 | "Get out. Stay out. No seething. No whinging. Don't darken my doorway again." |
Berlin's state constitutional court on Thursday rejected an appeal by the former imam of the local Mevlana Mosque against his expulsion from Germany on grounds of incitement. | [Ed. note: go read the Mevlana Mosque link for an interesting history of mosque building in Germany.] |
The 59-year-old Turkish man, whose identity is not given in German judicial proceedings, was ordered to be expelled by Berlin's office dealing with foreigners in late 2004. The authorities cited a speech he had given at a rally of the extreme nationalist Milli Gorus organisation in which he had praised the suicide attackers in Jerusalem and Iraq as martyrs. The imam had also been shown to use insulting language in his sermons about the Germans, calling them "infidels" and saying that they "stank" and were of "no use to Moslems". Authorities cited the remarks, which were tape-recorded, as evidence that the man was inciting hatred against Americans and Jews and endangering the peace in the local German community. The expulsion order was previously upheld by the Berlin civil court. The Turkish man, who has been living in Germany since 1971 and is one of the founders of the Mevlana Mosque in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, then appealed against the expulsion on to the state constitutional court. |