Mathias Rohe on legalistic Islamism as a threat in Germany

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Quelle: Kurier.at © Bild: /Roland Schlager

On the news page BR24 on September 16 it has been elaborated on the question, why legalistic-Islamists pose a threat to democracy. According to homeland-security agents, legalistic Islamism, as opposed to Jihadism, was characterized by nonviolence. The aim was rather a permanent infiltration of society, which should finally lead to the establishment of Islamic states. In doing so, legalistic-Islamist groups were proceeding as to explicitly isolate themselves from the pluralist society and to demonize it in lectures as the enemy image.

Thereto Professor Mathias Rohe, Law Scholar and Islamic Scientist, as well as founding rector of the EZIRE, reckons, that the problems were starting “already, where people are propagating an extreme delineation from the surroundings – a clear-cut good-evil world and thereby eventually also connect a political and statist claim to power.”

On July 21already, Mathias Rohe elaborated on the media platform tagesschau.de on the handling of legalistic Islamism in Germany.

He stresses, that many positions in Islamic Law on physical punishment, that are being advocated by legalistic-islamistic groups like the Furkan-Community, are theologically hardly reasonable nowadays: “The majority of Muslim coined countries have abolished the draconian physical punishments. This is indeed justifiable on the basis of sharia argumentations, if the Islamic Law is read as a dynamic subject.”

Next to the criticsm of legalistic-islamistic aspirations, Rohe also issues a warning about generalizations: “If for example, the use of the word sharia alone counts as a suspected case, this would be overstated. For sharia can also imply: pray, lent, hence simply the use of the freedom of regligion.”