Saliha and Reyhana stop at a kebab shop on the Bornheimer Strasse in the Bad Godesberg. "Can we pray here?" Saliha asks.
"Sure, okay," says an employee.
The two women walk into the shop and unroll a makeshift prayer rug on the floor. The employee continues putting away chairs. It's 9 p.m., and he wants to close. Saliha uses the compass on her iPhone to determine the direction of Mecca.
It points in the direction behind the kebab shop, where the ICE high-speed trains pass through Bonn. The two women kneel down on the floor to pray. They are wearing gloves and the niqab, a veil with narrow slits for the eyes. Cars pass by in the darkness outside. For the people out there, these women are the brides of terrorists.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, is paying close attention to the men in their Sunni fundamentalist movement, who have come to be known as Salafists, and who they view as a threat to peace and stability in Germany. Salafists aim to emulate the Prophet Muhammad in how they live their lives. They live in a world governed by the laws of Allah, not the rules of Western society. » | Özlem Gezer and Barbara Hardinghaus | Thursday, September 27, 2012
