International Courage Award for Islamophobia Victims

A leading German Muslim group announced on July 1 presenting its “International Courage Award” to two victims of Islamophobic attacks in the country This stance is meant to highlight the growing xenophobic and Islamophobic atmosphere in Germany, Anadolu Agency reported. “The prize was aimed to highlight the sacrifices and pain of the victims of racism. There was a need to fight racism and Islamophobia in a stronger way,” President of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek said.
One of the two Muslim victims, Mevlude Genc, lost five of her relatives in an Islamophobic attack in Solingen, Germany 26 years ago. On May 29, 1993, four Islamophobic terrorists aged 16-23 set ablaze the house of Genc’s Muslim Turkish family, killing five people and injuring 14 others. The other Muslim victim who received the award is Farid Ahmed who lost his wife at the recent Christchurch Massacre in New Zealand.
The International Courage Award is named after Marwa el-Sherbini; an Egyptian Muslim scientist who was stabbed in an Islamophobic attack during a court hearing in Dresden, Germany in 2009. Pregnant Sherbini, 31, was killed inside a German court in front of her three-year-old son and husband. Alex Wiensan, a German Islamophobic terrorist from Russia stabbed her after she testified in a criminal case for verbal abuse. The court admitted that the initial confrontation by the perpetrator against the Muslim pharmacy researcher had happened because she wore a hijab.
The first documented contact between Islam and Germany came during the 18th century as part of the relations between Germany and the Ottoman Caliphate when 20 Muslim soldiers served under Frederick William I of Prussia. In 1745, Frederick II of Prussia established a unit of Muslims in the Prussian army called the ‘Muslim Riders’ and consisting mainly of Bosniaks, Albanians, and Tatars. In 1760 an exclusive Bosniak corps was established with about 1,000 men. In 1798, the first Muslim cemetery was established in Berlin.
Owing to labour migration in the 1960s, Islam has grown in Germany to become a visible religion. According to 2015 estimates by the Federal Office for Migration and refugees, there were 4.7 million Muslims in Germany or 5.7% of the population. Of these, 1.9 million are German citizens (2.4%). Moreover, according to the German statistical office, 9.1% of all newborns in Germany had Muslim parents in 2005.
(Extracted from aboutislam.net/)