“The Irani and the Arabi are banned from Tel Aviv,” Massiv rapped in 2015. Sentences that sound like a violent fantasy against Israel are also used in the song, which the rapper recorded with Sinan G: “Bomb belt zelame”, “I kidnap a Boeing and shoot at your family”.
In May 2021, the Berliner followed suit, comparing the situation of the people in the Gaza Strip in an Instagram post with the Warsaw ghetto.
Less than a year later, Massiv is holding a prize in his hands, awarded for “special commitment (…) against extremism and racism”: the Hamza Kenan Kurtovic Award. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) smiles at the camera just a meter away from the gigantic musician. She, too, has just been recognized for her commitment. Before that, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), who was connected, read out a greeting.
All of this might seem strange. If the commemoration of the victims of right-wing terror in Hanau had not taken on strange features a long time ago.
References to Islamism remain unmentioned
The prize was awarded for the first time on Tuesday. It is intended to honor Hamza Kenan Kurtovic and the eight other victims of the racist-motivated attack on February 19, 2020 in Hanau – and actually show “how important social commitment is to the fight against all extremism and racism,” as the organizers announced.
Massiv, who accepted his award wearing a Palestine jersey, was honored for his commitment to refugees.
It went unnoticed that the rapper had been in circles with well-known German Islamists in the past. This is borne out by photos showing Massiv next to his longtime manager Ashraf Remmo and the leading Salafist Bilal Gümüs.
Gümüs, who was the head of the Koran distribution campaign “Lies!”, has been in prison since February 2020 for preparing a serious act of violence that is dangerous to the state. In 2013, he is said to have helped a 16-year-old emigrate to the Syrian civil war, who died there fighting for an Islamist militia.
Apparently that was an inspiration for Massiv. In a song called “Condemned / I didn’t want to go to Syria” Massiv rapped in 2015 about a 26-year-old Koran distributor named Bilal: “They accused me of being one of ISIS. I serve God, my heart is pure.” In other songs, he toyed with the terror image, described himself as a “top ten terrorist”.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior said on request that Faeser had not known before the award ceremony who would be honored next to her. Faeser received the award “because of her commitment against racism and her close ties to the victims of the right-wing extremist attack in Hanau”.
A well-known agitator is involved in the background
The prize was awarded by C&E Education and Sport, a non-profit limited company. One of its managing directors is Ernes Erko Kalac, former integration ambassador of the German Olympic Sports Confederation and holder of the Federal Cross of Merit since 2021.
Among the 14 award winners are former Federal President Christian Wulff, comedian Enissa Amani, football club Eintracht Frankfurt and professional boxer Zeina Nassar.
This was selected by a twelve-member jury around Hamza Kurtovic’s family, ex-DFB team boss Rudi Völler, ZDF presenter Dunya Hayali and Aiman Mazyek, chairman of the Central Council of Muslims. However, influencer Tarek Baé was also apparently involved behind the scenes in organizing the event.
Baé calls himself a journalist and worked in the past for the think tank Seta, which the federal government believes is close to Erdogan’s AKP party. Baé formulates dubious theses on the subject of Islamism on Instagram and YouTube. In the past, he ran a Facebook page that also promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Since a WELT request to Baé in summer 2021, the site is no longer accessible.
Baé wrote on Twitter that he “worked on the award and it was a success”. He will also be part of the jury next year.
Nationalists want to hijack Hanau commemoration
The official Hanau commemoration in February had already been exploited by anti-Israel groups and Turkish nationalists. While Interior Minister Faeser and Hessian Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) were speaking at a commemoration event at a Hanau cemetery, demonstrators in Berlin chanted “Yallah Intifada, from Hanau to Gaza”.
A dubious coalition of “Hanau associations and mosque communities” also came together at Hanau’s Heumarkt. The journalist Eren Güvercin criticized that it remains nebulous who these clubs actually are. So the suspicion persisted that demonstrators from outside of Hanau from the environment of the AKP lobby organization UID had traveled.
A man named Teyfik Özcan acted as organizer. Özcan is also a supporter of Erdogan and publicly denies the genocide of the Armenians. That didn’t stop SPD leader Saskia Esken from speaking at the event – and having her picture taken over coffee with initiator Özcan.
Journalist Güvercin criticized at the time that actors who preached anti-racism in Germany but in Turkey “support the aggressive nationalist-identitarian power politics of the AKP-MHP” are certainly about a lot – but not about racism and commemorating the victims.
