Germany bans Islamic Centre Hamburg, citing Iran influence

German authorities on Wednesday banned the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH), an organization that domestic intelligence considers to be controlled by Iran.

To enforce the ban, which was published in the Federal Gazette and also affects five affiliated organizations, officers searched the IZH inside the Imam Ali Mosque in Hamburg as well as premises in eight other states early in the morning.

Dozens of police officers were seen cordoning off the Imam Ali Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque, in Hamburg, a Shiite mosque run by the IZH that is located in an upmarket area on the shore of the northern German city's Outer Alster Lake.

According to a dpa reporter, several police officers stormed the building of a Shiite organization in Berlin's Tempelhof district at around the same time.

Germany's domestic intelligence service has classified the IZH as extremist.

The IZH aggressively and militantly spread the ideology of the Iranian "Revolutionary Leader" and the so-called "Islamic Revolution" in Germany, according to a statement by the German Interior Ministry.

"It is very important to me to make a clear distinction here: we are not acting against a religion," German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said, assuring that the peaceful practice of the Shiite faith is explicitly unaffected by the ban.

In total, four Shiite mosques have been shut down as part of the ban, according to the statement.

Germany is home to some 150 to 200 Shiite communities.

The IZH is considered an important propaganda centre for Tehran in Europe. The state-level branch of the domestic intelligence service in Hamburg has been monitoring the organization since the 1990s.

A total of 53 properties in the states of Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria were searched in connection with the ban, according to the statement.

The large-scale operation comes after officials searched some 50 properties across Germany in November, including the Blue Mosque and dozens of other premises in Hamburg.

Serious suspicions had been substantiated following the extensive search measures directed against the IZH last November, the interior minister said.

Extensive material was confiscated at the time.

The IZH is an extremist Islamist organization that pursues unconstitutional goals, the Interior Ministry said in its statement.

The ideology promoted by the organization was aimed at undermining women's rights, an independent judiciary and the democratic German state, Faeser said.

"In addition, the Islamic Centre Hamburg and its affiliated organizations support the terrorists of (Hezbollah) and spread aggressive anti-Semitism," the minister said.

Calls have been mounting for years for the IZH to be shut down. The German parliament has urged the federal government to assess "whether and how" the IZH, "a hub of the Iranian regime's operations in Germany" can be closed permanently.

According to the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a state-level intelligence agency that monitors potential threats to Germany's democratic values and institutions, the IZH advocates the goals of the Islamic revolution, which are opposed to the free democratic basic order of the German constitution.

According to the agency, in recent years the IZH has built up a nationwide network of contacts through which it exerts influence on Shiites of different nationalities as well as Shiite mosques and associations - having complete control in some cases.