A thousand demonstrators in Hamburg have stirred up German political leaders. The republic is suddenly on the verge of becoming a theocracy. Our columnist too.
Lightning cravings, you know the drill: Now quickly dig with your hands in damp earth, stick your finger in the yawning cat’s mouth, scream out the window or, that was my problem this week, demand a caliphate. I guess I should explain the latter before heavy boys in uniform trample over my stripped floorboards.
One by one: It started in Hamburg, where around 1,000 men from “Muslim Interaktiv” took to the streets last Saturday. “Muslim Interactive” sounds a bit like a milieu-specific AOL CD with free internet minutes, as was common in the early 2000s, but it is apparently the digital arm of a caliphate movement that has been banned from operating. At the demo, some men held up posters and it said “Caliphate is the solution” or “Germany = dictatorship of values”, which probably sounded more threatening in caliphate brainstorming than in a democracy, and “reason of state kills”, which is of course true the dying in Gaza and Germany’s solidarity with Israel.
So far, so yawn. Then there was a survey that showed that a significant number of Muslim young people find the Koran more important than the Basic Law and the theocracy is certainly better than democracy. And because May is also a mild month in which employees are constantly off while freelance columnists dig through tax documents, politicians pounced on this non-event.
Scholz on fire
Surprisingly, one of the first and most consistent warnings was Olaf Scholz, who is probably still gnawing at his G20 trauma – at that time, the current Chancellor was sitting in the Elbphilharmonie while the city burned outside. This probably shouldn’t happen again. So on April 29th, Scholz consistently, as I said, pounced on the non-event with a non-statement: “One thing must be clear,” he said, “all criminal offenses must be committed wherever the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany have been violated to be persecuted”.
Surprisingly, one of the first and most consistent warnings was Olaf Scholz, who is probably still gnawing at his G20 trauma – at that time, the current Chancellor was sitting in the Elbphilharmonie while the city burned outside. This probably shouldn’t happen again. So on April 29th, Scholz pounced, consistently as he said, on the non-event with a non-statement: “One thing must be clear,” he said, “all crimes, wherever the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany have been violated, must be prosecuted become”.
The chancellor and lawyer had probably bundled all of his double-certified legal knowledge into one sentence. Pursue violations of the law, everywhere? Thunderstorm. Even in Hamburg? Insanity! And further: “All the Islamist activities that take place must be dealt with using the possibilities and options for action of our constitutional state.” So you should not only proceed with possibilities, but also with options, the Chancellor is obvious on fireDouble boom again!
But it wasn’t just the Chancellor that the caliphate fans served as a projection surface for cheerful, yet consequence-free masculinization. The Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) announced on X with, also on April 29th: “Anyone who would prefer a caliphate to the state of the Basic Law is free to emigrate.” Of course, that’s only half the truth, because anyone who thinks a caliphate is an absurd nonsense is free to emigrate – I’m fairly certain from a legal perspective.
One-way flight to Afghanistan
But it didn’t stay with this tame sound. Because on May 1st the party really started: The Green Robert Habeck announced the bold thesis on “Lanz”, the demand for a caliphate is not covered by freedom of expression. The Union woke up: Jens Spahn reformulated the Buschmann quote and spiced it up, on May 1st he told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”: “If you want to live in a caliphate, you can get a one-way flight ticket to Afghanistan or Iran “, and I’m a bit irritated at how carelessly the opposition plans to deal with the dwindling tax money, especially since there are apparently supposed to be options (neither of which are caliphates, by the way).
The announcements from the half-strong politicians to the caliphate fans didn’t sound particularly threatening, especially since many of the demonstrators probably have a German passport. It sounded more like Till Schweiger, who recently explained in an interview how he almost wanted to hit Jan Böhmermann. Nearly! What are we, twelve?
At the height of the excitement, the unimaginable happened: The “Bild” newspaper described Alexander Dobrindt as a “CSU thought leader”. Alexander “Foreigner Toll” Dobrindt! Thought leaders! With which Germany really seemed to have reached the brink of madness. Dobrindt spread in the “picture” So an alliteration tailored to the target group, namely a “tough course against caliphate fighters”. If only he had said “against” instead of “against”! A particularly tragic one of many missed opportunities in the history of political communication.
Staggering hostility to the caliphate
So now, according to Dobrindt, the full ultra-toughness of the constitutional state, which is ultimately known for nothing but the toughness of steel, should thunder down on anyone who – wait, how was that – “demands a caliphate”! Whoever does this can expect prosecution for incitement to hatred in the future! Citizenship gone, at least if it’s not the only one! Identify! Social benefits gone! And head off! Well, the last one was between the lines, but it was still easy to read.
And it was exactly this, this shocking hostility to the caliphate, that made me sit up and take notice. I mean – admittedly: In caliphates, i.e. Islamic forms of government with a secular and religious leader and Sharia law, there would sometimes be all sorts of unpleasant things if you use the Islamist model of this form of government: pork consumption makes you gay, gays are thrown off high-rise buildings, basic rights are taken away, this, that. Then again, an Islam expert friend of mine tells me, the place California owes its name to the word “Khalifa.” Her eyes light up and I consider whether I should denounce her.
What catastrophic exactly happens when you demand a “caliphate” in Germany? Do you get that then? We know this from basic child welfare: in the German bureaucracy you no longer know what you should and can apply for. Is there perhaps also one for caliphate claims behind the re-registration form on the light gray shelves in the citizens’ office? Is there a caliphate committee in the Bundestag that is just waiting for a petition to trigger a caliphate?
Tickling assaults
The blatant caliphate screechers – no Dobrindt, you don’t have an exclusive subscription to alliteration! – seem to be significantly more dangerous overnight than some other things. More dangerous, for example, than these figures who wanted to storm the Reichstag and were hoarding guns, or the loud charges at the remigration conference, or, for example, than an AfD whose deplorable top politicians don’t know to which dictatorship they haven’t yet sold their supposedly beloved fatherland.
In any case, the ban on calls for a caliphate tickled me. Such state overreach always tickles me, which is why, as a young, lively man, I particularly enjoyed going dancing on Good Friday, for example in the “Tucholsky” in Kiel, where students usually go to “Killing in the Name” on the dance floor after twelve tequilas. bumped around, but not on Good Friday, because because of a carpenter from Galilee who was crucified over 2,000 years ago and later resurrected, by order of God, there were modest tables with candlelight and the bouncers “accompanied” anyone outside who stepped foot to the music twice in a row rocked. “What kind of fucking theocracy is this here?!” was something I might have shouted into a police car outside.
Times are changing, I am now established, not to say extinct, I only rarely dance anymore and when I do, then not in the Kiel “Tuch”. But the tickling isn’t completely gone yet. And if a Robert Habeck casually says in a dignified circle with Markus Lanz that one is not allowed to demand a caliphate under current law, I have two messages for him. Firstly: Let’s try a caliphate, the traffic lights aren’t that great. And secondly, in the words of Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha: Fuck you, I won’t do what you told me!