In an irony of ironies, German security authorities recently disclosed that they believe a multicultural house in the southern German city of Neu-Ulm is the center of a radical Islamic network that spans their entire country.

Opened only three years ago, this lib-left symbol of tolerance and understanding between peoples contains a mosque that was one of 37 places raided last January in a countrywide strike against Islamist targets. Seven hundred security personnel in six German states searched apartments, businesses and mosques as far away as Berlin and took 24 people, mostly of Arab origin, into custody. All are legal residents. Large amounts of cash and bank account documents were also seized.

At least two of the people taken into custody, police believe, attended al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, while others are suspected of having ties to the Islamist organizations El Tawhid and Ansar al Islam. The 25-year-old preacher of the multicultural house mosque, a native German and a student of Islamic studies, was also arrested and spent two weeks in jail. 

The mosque’s imam, an Egyptian, was deported last month back to Cairo. The ‘holy man,’ according to a German intelligence agency, was calling for jihad in his sermons and had described Israel and the United States as Satan and the true terrorists who threaten the Muslim world.

The 24 people arrested are also suspected of promoting the imam’s hate-filled views and of recruiting people for the ‘Holy War.’ They also raised money through crime for Islamist groups and activities abroad, and provided people with phony identity papers and false residency documents for both inside and outside of Germany. 

While authorities would not confirm whether congregation members had been recruited for suicide attacks in Iraq, suspected Islamists, some allegedly connected to al Qaeda, are seen attending the still functioning multicultural house mosque. One former mosque member, suspected of involvement in the Bali bombing in Indonesia, spent 10 months in jail in that country before settling in Germany with his wife and five children. Since then, Germany’s welfare system generously used taxpayers’ money to help relocate him to Berlin.

Neu-Ulm’s mayor, a Christian minister and a high official of Germany’s leftist, anti-American Green Party attended the multicultural house’s opening celebration, most likely believing, like their Dutch lib-left counterparts, that such displays of largesse and liberal tolerance are building a better world.

In reality, as in Holland where the government has admitted to multiculturalism’s dismal failure, their incredibly dangerous naiveté and irrational tolerance may, in the end, wind up destroying the society they have been so busy remaking since the 1960s to suit their ideological outlook.

Ironically, it is probably the Islamists who are the German lib-left’s biggest supporters, since they see in their naïve multicultural tolerance not just the chance to colonize and promote their own intolerance within Europe, but also the opportunity to bring the ‘Holy War’ to European soil.

A German newspaper, for example, carried an interview with a young Islamist from Berlin who had fought against American forces in Iraq and intended to go on to the Netherlands because it “is burning there, and holy warriors like me have to be at the focal point.” 

Another publication, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, maintains that al Qaeda is recruiting among Muslims in Europe “at a brisk pace,” having already found 25,000 to 30,000 in Germany willing to join its ranks. A further 45,000 to 55,000 have joined in England and France, and all have been organized into military-style units, according to the report.

And perhaps just as ominously, two Islamists arrested in Mainz and Bonn last January stand accused of trying to procure 48 grams of highly enriched uranium from a group in Luxembourg. One, an Iraqi, had fought in Afghanistan during the American invasion and had been sent personally by bin Laden to raise money and recruit for the jihad in Europe. Despite the fact his asylum application was rejected, the Iraqi was allowed to stay in Germany where he recruited his co-accused, a Palestinian medical student married to a German, as a suicide bomber for the Iraq war. While German security authorities do not know the intended purpose of the uranium, it is well known that al Qaeda is set on eventually producing a dirty bomb.

After the multicultural house revelations, one German intelligence official, who is also an Islamic scholar, said he believes it is too late to deal with the Islamist threat with only legal means. The German conservative party appears to share this opinion and has called for the immediate expulsion of 3,000 of the most dangerous Islamists living in Germany, the number alone indicating the seriousness of that country’s security situation. But with multiculturalism and all-embracing human rights, the reigning tenets of lib-left thinking, this thoughtless and criminal tolerance for the intolerable will continue to endanger innumerable innocent lives for some time yet.