Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs :
one of the largest Islamic organisations in Germany that was found in 1984 as a branch of the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Ankara, it is an “arm” of the Turkish state.
Headquarters: Germany, Cologne–Ehrenfeld.
Missions:
the DITIB funds 900 mosques in Germany since 2016
The imams and the religious teachers, officially classified as civil servants of the Turkish state, are trained in Ankara and sent to Germany from Turkey.
DITIB claims it is independent of the Government of Turkey.
Because the state back then was almost bankrupt, the officials had to be paid with money from the Muslim World League, which provoked protest from secularists. The fixation on Turkey and the Turkish language proved to be a handicap because other Islamic organisations used the German language in public.
The usage of German was seen by many to be more dialogue-friendly.
Homepages of local Ditib chapters have featured Christophobic, antisemitic and anti-Western hate speech.
In 2018, Federal Ministry of the Interior cut all funds after DITIB had been involved in a number of controversies, such as refusing to take part in a Cologne anti-terror march in 2017.
Under the presidency of Rıdvan Çakır, DİTİB tries to present itself as a more integrated actor in German society. DİTİB was one of the initiators of the mass-event “Gemeinsam für Frieden und gegen Terror” (en: “Together for Peace and against Terror”). Over 20,000 Muslims participated in this demonstration, which was held on November 21, 2004 in Cologne. Participants who gave speeches included the Green Party politician Claudia Roth, Bavaria‘s Interior Minister Günther Beckstein and Fritz Behrens. The goal was to signal the disapproval of the use of violence in the name of Islam. It was one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in the history of Germany.
Problematisches ist auch der Ditib, dem größten muslimischen Verband, vorzuwerfen. Wiederholt war auf lokalen Ditib-Homepages juden- und christenfeindliche und antiwestliche Hetze zu lesen.
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