Germanys 'Sharia Police' #fundie spyghana.com
German police said Friday they are seeking ways to stop the bearded young fundamentalists, who have been sighted on several recent occasions at night.
The radicals have distributed leaflets describing the sleazy nightlife area they monitor near the main railway station of Wuppertal – a city of 340,000 – as a “Shariah Controlled Zone.”
They wore fluorescent orange traffic-safety vests marked “shariah police” in English on the back.
The Wuppertal radicals, who have won some converts among young ethnic Germans and have exasperated authorities with previous publicity gambits, are followers of Salafism, a puritanical stream of Islam.
Police took the names of 11 men aged 19 to 33 on Wednesday night and are investigating them on possible charges of illegal assembly. Wuppertal citizens were urged to phone police if the vigilante patrol was sighted again.
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Leaflets handed out by the self-styled guardians urged citizens of the city to refrain from alcohol, drugs, gambling, attending concerts, watching pornography or visiting prostitutes.
The group issued a YouTube video publicizing their activities. Regional newspapers said Facebook had deleted a group calling itself “Sharia Police Germany.”
The seven-minute video shows the men walking up to youths, saying, “How are you?” and urging them to visit the Salafists’ mosque.
A blond man boasts in the video that the vigilantes made men “ashamed” to visit a gambling-machine parlour, saying the group did not use force, but offered a path to “paradise” for the virtuous.
Salafists in Wuppertal and nearby have shown creativity in the past in attracting publicity.