Young men in baggy track suits linger around a gas station in Bonn. Rain drizzles. This is the meeting point for my interview with two Salafist preachers. A minute past 5 o'clock in the evening, a lone man arrives to pick me up.
"Yeah, we're radical," the man smiles. After a dramatic pause, the clean shaven 20-year-old adds: "radically on time." His smile turns into a grin. He does not shake my hand. "You have to understand," the man says. In western countries, not shaking someone's hand is considered an affront. But this man's strict interpretation of the Koran forbids him from offering me - a woman - his hand to shake.
The man explains that he will film the conversation with the preacher. "It's safer for you, and it's safer for us. But you probably don't want to be on camera at all, right?" The two preachers, who would like very much to be on camera, sit in a small café across from the gas station. We walk over. Turkish music plays from a loudspeaker. The older one, Ibrahim Abu Nagie, stirs his coffee while the younger of the two, Abu Dujana, plays with his white iPhone.
They offer me a friendly greeting and wave a waitress over: "Sister, another coffee, please." » | Naomi Conrad / slk | DW.DE | Wednesday, January 16, 2013
