Subsidizing the Caliphate: The Farce of Germany's De-Radicalization Industry

When a government spends seventy million euros of taxpayer money, citizens expect a return on investment. For the German de-radicalization NGO Violence Prevention Network, that return is a well-funded proximity to the extremists the state claims to fight. Between 2014 and 2024, this organisation enjoyed massive subsidies to steer radicals away from dangerous ideologies, even holding sessions with Abdul Ballout, the Islamist attacker who targeted a Christopher Street Day parade. Yet a closer inspection reveals a staggering porousness between the de-radicalizers and the radical milieu.

Take Talha Taşkınsoy, who spent seven years as a pedagogical employee for the organisation. While drawing a salary to prevent extremism, he cultivated relationships with questionable figures. In 2016, he posed on social media with Hamza Yusuf, an American scholar he called his beloved teacher. Yusuf promotes Islamic neo-traditionalism, a dogmatic ideology aimed at establishing Islam in the West, and has fantasized about an Islamic victory over modern society.

Taşkınsoy’s networking continued when he was married this year by Ferid Heider, an imam repeatedly linked by domestic intelligence to the Muslim Brotherhood. Heider chairs the Islamic cultural centre Teiba, whose mosque is affiliated with the Egyptian radical group. The former pedagogical employee was also recently photographed at a Gaza fundraising gala alongside Marcel Krass, a TikTok Salafist monitored by authorities.

The ideological blurring extends to other former staff. Until late 2019, Younes Al-Amayra worked as an anti-violence trainer for the network. He co-founded the public-broadcasting format Datteltäter, financed by mandatory media fees. While ostensibly designed to dismantle stereotypes, the format traffics in Islamist narratives, with one colleague publicly disparaging unveiled women as half-naked.

The rot is not confined to the lower ranks. Thomas Mücke, the managing director of the Violence Prevention Network, sits on the board of Gangway, a youth association that engages in political agitation. A 2023 Gangway report featured promotional material showing four young women in headscarves wielding large laser-tag guns. The political ambitions of Mücke’s secondary venture surfaced during the 2023 Berlin state elections, when a local branch released a poster demanding a halal Germany, a direct reference to strict Sharia law.

Germany has spent two decades importing demographic challenges, only to outsource the resulting friction to an opaque NGO industry. The Violence Prevention Network claims to talk to extremists rather than about them. They have taken this literally, absorbing the milieu into their ranks. When a state finances organisations whose staff revere radicals, de-radicalization becomes an expensive farce. The silent transformation of the country proceeds, subsidised by the government tasked with preventing it.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com