fire” and drive home “the absurdity of radicalisation, terrorism and…
17 year-old Lloyd Gunton was reportedly radicalised online, where he viewed Isis propaganda and accessed guides on carrying out terrorist attacks. Security services and ministers have issued warnings about “remote radicalisation”, which is thought to be becoming more common with the decline of Isis.
On January 1, 2018, a new law went into effect in Germany with the aim of curbing ‘fake news’ and hate speech online. The Act for the Improvement of Law Enforcement on Social Networks – thankfully shortened in common parlance to the Network Enforcement Law (Netzdurchsetzungsgesetz) targets social media such as Twitter and Facebook, seen…
As the so-called Islamic State’s last bastions in Mosul fell, Iraqi soldiers and militias captured a host of IS-fighters. Amongst them were a larger number of foreigners who had joined the terrorist group over the preceding years. Trip to the Levant in 2016 Yet few arrests have called forth more international attention than the…
