Wolfgang Büscher, who leads a Christian organisation in Berlin that helps socially disadvantaged children, warns of religious bullying from Muslim school children, who also pressure fellow pupils to convert to Islam.
Die Arche – Christliches Kinder- und Jugendwerk, which Büscher leads, is a Protestant charitable organisation that, among other things, offers after-school care and homework assistance to children from disadvantaged backgrounds in several cities in Germany.
It is on the basis of that experience that he issues his warning in an interview with the German news magazine Focus.
“I want to warn society: The pressure that political Islam exerts on fellow pupils through children of the Muslim faith in our schools is steadily increasing. If politicians do not intervene now, we may come to regret this bitterly in a few years.”
“Small hardened Muslims are emerging, mini-Islamists. And politicians have so far not found any effective means against this development.”
The phenomenon is not new, he says, but it is being reported ever more frequently, also by employees in kindergartens run by Arche.
The education authorities in Berlin have commissioned an investigation into the phenomenon, but are examining it so broadly that it is not possible to address the problem complex properly, which is most evident in schools with the highest proportion of pupils with an immigrant background, that is, up to 90 per cent, Büscher explains.
In schools with such a high proportion of pupils with an immigrant background, the risk of religious bullying is greatest. “Our staff at the Arche institutions report increasingly often to me that pupils who do not follow the strict lifestyle of political Islam are ostracised, harassed, intimidated and in some cases even pressured to convert to Islam, if they belong to another faith.”
The problems mainly concern children with origins from Syria, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank, says Büscher.
The victims are not only pupils of Christian or Jewish faith, but also Muslims who, according to the children and young people who have been religiously radicalised at home by their parents, do not follow the strict rules of political Islam.
He himself is asked not to be so confrontational:
And Büscher does not hesitate to point out who is threatening whom, even though he is repeatedly advised by politicians, authorities and even Christian churches to refrain from doing so. “Germans simply find it difficult to address major problems openly,” says the 56-year-old.
He does not believe that the ongoing investigation will change anything, since “no one has the courage or wishes to employ the necessary means”. Political Islam will become an even greater threat in the future if the phenomenon is not addressed, Wolfgang Büscher now warns.
RAF cadet expelled for calling Islam Britain’s greatest threat