For what the Palestinian Hamas did in Israel – the insidious murder of more than 1,200 people – you could, if you wanted, immediately find the right word: terror.
The war that arose from this terror and in which, according to the Ministry of Health, 3,000 people were killed in Gaza by Israeli counterattacks by Tuesday evening, has since then also been commented on in the sports public. When the first athletes positioned themselves in favor of Palestine, questions arose that the clubs and associations of these athletes always ask themselves in such situations: How do they evaluate these words? And what words do you find yourself? This is significantly more complex. You have to know the details case by case. And how complex these details and what follows or should follow from them usually are can now be seen in the case of FC Bayern Munich and its Moroccan football player Noussair Mazraoui.
Mazraoui has 2.3 million followers
On Saturday and Sunday, Mazraoui, 25 years old, Muslim, who has been playing for FC Bayern since the summer of 2022, posted several pro-Palestinian posts or posts that could be interpreted as such in his Instagram stories with his 2.3 million followers Shared with followers. It started when he spread the post from the account “@islam_sobhi.1”, which reproduces in several images a passage from the Koran (Sura 14, verse 42) that can be translated as follows: “And do not mean that Allah be heedless of what the unjust do. He just puts them aside until a day when the gaze becomes fixed.” And that ended with him spreading the post from the account “quran_reminderrrr”, which consists of an image and a video in which a voice says: ” God, help our oppressed brothers in Palestine to achieve victory. May God give mercy to the dead, may God heal their wounded.” Mazraoui himself wrote: “Ameen”.
On Sunday afternoon, the German Press Agency (dpa) broadcast this as a report – with the headline: “Bayern professional Mazraoui spreads pro-Palestine video”. This led to a debate in Germany that reached its populist climax when CDU member of the Bundestag Johannes Steiniger wrote on his don’t leave it like that. Dear @FCBayern: please throw him out immediately. In addition, all state options should be used to expel him from Germany.”
Noussair Mazraoui : Bild: Witters
Now to the details. Apart from the fact that Mazraoui also has a Dutch passport, which in turn would have an impact on the possibility of deportation: the basic condition for this would be that he had supported a terrorist organization or approved terrorist acts. Does he have that? Even in the “Bild” newspaper, in which Mazraoui is described as a “terror supporter” in a comment, a specialist lawyer for migration law can come to the conclusion that “a single post is probably not enough.” And so one must at least ask whether in this case both Mazraoui’s Instagram stories and the “Bild” comment are covered by the same fundamental right: freedom of expression.
