Lecture about the Daesh-Genocide against Yazidis at Eurojust 2023, Den Haag

For many Germans, it is hard to understand the dangers of islamist groups such as Daesh, Hamas or the regime of Iran. Many of us are trying to downplay the dangers of Antisemitism and Dualism by claiming that the German Nazis had been a singular break in the upward history of human civilization. Therefore, many Left-leaning and Muslim Germans tend to emphasize that “Never again” has nothing to do with today.

But having witnessed the war against Daesh in Iraq firsthand, I strongly disagree. Like the German National Socialists (and their Arabian-Muslim ally Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini), today’s Antisemitists are out there to actually kill people and to destroy democracies. Daesh taught that they had to destroy Yazidism – and they committed a genocide on this religious minority. Hamas taught that they wanted to destroy Israel at any cost – and they used any cease fire to prepare for more violence and terror. And the Iranian regime is still persecuting Bahai while having erected a public doomsday clock in Tehran marking the “last years” of the “Zionist regime”, the republic of Israel. As a scholar in religious studies and as a German I strongly suggest not to use history to downplay the dangers of Antisemitism, but to face them. Never again is now!

Therefore, I gladly accepted the invitation by Eurojust (the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation) to speak at their 34th international Genocide Network meeting in Den Haag (Netherlands). Among a lot of other things, I would like to see criminal laws against slavery in every democracy to be able to better fight human trafficking in general and islamist ideologies that are attacking us.

You may find the text of my Eurojust-speech with two photographs from the Shingal region of Iraq here:

Desk View at the Eurojust-conference 2023 in Den Hag. Credit: Michael Blume

Although the topic of the conference was heavy and the mood has been sober, I was happy to meet Abid Shamdeen from Nadia’s Initiative, whom I admire as a friend and earnest scholar. His speech was very moving and I do believe that our future as humanity is dependent on inter-religious groups of Jews, Yazidis, Druzes, Christians, Muslims etc. joining forces with all people of good intentions to protect each other from the dangers of conspiracy myths and dualism (according to Rabbi Sacks).

A beam of light at the conference has been the reunion with Abid. Credit: State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg

Thanks to everyone spending some minutes to join the good and legal fight against Antisemitism und Dualism!