The Interior Ministry no longer wants to distribute the report of the “Independent Expert Group on Muslimphobia” following a court decision. Two critics of Islamism saw themselves defamed.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) was full of praise in June 2023 when the “Independent Expert Panel on Muslimphobia” (UEM) presented its report. It is now important to seriously consider the recommendations of this report and “take decisive action against anti-Muslim sentiment,” she said in a personal foreword.
However, well-known critics of Islamism are also personally named and attacked in the report, including the expert Sigrid Herrmann, who is a member of Faeser’s SPD regional association.
Now the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) has withdrawn the controversial report. rbb24-Research has provided a corresponding letter from the BMI to the Berlin Administrative Court. It states that the BMI has removed the report entitled “Muslimophobia – A German Balance Sheet 2023” from the internet portal.
Report offline
200 remaining printed copies of the report were also “disposed of”. In the future, the BMI will no longer publish the report in a way in which it “can be considered an official statement by the BMI.”
When asked, the BMI said that the handling of the study was still being examined: “Whether and how the ‘Independent Expert Group on Muslimphobia’ (UEM) will publish its report in the future is up to the expert committee itself.”
Mathias Rohe from the University of Erlangen, who coordinated the expert panel, said the panel no longer existed. In this respect, he is not entitled to comment on the process.
According to information from rbb24-According to research, at least one former member of the group of experts refuses to have the report put back online on his own initiative. This would prevent the text from being made public again.
1.5 million euros for a withdrawn study
The UEM was convened by the Federal Ministry of the Interior – then still under CSU politician Horst Seehofer – after the attack in Hanau in 2020, in which ten people fell victim. The BMI also published the complained report. In addition to the co-editor of the right-wing conservative blog “The Axis of Good” Henryk M. Broder and the CDU member of the Bundestag Christoph de Vries, the blogger and Islamism expert Sigrid Herrmann are also mentioned by name and thus placed in the context of “Muslimophobia”.
The aim of the study is to “analyze anti-Muslim discourses using concrete examples”. When asked, the BMI announced that the study had been funded with 1.5 million euros.
Herrmann has been running the blog “Islamism and Society” for many years and advises constitutional protection offices and the media. The UEM report says about the blogger that she describes herself on her blog as an “Islamism expert,” “despite a lack of professional expertise or relevant language skills.”
Just being mentioned in an official report from the Federal Ministry of the Interior is doing massive damage to her professional practice as an expert, says Herrmann. For years she has been exposed to public and legal attacks from protagonists of political Islam. Even in her party, the SPD in Hesse, she lacks the necessary support against Islamic extremists.
violation of Personal rights
First, the journalist Henryk M. Broder sued against his mention in the report and won. In its decision, the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court condemned the BMI to no longer publish the passages about Broder because they violated his personal rights.
The court primarily criticized the fact that the study could be understood as an official statement by the federal government. The Ministry of the Interior is obliged to exercise restraint, objectivity, balance and “legal distance”.
However, the experts’ statements in the report about anti-Muslim sentiment are so judgmental that they could disparage the author. The problem: The ministry’s editors give the potentially reputation-damaging statements the appearance of being official. This would further intensify any damage to reputation.
CDU demands an apology
The CDU domestic politician and member of the Bundestag Christoph de Vries was also particularly mentioned by name in the UEM report. He was accused of a lack of differentiation from the AfD because he seamlessly included “regular structures of Islam and strict religious behavior of an orthodox-conservative part of Muslims” in his argument against Islamic extremism.
The expert commission’s report also states: “The CDU/CSU (de Vries) opposed anti-Muslim sentiment, but (like the AfD) rejected the term ‘anti-Muslim racism’ as an allegedly constructed term.”
De Vries sees these paragraphs as a degradation of his work, as he is very much committed to integration. The fact that the BMI is now withdrawing the final report on “Muslimophobia” on court instructions is “a crushing defeat for the Federal Interior Minister across the board,” said de Vries when asked.
Little remained in the UEM report of the original mission to highlight hostility to Muslims in everyday life and to counteract this form of misanthropy. De Vries calls on the Federal Minister of the Interior to apologize to those affected.
This is also what the blogger Herrmann, who is taking legal action against the BMI, wants. According to the letter to the Berlin Administrative Court, the BMI now declares the legal dispute with her to be “closed” because the ministry will no longer publish it. Herrmann is only partially pleased about this. Because the accusations against her continue to circulate, although no longer on the BMI website.
“In my opinion, the BMI is making things too easy for themselves. Because they have spread untruths about me. That should also be admitted,” says Herrmann. Their opponents continue to refer to the “Independent Expert Commission on Anti-Muslimism”. “The minimum would be for the BMI to admit that it has wronged me and correct it in relation to me personally.”
Federal Ministry of the Interior doesn’t distance himself
When asked whether the BMI would distance itself from the content of the statements about Herrmann and Broder, the ministry simply stated that it had always made it clear about the study “that this is not a report by the BMI, but a report by an independent group of experts who “has only been published by the BMI”.
This doesn’t help Sigrid Herrmann: Since the ministry is legally withdrawing from the affair in this way, it now has to take legal action against other disseminators of the report at its own expense. The report has now also disappeared from the websites of the Hessian SPD, whose chairwoman is Federal Interior Minister Faeser.