“The fact that Sascha B – whose full name was withheld due to privacy considerations – had converted to Islam before joining the military was considered irrelevant by his employers.” Of course. Any other course of action would have been “Islamophobic.”
“According MAD, 29 former Bundeswehr soldiers have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups, and 65 active soldiers are under investigation on suspicion of Islamist tendencies. Since 2007, 22 soldiers have been classified as Islamists, all of whom have either been dismissed or have left the military.” The solution? Keep bringing Muslims into the Bundeswehr, and more Muslim migrants into Germany. What could possibly go wrong?
“Are Islamists using the German military as training ground?,” by Michael Fischer and Susann Prautsch, DPA, April 12, 2016:
Berlin (dpa) – Sascha B was a calm, competent and sociable young man, moving steadily through the ranks of the German military over the course of three years as he trained Bundeswehr recruits in the use of infantry weapons.
The fact that Sascha B – whose full name was withheld due to privacy considerations – had converted to Islam before joining the military was considered irrelevant by his employers.The changes were creeping. At the age of 26, he started growing his beard, wearing Middle Eastern garments in his free time and going AWOL on occasion.
Suspicions only arose when he refused to train reservists shortly after members of his unit were sent to Afghanistan, justifying his stance by saying the weapons could be used against his fellow Muslims.
Called in by his company commander, Sascha B refused to trim his beard according to army regulations, citing the German constitutional commitment to freedom of worship and threatening to organize a demonstration in front of his barracks.
When officials from the military counterintelligence service (MAD) interrogated him, Sascha B made plain that he saw sharia law as superior to the German constitution and that for him every conversation was Dawa – a missionary call to Islam.
It also became apparent that Sascha B was frequenting mosques run by the ultra-conservative Salafist school of Islam.
“If I am able to choose between two evils – the Bundeswehr and having no income – I will decide for the lesser evil and stay in the military,” he told the MAD officials.
His dismissal from the Bundeswehr followed shortly thereafter. Sascha B still does not see himself as an extremist and regards the action taken against him as unjustified.
The case – dating back to 2010 – was the first of its kind to draw wider public attention. At the time hardly anyone had heard of the Islamic State extremist group, and few were worried by the idea that young Muslims in Europe could be recruited for jihad.
According MAD, 29 former Bundeswehr soldiers have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups, and 65 active soldiers are under investigation on suspicion of Islamist tendencies. Since 2007, 22 soldiers have been classified as Islamists, all of whom have either been dismissed or have left the military.
“We perceive a risk that the Bundeswehr may be used as a training ground for potentially violent Islamists,” says MAD chief Christof Gramm….