Defending Germany's Constitution

From the National Secular Societys website, story dates from March, updated April.

According to the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, a German group is taking legal action against the Koran, claiming it contradicts the country’s constitution.

"The author of the indictment in Hamburg, Jutta Starke, says that the Quran was reported to the police two or three years ago, but that the report was dismissed on the grounds that it was a book of only historical interest.

“The events of the last months have made clear that the Quran isn’t just a historical book, but very much a potent political book, a thing which we document extensively in the indictment,” Jutta Starke says.

She says it is a task of sisyphean dimensions to inform the media, politicians and churches of the true intentions of Islam in the enlightened world of the West.

“We are grateful to Jyllands-Posten that discussions about Islam have now become possible,” says Jutta Starke.

“You suffer for all of Europe and that’s why we find it indecent that Europe hasn’t loudly, in unison, taken a stand for Freedom of Speech against the laws of the Quran.”

The indictment consists of five pieces of paper and a number of appendices. The indictment says that it is not against Islam’s spiritual message, but against the judicial and political message.

The decisive count of the indictment “is in the Quran’s status vis-a-vis the Federal Republic of Germany’s constitution”. In the appendices to the indictment, 200 points have been listed “where the Quran is against and claims itself above the constitution.”

The indictment has been filed in several states, including Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bayern and probably more. In several talk-shows on German TV, conservative politicians have pointed out that the Quran is incompatible with the German constitution. The Turkish-born writer Serap Cileli said on January 29 this year that “the Quran must be considered a historic document. It is not compatible with our constitution and Human Rights.” Now the alliance wants the matter tried at the courts.

A prominent Moslem, Ibrahim El-Zayat, is quoted as saying that he thinks it is possible that “the Federal Chancellor in 2020 is a Moslem, born and raised in Germany, that the Federal Supreme Court has a Moslem judge, and that a Moslem representative will be on the Federal Radio/TV Council to secure the Moslem citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.”

One of the key things to take out of this, rather than dwelling on the depressing bluster by the prominent scaremongerer, is the action by this alliance of grass roots activists and the highly publicised discussion being undertaken by their conservative politicians in defence of their constitution.

Read a translation of the Jyllands Posten article here