Battle with the Islamic State for the minds of

young Muslims
Fighting the invisible arm of the Islamic State

Th
e story of a Berlin mosque illustrates Muslim communities battle to save youths
from the pull of extremists.

19

By Anthony Faiola and Souad Mekhennet December

BERLIN After the latest of his sermons denouncing the Islamic State, Mohamed
Taha Sabri stepped down from an ornate platform at the House of Peace mosque.
The 48-year-old chief preacher then moved to greet his congregation, steeling
himself for the fallout.
Soon, two young men they are almost always young, but not always men were
calling him out. Only moments before, Sabri had derided the militants tactics,
saying it is not our task to turn women into slaves, to bomb churches, to slaughter

people in front of cameras while shouting God is great!

One young man in a black leather jacket angrily chided him for challenging
Muslim freedom fighters. His companion in a yellow shirt then chimed in: What
is your problem with the Islamic State? You are on the wrong path!
No, said Sabri, embracing the surprised young men. My brothers, you are the

ones on the wrong path.

In the era of the Islamic State, the wrong path has become all too familiar ground at
the House of Peace. Nestled between the kebab restaurants and bric-a-brac shops
of an immigrant neighborhood in south Berlin, the liberal mosque stood for years
as a temple of tolerance where battered Muslim women could find help divorcing
their husbands and progressive imams preached a positive message of religious
tolerance.
But as a ruthless brand of Islamic ideology
radiates from the battlefields of the Middle
East, the House of Peace has become a
microcosm of the new fault lines
developing inside countless mosques in the
West. It illustrates the daily battle being
fought against the militant groups
message by thousands of moderate
religious leaders in Europe and beyond.
It is a fight that is sowing fresh divisions,
and one the moderates do not always win.
At least two youths who used to worship at
the House of Peace including Denis
Cuspert, a former German rapper recently
Roughly 16 worshipers have stopped attending
filmed holding the head of an enemy in an
prayer services in protest of Sabris stance.
Islamic State video have already left to
(Mario Wezel/For the Washington Post)
wage jihad in Syria and Iraq. Another
former worshiper here an 18-year-old female convert to Islam is now actively
making plans to travel to Syria with an Islamic State fighter.
Roughly 16 worshipers have stopped attending prayer services in protest of Sabris
stance. Two others were banned from the mosque for spreading radical views.
Surveillance cameras have been installed and unauthorized gatherings prohibited
to thwart radical recruiters. One burly 20-year-old worshiper became so enraged
with Sabris Friday sermons against the Islamic State that he twice assaulted the
slight preacher, once leaving him bleeding on the floor in need of emergency

medical treatment.
The Islamic State. It is like an invisible arm, coming to poison the wells where our

children drink, Sabri said. We are losing something precious. We are losing our
young people.

Leaving for the caliphate

Three weeks ago, Imam Ferid Heider, a part-time preacher and coordinator of a
youth group at the House of Peace, received an anonymous note asking if it is okay
to kill Christians and Jews. Not long afterward, the author of that note an 18year-old girl who gave her name as Meryam was wandering down a Berlin street
with a journalist.
She wore a full Islamic covering known as a niqab, with only her green irises and
pale skin visible through an eye slit. Even in a heavily Muslim neighborhood, she
attracted the attention of passersby. Let them watch, Im used to it, she said
dismissively. I don't care.
Meryam is making plans to move to Syria with a Tunisian-born fighter for the
Islamic State. A friend of hers has told leaders at the House of Peace of her
intentions, but so far, the friend has honored Meryams request not to reveal her
identity to the mosque, whose leaders still hope to stage a family intervention that
might prevent her flight.
Meryam agreed to tell her story to The
Washington Post at the friends urging on
grounds that her name be changed and
that her real identity not be revealed to the
mosque or German authorities.

Members of the congregation of the mosque

Neukoellner Begegnungsstaette pray outside, in
front of the mosque, next to a small shop. Around
600 people attend friday prayer every week.
(Mario Wezel/For The Washington Post)

She has a friend, she said, an Afghani girl,

who has already traveled to Syria where
she is living in a house with other single
women waiting to marry a fighter. From
that friends reports, the caliphate is an
Islamic utopia, a place wholly different
than the lies in the Western media that
tell of repression and fear.
It is our duty to leave the land of the

unbeliever, to go and live in the caliphate, she said.

Her awareness of the Islamic State has grown in recent months, she said. She has
watched their videos on YouTube. Though she turns away from the ones with
graphic beheadings and mass executions, she calls those acts righteous vengeance
against nonbelievers.
Meryam is jobless. She first married at age 16. She fits a profile; large numbers of
Western jihadists have come from socially disadvantaged homes, their lives plagued
by unemployment and family turmoil.
The Tunisian man who Meryam plans to wed is in Berlin, she says, waiting for her
divorce to be final. He is the first cousin of a friend of hers, and he recently entered
Europe illegally, she said, after leaving Syria with a group of other Islamic State
fighters of Yemeni and Chechen descent.
Meryam will be his second wife a fact she said she fully accepts.
I believe I have found the right man, she said.

Together, she said, they have visited the House of Peace, where her betrothed was
outraged by Sabris sermons against the Islamic State. She has since ceased
worshiping there, and pulled out of a weekly youth group at the House of Peace.
He said ... these people are nonbelievers.
Like several of the most extreme youths who have gone to Syria from the West,
Meryam is also a convert. She was 14 at the time. The year she converted, a close
Muslim friend was killed in a neighborhood stabbing. She attended prayer vigils at
his mosque, talked to some people, made the big leap. Her divorced parents were
surprised but took no action to stop her.
She says she and other devout Muslims feel ostracized in German society. When
she first started wearing a partial head covering, she said, she was already being
turned down for jobs. When she started wearing a niqab, it became impossible to
find work.
Meryam said her mother knows of her plan to travel to Syria but has promised to
let her daughter follow her faith. Her father still does not know.
I dont think my father would agree, she said. When he sees her in a Muslim veil,

she said he often tells her, If this is how you want to live, then go and live in an
Islamic country. So thats what I will do.

Caught in a vice

It was two years ago that Sabri began to sense trouble among his followers at the
House of Peace.
As the Islamic State was consolidating its power in Syria and Iraq, a tug-of-war for
the minds of young Muslims was taking shape. He had to act.
In response, the Tunisian-born Sabri, who was imprisoned and tortured in the
1980s as a student protester before moving to Germany, called a series of youth
meetings. He prominently displayed the flags of Germany and the European Union.
His point: Muslims should be proud to live in a thriving Western democracy.
Sabri called the gatherings five days in a row, stringing up new flags each day. But
every morning, he said, he arrived to find that some of the youths had taken down
both flags before violently shredding them with pocket knives.
They called me an unbeliever for defending democracy, which the Islamic State

says is against the Koran, he said.

To be sure, youths at the House of Peace have been seduced by radicalism in the
past. Before the Islamic State, the ruthless philosophy of al-Qaeda tempted two
young worshipers to try to travel to Afghanistan. But Sabri said that was nothing
compared with the lure of the Islamic State now.
The House of Peace has already lost one son. Samir Malla, 27, took up arms in Syria
only to be killed over the summer. Ferid Heider, who was Mallas spiritual adviser
for three years, said he could see the young man slipping away.
He had recently divorced and began dressing in religious garb, Heider said.

Malla, he said, also began associating with a well-known Palestinian-born radical.

When Malla began handing out extremist literature inside the House of Peace one
afternoon, he was finally banned from the premises.
The mosque has sought to stage interventions through relatives and friends, but, to
protect its own credibility with the community, it will only go to authorities if there
is a credible threat of violence. They are holding regular meetings with youths on
weekends, using the time to fight fire with fire citing passages in the Koran, for
instance, to undermine the teachings of the Islamic State.
They also feel caught in a vice, between the Islamic States radicalism on one hand,
and a sense of growing Islamaphobia within German society on the other. Rightwing protests have broken out around Germany, ostensibly against radical Islam

but with overtones of a broader religious bias. A local Berlin lawmaker has already
blocked the sale of a nearby city property that the House of Peace hoped to acquire
for an expansion.
It is our job to make sure our youth do not give in to discrimination and follow the

wrong path, Sabri said. We try to reach out, we try to make them feel that this is
their country, that religious tolerance is the right path. But for some of them, the
message of the Islamic State has confused them.

Anthony Faiola is The Post's Berlin bureau chief. Faiola joined the Post
in 1994, since then reporting for the paper from six continents and
serving as bureau chief in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, New York and London.

Souad Mekhennet, co-author of The

Eternal Nazi, is a visiting fellow at Harvard,
Johns Hopkins and the Geneva Centre for
Security policy.