Hooligans from rival football clubs have temporarily set aside their mutual hatred for each other in order to unite against a common enemy: radical Salafists who are bringing Islamic Sharia law to Germany.
After police predicted that more than 10,000 hooligans would show up at an anti-Salafist rally in Berlin, authorities cancelled the event. Similar rallies planned for Frankfurt, Hamburg and Hannover have also been banned.
Vogel, a former professional boxer who often depicts himself as the embodiment invincible Islam, is now portraying himself as a helpless and fearful victim of the football hooligans
A group of nearly 5,000 football hooligans from across Germany gathered in the western city of Cologne on October 26 to protest the spread of radical Islam in the country.
The watershed march was organized by a new initiative called “Hooligans against Salafists,” better known by its German abbreviation, HoGeSa, short for Hooligans gegen Salafisten.
HoGeSa is a burgeoning alliance between hooligans from rival football clubs who have temporarily set aside their mutual hatred for each other in order to unite against a common enemy: radical Salafists who want to replace Germany’s democratic order with Islamic Sharia law.
The alliance has its roots in a hidden Internet forum called GnuHoonters (homophone of “New Hunters”) formed in 2012 between 17 different hooligan groups from across Germany. GnuHoonters was established primarily to fight anarchists, Marxist-Leninists and other left-wing extremists in the country.
In 2013, some 300 members of GnuHoonters set up another hidden Internet forum called “Because Germans Still Dare” (Weil Deutsche sich’s noch trauen), aimed at developing an action plan to fight the leaders of Germany’s Salafist scene.