(DPA) German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann has dismissed Islamist support for the caliphate as a form of rule as absurd, but does not necessarily consider it a judicial issue in Germany.
His comments came ahead of an Islamist demonstration in Hamburg later on Saturday, called by the organization Muslim Interaktiv, and in the wake of controversy following a similar rally last month.
“Purely expressing sympathy for a caliphate is something that I consider politically absurd,” Buschmann told dpa.
But, he said, Germany’s Constitutional Court had found that as long as people simply express an absurd opinion — even one that runs counter to the country’s Basic Law — this must be tolerated as part of the intellectual battle of opinions, so long as no efforts are made to overthrow the legal order or violate legal interests.
