Germany Islamic Center Hamburg banned

The Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH) and its sub-organizations are banned in Germany. To enforce the order, which was published in the Federal Gazette, the police searched the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) and other buildings in other federal states early this morning for the second time in a few months.

Dozens of police officers cordoned off the Blue Mosque in Hamburg early this morning. According to a reporter from the German Press Agency, they began searching the Shiite place of worship. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the association that runs the mosque as extremist and controlled by Iran.

According to a dpa reporter, several police officers stormed the building of a Shiite association in the Neukölln district of Berlin at around the same time.

In November last year, the ministry had already searched 54 properties across Germany, including the Blue Mosque and dozens of other premises in the Hanseatic city. At the time, raids were also carried out in Lower Saxony, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia. Extensive material was confiscated at the time.

The IZH is considered an important propaganda center of the Iranian regime in Europe. The Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been monitoring it since the early 1990s.

There have been calls for it to be closed for years. The Bundestag had also called on the federal government to examine "whether and how the Islamic Center Hamburg can be closed as a hub of the Iranian regime's operations in Germany". The Hamburg Parliament also called for the closure of the center.

According to the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the IZH represents the goals of the Islamic revolution, which are diametrically opposed to the free democratic basic order of the German constitution. In recent years, the IZH has built up a nationwide network of contacts through which it exerts influence on Shiites of different nationalities as well as Shiite mosques and associations - to the point of complete control, it said.