British National Party
Anti-Jihad News Bulletin w/c April 9, 2007
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1. GOVERNMENT MOVES TO MARGINALISE EXTREMISTS

The problem is not extremists but Islam, a religion whose followers recognise only the laws of God and see any other law as an act of blasphemy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6528305.stm

The government is planning to intervene in some mosques to support Muslims who want to marginalise extremists. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has announced a new role for the Charity Commission, strengthening its task of overseeing religious institutions. A £600,000 faith unit within the commission will help Muslims strengthen governance and leadership in mosques. But Britain's first Muslim peer, Labour Lord Ahmed, criticised the measures as a "rehash" of existing policy.

Desire and commitment

In a speech on Thursday, Ruth Kelly said: "I do not under-estimate the difficulties we face or the scale of this challenge. "But I know from my conversations with Muslim communities up and down the country that the desire and commitment to tackle extremism is there. "Success will hinge on forging a new alliance against violent extremism. We need to reach out and give greater support to the overwhelming majority who are disgusted by terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam." The Charity Commission's new Faith & Social Cohesion Unit aims to encourage registration, strengthen the governance and accountability of religious institutions, focusing at first on mosques. Some commentators have previously attacked the regulator, accusing it of acting too slowly on reports of extremism. The body was however a key player in the removal of the radical cleric Abu Hamza from Finsbury Park Mosque. Hamza was jailed for seven years in 2006 for soliciting to murder. Ms Kelly's department has changed government strategy by launching talks with a broader range of Muslim groups.

Access for women

But at the same time the largest body, the Muslim Council of Britain, has received less attention, leading to claims that ministers are talking only to those prepared to agree with government. Lord Ahmed also criticised the measures which include strengthening leadership at mosques, improving access for women and citizenship lessons in schools and madrassas. "I am not so sure this is going to work," he said. "The real issue is to find out the reasons behind extremism and radicalisation." In a related move, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said specialist prosecutors are beginning to work with police officers to improve how they target extremist preachers. The strategy is part of the government's attempts to develop a plan to prevent extremism, a key plank of counter-terrorism policy.

'No quick fixes'

For the Liberal Democrats, Andrew Stunnell described the measures as a "disastrous mix of good intentions and poor analysis" saying the government should be tackling deprivation which allowed extremism to breed. "It was never suggested during the Troubles in Northern Ireland that state regulation of Catholic churches would have ended IRA activities," he said. Shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve welcomed the involvement of the Charity Commission, but on the new measures he said "we have heard it all before". "The government needs to realise that this is a long-term project with no quick fixes. We have had enough rhetoric now we need action," he added. New research commissioned by the government links radicalisation of young Muslims with a failure of traditional mosque leadership. The study, written by a Muslim academic, pinpoints a conveyor belt towards extremism which starts with identity crises during teenager years. These problems are then easily compounded by discrimination, lack of opportunity and the poor quality of religious leadership in some traditional mosques. The research warns the government that extremist groups successfully recruit by exploiting a combination of alienation and religious illiteracy among youths. It names proscribed group Al Muhajiroun as one of the groups having been most successful as targeting students. But at the same time, the report predicts that a positive British-Islam voice can emerge to defeat extremists, if there is investment in religious leadership.

2. INDONESIA'S SECULAR STATE UNDER SIEGE

Indonesia has always been seen as an example of a successful secular Islamic democracy. The fact that radical Islamists are getting more influential means that no Muslim state can be truly secular and for that reason Turkey, a secular democracy like Indonesia, must never be allowed to join the EU.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,476068,00.html

It is Saturday afternoon in Kemang, the garish bar district in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. The young patrons partying at poolside on the roof deck of the trendy restaurant "Edge" enjoy a panoramic view of the entire southern part of the city. The only reminder that these partygoers are unwinding in the world's largest Muslim country is the muezzin's call to prayer at a nearby mosque. Well-off models, successful trendsetters, designers and young filmmakers make up the guest list, and everyone is in high spirits, at least until Izabel Jahja, 30, speaks up. Wearing a tiny bikini, she raises her glass of red wine in a toast and says: "Let's enjoy life, as long as our country continues to allow it." Jahja, the self-confident editor-in-chief of glossy magazine A-Plus, is dead serious.

The Indonesian parliament has been debating a more stringent anti-pornography law for months. If the law is passed, it will ban a lot more than X-rated books and movies. In fact, it would spell the end of parties like this one, would make public kissing illegal and would mean prison time for anyone bold enough to wear "lascivious clothing." Theater, the cinema, painting and music, would likewise be curtailed, just as they are today in many countries of the Middle East. "We are on the brink of a comprehensive Islamicization of Indonesia," says Jahja. For years, radical Islamists have taken advantage of the democracy gained after the 1998 ouster of former Indonesian dictator Suharto to question that very democracy, all in the name of piety. A cultural war has broken out between the supporters and opponents of religious fundamentalism, a struggle that could deeply change this country and its traditionally softer brand of Islam.

A brutal spectacle

With 221 million inhabitants, of which 194 million are Muslims, the island nation is not only Southeast Asia's most populous country, but is also home to the world's largest Muslim population. And that population looks to be growing increasingly devout. Significantly more women wear the headscarf today than a decade ago, and the number of Indonesians making the pilgrimage to Mecca grows year after year. Alcoholic beverages are disappearing from the shelves of supermarkets, and in some places those who violate the Islamic ban on alcohol already face public whipping -- a brutal spectacle that is even broadcast on local television stations. Since two bombs killed 202 people, most of them Western tourists, at the Kuta beach resort on the island of Bali in the fall of 2002, Islamist terrorists have repeatedly attacked Western targets at the same time of the year, prompting Indonesians to refer to autumn as "bomb season." Al-Qaida, which is clearly allied with local extremists, has identified the country as a battlefield of the future.

While the country's secular president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, may be tough on terrorists, there is little he can do to stop the Islamists from gaining political ground. The winner of the struggle between proponents of a secular state and radical imams calling for a theocracy stands to capture a valuable prize -- one of the world's most strategically important countries. All major shipping routes connecting Europe and East Asia pass through the waters off this island nation. It is precisely here, in this archipelago between the Straits of Malacca and the Celebes Sea, that a new front in the battle of cultures is emerging. That she would be assuming a pivotal role in this struggle is something the beautiful Izabel Jahja, once one of Indonesia's most successful models, would never have expected. A poster on display at the Jakarta Biennale art festival two years ago -- depicting Jahja in the nude, but in a rather modest pose, with well-known actor Anjasmara -- set off a furor among radical Islamists from the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), who stormed the event. They demanded that the "work of pornography" be removed, and threatened to kill Jahja and the actor if their demands were not met. But when Jahja filed a complaint against the radicals, she was the one who was arrested. Only after civil rights groups protested her arrest was she released.

Too much Western decadence

Islamic Defenders Front founder Habib Rizieq, 41, is proud of the actions taken by his supporters. He wears a white turban and a long kaftan, clearly imitating his Saudi teachers; he spent 10 years living in the Saudi capital Riyadh. The only decoration in his sparsely furnished office in eastern Jakarta is a portrait of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Rizieq is convinced that he too is on a holy mission. His struggle, he says, is directed against the Western decadence he insists is inundating "Indonesia's great culture." The FPI's roughly 3,000 activists, dressed in white, have become almost as audacious in public as Iran's Revolutionary Guards or Malaysia's religious police. The group besieged the offices of Playboy magazine in Jakarta until the publication gave in and moved to Bali, a liberal vacation paradise. Editor-in-chief Erwin Arnada was acquitted on Thursday of disseminating indecent pictures to the public with the court referring to Indonesian media laws passed in the wake of Suharto's downfall. Despite the decision, groups like the FPI have little to worry about when it comes to the police; and the extremists and their demands have long been acceptable in the Indonesian parliament. Hidayat Nur Wahid, for example, former head of the Justice Welfare Party (PKS) -- a party modeled after the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Hamas -- is speaker of Indonesia's parliament, the People's Consultative Assembly. In Indonesia's splintered party structure, the PKS captured 7.3 of the vote in the 2004 elections, garnering 45 seats in the parliament. Hidayat, who earned a doctorate at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, and his party are actively involved in social work, and hold themselves up as religious examples.

The party wants to see Sharia law introduced countrywide. In a country that has been at the losing end of globalization, the salient causes of Indonesia's religious conservative shift are economic. With foreign investment on the decline (it dropped by more than a third last year alone) and regional competitors like Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia booming, Indonesia has never truly recovered from the Asian financial crisis. For the roughly 42 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day, a strict religious order promises support. But not everyone welcomes the advance of the Islamists. "If the anti-pornography law is enacted, it will be a political catastrophe for our country," says Eva Sundari, a member of parliament who sits on the legal committee. Until now religious tolerance has been a distinguishing feature of Indonesia, a nation scattered across more than 18,000 islands. Under the so-called Pancasila, or "Five Principles," instituted by the country's founder Sukarno, the government expressly guarantees freedom of religion. Sundari is wearing a short, pleated skirt and a tight T-shirt. "The radicals want to force Indonesia to take on a different face," says Sundari. But despite her combative stance, Sundari senses that she is increasingly supporting a losing cause. "There are days," she says, "when the PKS representatives in the committee simply start speaking Arabic" -- in lieu of the official national language Indonesian. When that happens she leaves the room in protest, which at least temporarily prevents the committee from adopting resolutions. But the PKS, as the unstable government's coalition partner, is in demand these days. "If President Yudhoyono wants to be re-elected," says Syafi'i Anwar, director of the Jakarta-based International Centre for Islam and Pluralism. "He'll need the Islamists to get his majority." Yudhoyono's party holds only about 10 percent of seats in the parliament, while the other major parties plan to put up their own candidates in the presidential election two yea rs from now. In other words, an increase of conservative Islam influence seems unavoidable, but just how far the process will ultimately go remains a question.

It is being spurred on by imams from Saudi Arabia who preach Wahhabism, a particularly strict form of Islam. Every year they flood Indonesia with millions of free books that promote their interpretation of the Koran with mosques and the religious boarding schools known as pesantras gratefully accepting the literature. Riyadh also selectively hands out grants to radicals from the Islamic universities, including people like FPI founder Rizieq. But even the government feels uneasy about all this missionary zeal. "In the past there was no question that our country stood for openness," says former journalist Yenny Zannuba Wahid, 32. "Today we must increasingly justify our openness to the West." Yenny is one of Indonesia's most politically influential women. When her father, the blind Islamic scholar Abdurrahman Wahid, better known by the name Gus Dur, was president from 1999 to 2001, she was his right hand. Today Yenny is an advisor to President Yudhoyono and heads a center for inter-religious dialogue. She is also one of the leaders of her father's party, the political voice of the country's largest Muslim association Nahdlatul Ulama, with its 30-million members.

Victim of the United States

Yenny wears a silvery green silk scarf over her hair to suggest a headscarf. Without the jilbab, admits Yenny, who was educated in the West, she would no longer be accepted, not even in her organization, which is considered liberal. "The religious agenda is shaping more and more areas of daily life," she says. She is especially concerned by the fact that the radicals are far more successful in rural parts of the country than in urban centers. Central Java is one of those rural areas. It's evening in Solo, and Imam Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, an elderly man with a handlebar moustache, leads the prayers in the house of a well-known publisher who specializes in schoolbooks. More than 500 prominent citizens in this old city of Sultans are in attendance, their Mercedes and BMW limousines lined up outside the villa. Intelligence agencies are convinced that Ba'asyir heads the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. He also runs Al-Mukmin, an Islamic school on the city's outskirts where many of the October 2002 attackers were educated. He acquired even more respect at home when, despite strong objections from the West, he was pardoned after being imprisoned for almost two years on charges of conspiracy.

"The emir is merely the victim of the anti-Islamic policies of the United States and Australia," says the publisher and host, defending his prominent guest. Ba'asyir wants to re-establish the caliphate -- the Islamic form of government which once united the Muslim world. And in some parts of Indonesia, other aspects of conservative Muslim rule have already been put in place. The province of Aceh at Indonesia's northwestern tip, devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, has been administered by Sharia law since 2001. At the time, the government granted the deeply religious region this special right to prevent Aceh from seceding. But nowadays the only ones in Aceh who monitor compliance with the religious rules are radical clerics. When women refuse to wear headscarves, their heads are shaved in public as punishment. An adulteress has already been stoned. And the boyfriend of a French aid worker who was recently caught kissing her in a car was subjected to the humiliation of a public caning. Aceh stopped being an exception long ago. More than 60 regional administrative bodies throughout the country have already established their own religious rules. One of them is Padang, a large city in western Sumatra where schoolgirls, female university students and female public servants have been required to wear headscarves for some time. Fauzi Bahar, the city's 44-year-old mayor and a former member of the Indonesian navy, has even barred Christian restaurant owners from opening their businesses in the daytime during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Harmless soap operas

And in Tangerang, a large city just west of Jakarta, special police units patrol the streets every night searching for women they believe to be prostitutes. Their victims are promptly thrown into reformatories. That was how Lilies Lindawati, a 35-year-old teacher, ended up in police custody. A mother of two and pregnant with a third, she was picked up as she was walking home from work in the evening. As evidence of her supposedly amoral way of life, the police cited the fact that they found lipstick in her purse. The mistake was discovered and Tangerang's mayor apologized to Lindawati. But the discussion on Muslim morality triggered by the incident spread quickly to the capital. Anjasmara, the actor photographed with a nude Jahja for the controversial poster, apologized to the radical Islamists of the FPI for the transgression and promptly denounced "Western decadence." Since then he has only appeared on Indonesia's TV screens in harmless soap operas.

3. MODERATE ISLAMIC CHARITIES BACK TERROR

Islamic charities are very active also in the UK and many are suspected of promoting terrorism but authorities seem reluctant to act.

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55129

Muslim charity groups posing as "moderates" continue to support terrorist activities, according to a report by the government watchdog Judicial Watch. The report – titled " Muslim Front Organizations: Moderate Non-Profits or Elaborate Deceptions?" – says that while the U.S. government "finally has taken action against some of the groups identified by Judicial Watch, others are still functioning." Judicial Watch contends the federal government is aware of the Islamic groups "and the danger they pose to our national security. The question is: Why are they still in operation?" "This report carefully documents connections between so-called Muslim charities in the U.S. and the terrorists who murder innocents," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The federal government should no longer coddle terrorist front groups in the name of political correctness. Any organization that funds terror should be shut down immediately." After the 9/11 attacks, Judicial Watch filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against non-profit organizations "reportedly being used as money laundering front organizations for radical Islamic terrorists." The complaint said non-profit entities have been used to launder financial transactions and facilitate the transfer of funds supporting violent terrorist attacks by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Judicial Watch said that in 2004, the Senate Financial Committee requested an investigation of several of the organizations on the list of groups it provided. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said, "Many of these groups not only enjoy tax-exempt status, but their reputation as charities and foundations often allows them to escape scrutiny, making it easier to hide and move their funds to other groups who threaten our national security."

Nevertheless, many of the groups continue to function. Among the organizations highlighted in the report is the Islamic Society of North America, which enforces teaching the theology of the radical Wahhabi stream of Islam – practiced in Saudi Arabia – in 1,200 officially recognized mosques across the U.S. The organization allegedly has helped turn the federal prison system into a fertile recruiting ground for al-Qaida, the Judicial Watch report says. In 2005, the White House invited the Islamic Society of North America to send a representative to participate in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Representatives' White House Leadership Conference. Another prominent Islamic organization, the Council for American Islamic Relations, has conducted "sensitivity" and cultural training with federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and with the military. In June, a senior Department of Homeland Security official from Washington guided CAIR officials on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.

The group's regular meetings with the Justice Department and FBI have prompted complaints from case agents, who say the bureau rarely can make a move in the Muslim community without first consulting with CAIR, which sits on its advisory board. Last month, a House Republican leadership group called on Democrats to retract an offer to CAIR to hold a seminar in a Capitol conference room. CAIR brands itself as a mainstream advocacy group, but it is a spinoff of the now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, launched by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and former university professor Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Several CAIR staffers have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, and CAIR founder Omar Ahmad allegedly told a group of Muslims they are in America not to assimilate but to help assert Islam's ruler over the country. Another group, the North American Islamic Trust, headquartered in Illinois, owns between 50 and 80 percent of North American mosques. Authorities say the organization is used as a funnel for Saudi and other gulf money to spread an anti-American brand of Islamic fundamentalism in American mosques across the nation. In 2005, the Judicial Watch report notes, a New York-based Muslim group, Islamic Circle of North America, was under investigation for its connection to a violent Pakistani terrorist group with al-Qaida links.

4. RUSSIA AND THE POLICING OF POLITICAL ISLAM

The Islamic population in Russia is increasing fast and the challenges posed by this demographic change is forcing the Government to act.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2033

Last week, a Russian law banning foreigners from retail stalls and markets, announced by the cabinet last November, finally took effect. While facially neutral, the law essentially targets immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. Meanwhile, a Russian city court in Pyatigorsk convicted Anton Stepanenko of promoting Wahhabism, inciting ethnic and religious hatred, and encouraging vigilantism. Yet Stepanenko’s case had become a cause célèbre for many Russian Muslims, and after public appeals to President Vladimir Putin on behalf of the imam (an “exemplary, heroic figure for all the nation’s Muslims,” according to some), the charges were reduced and Stepanenko went free. In the grand scheme, these are two fairly minor pieces of news, but still indicative of Russia’s present relationship with Islam.

The first story suggests a revival of nationalism, an increasing wariness of pluralism, and, along with other recent moves by Russian national and provincial authorities to promote Orthodox Christianity and create incentives for having larger families, speaks to a growing awareness of the challenges posed by Russia’s demographic situation (discussed by Mark Steyn elsewhere and Fjordman on this space). The second story shows that the Kremlin is nonetheless eager to mollify the growing Russian Muslim population and is crossing its fingers that Russian “Euro-Islam” remains what the Economist has dubbed a “benign growth” (a term presumably referring to moderate Islam generally and not to what has taken root in Chechnya, Daghestan, and North Ossetia). Russia’s history vis-à-vis Islam is of course a long one. On the one hand, the Soviet scholar D.S. Likhachev, in his Poetika drevnerusskoi literatury (1979), described “Old Russia’s special capacity to resist Asia” in the cultural sphere, which also meant that Russia’s foreign policy with respect to its southern border (roughly coinciding with the Islamic crescent that stretches from the Black Sea to Xinjiang) would differ substantially from its western policy. “In Europe we were hangers-on and slaves, but in Asia we are masters.

In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia we too are Europeans,” Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in 1881. This dichotomy was particularly evident during the collapse of the Soviet Union. While Gorbachev worked to reduce barriers between Russia and Western Europe, he simultaneously put down an Azeri independence movement in brutal fashion. Indeed, 1990’s “Black January” in Azerbaijan was the bloodiest use of Soviet state power during the Gorbachev era.) Two years later, the Russian Federation again eradicated a populist movement, this time in Tajikstan. Naturally, Russia’s current stance towards the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Islam in general reflects this history. On the other hand, Russia’s policy towards the Eurasian Islamic crescent, and particularly towards the Muslim population of its Middle Volga and North Caucasus territories, has been informed by certain realities. In 1871, for instance, an elderly Chechen could tell Nikolai Dubrovin in all honesty that “I don’t remember the crosses, but I heard that we once professed some other faith, but as to what it’s called I don’t know.” Taking this demographic shift into account, and all the while searching for security and order, Russian and then Soviet authorities vacillated between terrible mass deportations and paternalistic socio-political accommodation.

As early as the time of Catherine the Great, Russian authorities engaged in Islamic confessional politics, employing a strategy of, in the words of Robert Crews (author of last year’s overlooked but valuable For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia), “co-optation, patronage, and policing.” In this way the Ru ssia government, then the Soviet government, attempted to convince its largest minority group over the course of three centuries that the empire was indeed a colorable dar al-Islam. Yet, as governments across the world have come to realize, Islam as a political force is not so easily corralled. The interminable conflict in Chechnya, which has pitted Russians against Chechens as well as being an internecine conflict, was an inevitable outgrowth of this policy. As an increasingly nationalistic Russia seeks to grapple with the challenges posed by its own demographic doldrums and its complex relationship with the Eurasian Islamic crescent, it is necessary to examine how effective the longstanding Russian policy of co-opting Islamic moderates has been. As contemporary European nations likewise vie for the affection of Islamic moderates, it is worth noting that this instrumentalization of Islam poses its own challenges, and will mean that, to again quote Robert Crews, “religion and policing will become more closely intertwined,” something not ordinarily the goal of a liberal society. In the end, Russia’s age old balancing approach should certainly be of interest to European policymakers, but it still may be only postponing an increasingly likely confrontation.

5. THE THREAT OF ISLAMIST TERRORISM TO GERMANY

The situation in Germany is very similar to Britain's and in both countries any attempt to integrate Muslim communities is bound to fail.

http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373324

The recent al-Qaeda threat to Germany over its forces in Afghanistan coupled with the arrest of four Arab men accused of supporting al-Tawhid—a terrorist organization believed to have links to al-Qaeda—have convinced German authorities of the rising jihadi threat to Germany. "It is decidedly false to believe that Germany need not fear terrorist attacks because it is not involved with the Iraq war…Germany is the leading nation in the fight against the Taliban, with which al-Qaeda is tightly allied…We are part of the hated West," Bavarian Interior Minister Beckstein declared [1]. Yet, while Germany is by no means immune to home-grown terrorism, it is still a fact that the ideologies that spawn terrorism or radicalism elsewhere in Europe have not found fertile ground in the country's Turkish immigrants who make up three quarters of the Muslim population [2]. Thus far, the Turkish community has appeared largely immune from pietistic movements like Salafism, or Tabligh, or even from political Islam or Salafi-Jihadism. With the exclusion of the Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüþ (Islamic Community of the National Vision, IGMG), Islamic activism appeals far less to the Turkish Muslim element than it does to the rest of the Muslim minority. The few jihadi suspects apprehended so far are of Arab origin or were German converts.

Despite the scare of Islamist ideologues exporting their creed to a marginalized Muslim minority, the federal Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution), the equivalent of Britain's MI5 and the U.S. FBI, puts the number of Islamists at about one percent (32,100) of the Muslim population—27,250 of Turkish origin (26,500 of which belong to IGMG), 3,350 of Arab origin, 150 of Iranian origin and 1,350 of other nationalities. The Muslim Brotherhood is believed to claim 1,300 members while Jama' at Tabligh has about 500 members, Hamas 300 members and Hezbollah 900 [3]. Yet despite the fact that intelligence agencies have found little evidence of the association of Islamists with social unrest or jihadism, local and federal authorities are highly distrustful of Islamism in both its moderate and its radical forms. "We do not want terrorists, but we also do not want Islamists," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said in May 2006. The Verfassungsschutz keeps a close eye on all Islamist groups, including non-violent, law-abiding ones. Islamist organizations are accused of fostering radicalization.

This radicalization, however, failed to manifest itself during the French riots of 2005 and the 2006 Mohammad caricatures affair. Civic unrest or a spillover of violence did not occur. There is no doubt that there are radical Islamists that warrant close surveillance. It is estimated that the Kalifatstaat movement has between 750 and 800 members [4]. Hezbollah and Hamas count no more than a few hundred members. German officials put the number of suppo rters of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the Iraqi Ansar al-Islam/Ansar al-Sunna and a handful of "non-aligned mujahideen" in the low hundreds. One to two percent of Islamists (400-600) are believed to be "ready to commit violence," but so are foreign leftist extremists, who are estimated to number 17,290 in Bavaria alone, and foreign extreme nationalists (8,430 members). All are described as potentially violent [5]. Notwithstanding the small numbers of radical Islamists, state officials lump all Islamists together as quintessentially undemocratic, oppressive and anti-Western. There is a tendency to conjure the worst case scenarios in which non-violent Islamists, who are believed to deceptively project themselves as victims of state paranoia and Islamophobia, turn into terrorists or at the very least troublemakers who instigate civic unrest.