We are in Gröpelingen in front of a small, urban shopping centre, a slightly smaller supermarket. On the side of one of the Bremen mosques, the "Kultur & Familien Verein e.V.". The building is located not far away from the Gröpelinger Heerstraße, which runs like a dead straight main road, in a traffic-calmed residential area.
Rene, in his mid-fifties, who eats a sausage at one of the stalls on the fringes of a children's party, means
"We have other things to worry about. Sarrazzin does not write about the biggest stigma of Bremen: the BaGiS West. He could write about people being "desocialized". There is a couple who have power in their hands and abuse it perversely. They don't care about any law at all," he suddenly makes his point.
"Nobody controls them and it's like in the Roman Empire, there in the arena! They're getting all little Caesars with their Hartz IV policy. I think it is good when the public prosecutor investigates Sarrazzin, I read in the BILD newspaper. We don't need a new right-wing in Germany. If such a party gets 18% in elections, then we will soon have a hatred of Hartz IV recipients. Well, there is. In France it is the Roma, here it is another minorities. It's time again to call for a strong man. The politicians of all parties have driven the country against the wall, together with their friends, the bankers, and keep such officials as those in the BaGiS West to enforce their goals. This is bad."
"I don't support someone who writes such nonsense. It only warms up the xenophobia, so that it distracts from the real problems, which in our country are more pressing every day," says a young woman whom we ask.
"It is the usual populist clientele that can or wants to make friends with such verbal failures. We Hanseatic citizens are avowed Europeans," says one of them, grumbling at the evil machinations, as he calls them.
"Turks are part of our culture. There are only some who are wannabe Islamists! It is from them that the danger in question emanates, not from some muzzlers. Sarrazzin serves old prejudices and partly nasty propaganda," says another.
A likeable, full-bearded patrolman explains a children's party on the square in front of the prayer house with a colleague from a VW bus under surveillance:
"We would need a stronger government. At the moment everything is a banana republic," nods to his own words. Confirm this. Plucks at his uniform. No, he doesn't seem to feel joy or happiness anymore.
About the work he enjoys. The colleague of the official who is behind the wheel does not want to comment, but cynically but understandably in the situation he replies quite objectively:
"There is a press office that tells us everything. That's all I want to say."
It smells of fried sausages, as fish cakes are cooking in boiling fat which a saleswoman in her rolling stand turns and turns opposite:
"We're doing just fine!"
Then she shrugs her shoulders.
On the blue, huge, castle-like mat of an insurance company, three teenagers are enjoying the autumn sunshine and don't know what to say. "Life is just good at this moment. That's all I want to think about right now." "Europe is awesome!" another young man exclaims.
France and the Roma deportations are far away, nobody cares, doesn't bother. It looks bitter.
In front of the mosque of the "Kultur & Familien Verein e.V." a long-bearded believer with a bright white prayer robe walks into the door.
We try to address him, identify ourselves as journalists.
Want to hear him too, because he is a part of this city, a part of Bremen. No, he's not interested in a conversation.
Why should I? he yells
"It's bad enough that we don't have the intercultural exchange. If you talk to each other, don't shoot the other," commented a passer-by who had observed the situation shortly before.
"You have to be afraid of them, surely they're not just praying, read the
Report on the Protection of the Constitution," he shouts to us and continues to cycle down Sewenjestraße with his shopping. "I only live in Germany, this is Europe. Nothing more," the believer says unmotivated contemptuously and aggressively. By his pre-exercised appearance, he insults not only the Federal Republic of Germany, no matter whether this country is his home or the chosen host country, but also the honourable faith, the integration efforts and ability of so many Muslims, who once came to Germany with peaceful aims.
"No, I don't want to say anything!" he's telling us.
The man does not want to listen, he wants to be different. Retreats into the role of victim, damning the society living around it. Pulls on his child, tugs at the scared little girl as if he has to protect her from something. In the already mentioned report on the protection of the constitution, it was criticized that the children are brought up particularly strictly according to the Koran in order not to be in line with the general Western ideas.
He means to me that I have to disappear, that I have no questions to ask, certainly not to him.
His long robe blows in the first cool autumn wind.
Afterwards, he disappears with an evil, incomprehensible look into the house of religion. But comes back again after a few seconds, photographs the car, us at work. One senses that for him freedom is only valid within his limits. In the end, he makes a derogatory gesture, photographs the vehicle again several times from the mosque.
The so-called "Kultur & Familien Verein e.V." maintains the radical attitude according to the last, very clearly explained constitutional protection report. Preaches the Salafist-takfirist ideology, cursing here the Basic Law, which is valid for the Federal Republic of Germany and existential for the rest of us who live here, as not compatible with faith. Other Muslims and the Christians represent for this presumed community the "unbelievers".
Explain us to these.
The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution suspects that "possibly an attempt is being made to build up a network that can be attributed to the Salafist-Tafirist ideology".
Through systematic investigations by the Bremen authorities, knowledge was also gained of various travel activities of individual members, and the busy constitutional protectors in this matter also noted:
"A protagonist of the "Kultur & Familien Verein e.V." was refused a passport by the Bremen registration office. The reasoning is that the Bremen police have concrete facts at their disposal,
"...which justify the assumption that the passport applicant directly intends to leave the Federal Republic of Germany to go to a training camp of the terrorist organisation "Al-Qaida" in a non-European country and to receive instruction there in the handling of weapons and explosives or other military or terrorist skills...". It was also decreed that the federal identity card does not entitle the holder to leave the Federal Republic.
Understandable is the smouldering resentment of the neighbours, who fear that the diffusely acting group will one day radically carry the bloody war to Bremen, to Germany. Whatever. For questionable goals that are certainly not anchored in the foundations of religion.
An elderly gentleman, a former senior student councillor, watches us at work for quite some time: " Probably even he cannot justify what he is fabricating with two dozen alleged radicals. The terrible thing about them, they are very active," he pulls his decrepit dachshund of the leash and blows his nose.
"But the authorities' hands are tied. "I do not want to know what the children learn in this house of worship, what means are used to work there. What's going to happen to these kids? They hate us unbelievers, when they are 8 years old, which they do when they are 20, I would not like to imagine. But what I don't understand at all is why this centre is not banned," he says angrily.