It is a controversial gesture: On March 11th, footballer Antonio Rüdiger posted a photo of himself in a white robe on a Muslim prayer mat on Instagram. Rüdiger had his right index finger raised. He is a practicing Muslim and he shared the photo as a greeting for Ramadan.
“May the Almighty accept our fasting and our prayers,” wrote Rüdiger.
The former “Bild” boss and now journalist at the right-wing populist platform “Nius”, Julian Reichelt, immediately interpreted the greeting as an Islamist gesture – numerous right-wing and right-wing extremist platforms followed this interpretation.
Report filed
Rüdiger sees himself through this denigrated and insulted and filed a criminal complaint, as his management and the DFB confirmed to the German Press Agency. The complaint was filed with the Berlin public prosecutor’s office.
The DFB also reported the matter to the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) of the Frankfurt/Main Public Prosecutor’s Office.
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Julian Reichelt
Reichelt stuck to his interpretation of the gesture on Monday evening: “This gesture has been completely co-opted by terrorists over the last two decades. He is undisputed greetings from ISIS and Islamist murderers all over the world “by people who also murdered in Berlin and brought disaster and immeasurable suffering to the world,” he wrote on X (Twitter).
In fact, the greeting is used by numerous Islamists – such as Amis Amris, the Berlin gunman. However, the greeting has long been established in Islam – it is used, for example, in the Islamic creed. The raised index finger is considered an expression of belief in a single God. Jihadists from the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) have hijacked the greeting.
Evaluate gesture “in individual cases”.
According to the German Interior Ministry, the gesture “should be understood as a declaration of faith and should therefore be classified as unproblematic with regard to public safety. This applies regardless of the fact that Islamist groups appropriate this symbol and misuse it for their own purposes.” The significance must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.