A Turkish union has warned that there has been a notable increase in the number of threatening letters sent to mosques in Germany since the latest round of the Israel-Palestine conflict broke out on Oct. 7.
According to a statement from the discrimination unit of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) based in the northern city of Cologne, numerous letters and emails containing insults and threats have been sent to mosques in Germany since Israel launched relentless airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing over 24,000 Palestinians, in retaliation to a Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis.
Cologne Central Mosque alone has received 17 such emails and letters and more recently, the DITIB Selimiye Mosque in the northern town of Dinslaken was targeted.
The Muslim community is increasingly worried, it said.
Mosques in Germany reported an increase in vandalism, harassment and threats throughout 2023, particularly letters and packages signed with the neo-Nazi alias "NSU 2.0."
DITIB reported a similar incident in late October last year where it said three of its mosques received packages containing racist messages, burned pages of the Quran, Islam's holy book, pork and feces.
Earlier in June 2023, a mosque in central Duisburg city also received hate mail threatening the congregation and including both a swastika and the word "NSU 2.0."
"NSU 2.0" refers to the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi terrorist group uncovered in 2011 that murdered 10 people and carried out bomb attacks targeting Turkish and Muslim immigrants.
According to official statistics, there were 124 attacks on Muslims in the first three months of 2023, including verbal and physical assaults, threatening letters and arson attacks targeting mosques.
In recent years, Germany has witnessed growing racism and Islamophobia, fueled by the propaganda of neo-Nazi groups and the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which exploited the refugee crisis and attempted to instill immigrants fear.
Germany has been recording Islamophobic crimes separately since 2017.
In 2018, there were 910 incidents, including 48 attacks on mosques alone, a little lower than 2017's 1,095 crimes. In 2019, some 871 attacks targeted the Muslim community in Germany.
Notably, in 2020, far-right extremist Tobias Rathjen attacked two cafes in the city of Hanau, killing nine young people and injuring five others. All the victims had migrant backgrounds, four of whom were Turks.
With over 84 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country's nearly 5.3 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish descent.