Germany’s surging right-wing, nationalist party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) is mobilizing people to block the construction of a mosque in the eastern state of Thuringia.
AfD has gone from insignificant to the third largest party in Germany in less than a year, as Germans are fed up with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies. The party declared that “Islam is not part of Germany” in its manifesto in April, and it is now fighting to make it reality. (RELATED: Majority Of Germans Don’t Think There Is A Place For Islam In Society)
A planned mosque in Thuringia is “part of a long-term land grab” by Muslims, according to AfD’s Björn Höcke. The party has announced that it will fight to make sure the mosque never gets finished, and is organizing protests under the slogan: “No mosques in Thuringia without the people’s consent.”
Höcke said the party will introduce legislation in the state parliament that outlaws constructions of any mosques, but it is unlikely to pass as AfD is part of the minority. (RELATED: Germany’s Nationalist Party Proposes Fence To Stop Immigration)
The Muslim community in Thuringia, which currently holds meetings in one of the members’ home, thinks AfD is just out to get attention.
“It would be a relatively small mosque,” Abdullah Uwe Wagishauser, the mosque’s leader, told Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “It’s ridiculous to see it as a threat to the West. But the AfD appears to need such scandals.”
AfD originally tried to label itself as a more moderate party than Europe’s nationalist movements. As it’s continued to climb in polls and take seats in state legislatures, it decided to become increasingly more open about opposing the Muslim religion’s presence in Germany at a party convention in April.
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