A newly released study by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), nearly 50 percent of Muslims under the age of 40 in Germany hold “Islamist” views, with these Muslims expressing an attraction to Islamism, a preference for Sharia law over the German Basic Law, and harboring anti-Semitic prejudices.
The findings, described as “explosive in nature,” were featured in the latest edition of the “Motra Monitor.” The study reports that as of 2025, Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 (45.1 percent) hold “latent or manifestly Islamist attitudes.“
Some German politicians have already voiced their views on the study’s release. Wolfgang Kubicki, a prominent politician in the Free Democrats (FDP) and former MP, stated on X: “This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion. The policy of naively looking away has favored this development. The naivety must stop.”
He further stated that “anyone who demands a caliphate is an enemy of democracy. Enemies of democracy without German citizenship must leave the country. Neighborhoods where ghettoization provides fertile ground for radicalization must be restructured. Islamic associations without a clear demarcation from extremists must not be interlocutors for politics. Germany must act secular and self-confident.”
He further called for an end to headscarves in schools and other state institutions “not to harass or suspect the wearers, but to make it clear that the only binding source of our values is the Basic Law.”
Bei dieser Studie müssen alle Alarmglocken angehen. Das ist eine gesellschaftliche Zeitbombe. Wir dürfen nicht nur über Migration reden, sondern auch über Integration und Religion. Die Politik des naiven Wegsehens hat diese Entwicklung begünstigt. Die Naivität muss aufhören.
Wer… pic.twitter.com/h7rvl4GjbQ— Wolfgang Kubicki (@KubickiWo) March 12, 2026
Beyond rising crime rates, terrorism offenses, and demographic change, the soaring numbers of Muslims in Europe also raise fundamental questions about worldview and society.
The “Motra monitor,” a monitoring system tracking radicalization, spans 598 pages. It is published by the BKA and receives funding from several entities, including the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Family Affairs. While the report addresses various forms of extremism, including right-wing movements, it places a significant focus on Islamist extremism.
Evidence of these tensions surfaced in the summer of 2025 when “young Muslims and radical left-wing Germans occupied the Gutenberg Memorial in Frankfurt to demonstrate against Israel, some of them willing to use violence.“
The study’s researchers highlight a concerning core demographic, noting that “manifest Islamist attitudes are most prevalent among Muslims under 40, at 11.5 percent.“
In this context, “manifesto“ indicates that a person’s radicalization toward Islamism is already clearly evident and pronounced.
Further complicating the social landscape is a much larger group identified by the authors as having “latently Islamism-savvy attitudes.” This segment has seen a massive increase since 2021. The research group writes that “this amounts to 33.6 percent for those under 40 in 2025.“
While “latent” suggests these Islamist attitudes are present, the radicalization has not yet become openly visible. Combined, these two groups account for “45.1 percent“ of all under-40 Muslims in Germany.
Renowned Islamism researcher Prof. Susanne Schröter, who conducted most of her research into Islamism at the Institute of Ethnology at Goethe University Frankfurt and served as the director of the Frankfurt Research Center for Global Islam until 2025, said to Bild: “Islamism-savvy means that Muslims consider Islamist interpretations of Islam to be correct, are attracted to Islamist organizations close to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafism, prefer Sharia to the Basic Law, and usually also have anti-Semitic prejudices.”
The BKA study suggests that the radicalization of young Muslims accelerated significantly following the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
Germany is far from the only country seeing the rise of Islamism within the populace. A sobering study from the prestigious polling service Ifop from last year shows that hardline views are growing amongst Muslims in France, including an emphasis on the laws of Islam being placed over those of the state, particularly among young Muslims. At the same time, Christianity is collapsing in France.
Among Muslims in general, 44 percent polled say they “respect the rules of Islam” as being more important “than respect for French laws.” For those aged 15-24, 57 percent believe the rules of Islam are more important than “respect for French laws.”
Some 38 percent of French Muslims approve of all or part of Islamist positions, doubling the figure of 19 percent in 1998, underlines Ifop.
Correspondingly, the share of Muslims who want Islam to modernize has fallen from 48 percent in 1998 to 21 percent today. When Ifop requested respondents to choose between the Civil Code and Sharia law on “an important subject in your family, such as ritual slaughter, marriage or inheritance,” 49 percent of Muslims chose to respect French laws, down from 62 percent in 1995. The consumption of alcohol among Muslim men has also fallen sharply, from 46 percent in 1989 to only 26 percent today.
Today, 33 percent of Muslims residing in France — French citizens or foreign nationals — feel sympathy for one of the Islamist movements, a figure that rises to 42 percent among young people. Within this population, 3 percent have sympathy for the most radical and bloody ideology, jihadism.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 03/13/2026 – 06:30
