[DW] The fundamentalist Salafist ideology continues to draw adherents in Germany, the country's intelligence chief says. The movement is seen by authorities as a potential breeding ground for Islamic terrorism.More Salafists
...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them...
are living in Germany than ever before, domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen said on Sunday.
Maasen said the number of people adhering to the fundamentalist Islamic ideology had "risen to an all-time high," with the German intelligence agency BfV giving a figure of 10,800 Salafists in Germany as compared with 9,700 in December last year.
A growing "fragmentation" and drift to the private sphere of Salafism in Germany was making the scene harder to observe for authorities, Maassen said.
The BfV said the movement's recruitment drives have now more or less left the streets and mosques, and added that Salafists were instead being radicalized in small conspirative groups on the internet. The agency also pointed to the growing number of women's networks as posing a challenge for authorities, who have problems accessing them.
Security authorities see the Salafist movement as a potential springboard into Islamist terrorism, particularly for young Moslems.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere last year banned as unconstitutional a prominent recruitment campaign by the group in which passers-by were exhorted to read the Koran by banners bearing the word "Read!" ("Lies!" in German).
'Experienced fighters'
Maassen also said Islamists from the North Caucasus region represented a major threat to security in Germany, with some 500 murderous Moslems from republics such as Chechnya, Dagestan
...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
and Ingushetia now thought to be living in the country.
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He said that many of them had combat experience, having not only fought in the wars in Chechnya but also taken part in current conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
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