It is a country that needs to get its priorities straight - and soon.

Germany’s leftists, never the biggest fans of America, are currently up in arms about a recent agreement between their country the United States that would benefit both nations in the War on Terror.

Signed March 11, the accord involves a data-sharing plan concerning people suspected of involvement in terrorist and/or criminal activities. Under the agreement, personal information, such as DNA samples, fingerprints, political views, ethnic or racial origin, and even a person’s sexual orientation will now be made available to intelligence services in both countries. 

Designed as part of a larger project to catch terrorist/criminal evil-doers when they cross international borders, US Secretary for Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said in Berlin at the time of the deal’s signing: “We are fighting a networked, international enemy therefore we have to respond with a global network of our own.”

But while such a security proposal, if not long overdue, would at least be viewed as a common sense measure to most rational-minded people, since it is meant to protect and save lives, leftist German union leaders and politicians are condemning the deal as an attack on human rights and Germany’s privacy laws.

According to a story in the magazine, Der Spiegel, one German union leader called it “the height of impertinence” that personal data about union members and German citizens can now be passed on to the United States. A liberal German politician, on the other hand, gave as a reason for opposing the agreement her inability to understand what sexual orientation had to do with terrorism (Such lib/left politicians always support gay rights except when gays are persecuted by the very Islamists this accord is designed to catch. Then, it’s excused as a multicultural trait).

These phoney humanitarian protests, however, are in reality nothing more than a cheap camouflage used to cover the real reason for the German left’s opposition to the deal, namely, its deep-rooted anti-Americanism.  

It’s bad enough that such anti-accord Germans seem to have forgotten 9/11, a good part of which was planned in their country. Many of the Islamic terrorists who participated in the murder of hundreds of people that tragic day, including their leader, Mohamed Atta, belonged to what later came to be called the “Hamburg cell.” And it is just as bad the German left shows no sign of wanting to atone for this blunder by helping America prevent such future, devastating attacks. But what is perhaps worse is that German leftists do not appear interested even in defending themselves against the jihadist danger.

Only last week, for example, 130 German security officials staged country-wide raids on different Islamic establishments and apartments to break up an organization that was radicalising young Moslems and German converts to prepare them for jihad both inside and outside of Germany. While this network was not plotting terrorist attacks itself, it was spreading the poison of radical Islam that would lead to this end.

Sixteen buildings, including mosques and prayer rooms, were searched in different German cities and nine men between the ages of 25 and 47, all German citizens, were arrested, three of them German converts to Islam. According to news reports, the arrestees will be charged with forming a terrorist organization and with inciting hatred, in this case against Jews and ‘infidels’. Many documents and video tapes were also confiscated.

But what is noteworthy in this case on a continent where discoveries of Islamist networks and arrests of terrorists occur almost weekly is that the men taken into custody are all former members of the Multicultural House mosque in the southern German city of Neu-Ulm that German security officials closed down in 2005.

As reported in FrontPageMagazine at the time, the Multicultural House mosque was one of the most important centers of radical Islamic activity in Germany. Its network spanned the country. Among other illegal activities, the 24 people arrested in the 2005 country-wide raid, in which 700 security officials took part, were known to have recruited people for ‘Holy War’ and of raising money for that obscene purpose, sometimes by criminal means.

The mosque’s membership reflected its hate-filled mission. One member, a native of Egypt, was suspected of participating in the Bali terrorist bombing plot of 2002 in Indonesia that killed 202 people. The mosque’s former imam, also an Egyptian, had been deported back to his homeland for calling for jihad in his sermons and describing the United States and Israel as Satan. His replacement, a German convert, spent two weeks in jail after the raid.

The mosque member suspected of participation in the Bali bombing was arrested in the raid last week. Prior to Bali, he had been in Bosnia where he had filmed the execution of a captured Serb at a supposed Koran reading meeting, capturing how those present played with the corpse afterwards. His ex-wife, a German convert who witnessed the unfortunate Serb’s death and the barbaric indignities inflicted on his dead body, related this horrific incident in an interview with the German newspaper, Die Welt.

She also recounted how her husband’s brutality towards her increased the more religiously radical he became. Her sadistic spouse also took a second wife when she couldn’t have babies, eventually divorcing his non-progeny producing German wife.

But the most famous German converts to have been associated with the radical Neu-Ulm mosque were the ones arrested last year with CIA help. Known as the ‘Saurland cell’, its members, two of them converts, were planning to bomb American military installations and places where there might be American citizens, such as bars and schools.

When they occurred last summer, President Bush was immediately informed of the terrorists’ arrests, which were publicised worldwide. In breaking up the plot, Secretary Chertoff said the co-operation between the American and German intelligence services had never been closer, a fact that is lost on German leftists opposing the March accord.

However, the question remains regarding how so many members of the Multicultural House mosque, most known already to terrorism investigators, were able to regroup so easily and carry on their dangerous activities for almost another three years?

The answer most likely has to do with the fact that this crucial European country’s laws are too weak regarding Islamist terrorism. One German intelligence official, who is also an Islamic scholar, confirmed this after the 2005 raid on the Neu-Ulm Multicultural House mosque when he said Germany could no longer deal with the Islamist threat by the current legal means.

According to one German newspaper, the Federal Crime Office (Germany’s FBI), has a list of 890 Islamists living in Germany who are prepared to use violence. Two hundred are so dangerous they are kept under constant observation, while German intelligence services are also monitoring 30 Muslim prayer houses.  

All of which, besides indicating the weakness of Germany’s anti-terrorist laws, demonstrate the size and scope of the Islamist threat as well as the contempt in which the Islamists hold Germany’s legal system.

Even the Bali bombing suspect, regarded as a key Islamist who is suspected of radicalising the German converts arrested in last summer’s anti-American bombing plot, showed his contempt for Germany, her values and her legal system when he appeared in court last year to have his son named ‘jihad’ (Germany has a law that forbids parents giving a name to a child that may be detrimental to its future).  

Britain’s Home Secretary Jaqui Smith indicated the situation is similar in her country. Smith said British security forces are now being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Islamist danger and will not be able to cope within a year.

The British Home Secretary backed up this frightening warning with examples, saying anti-terror officials seized and analysed only one computer in 2001 but confiscated 400 last year along with 8,000 computer discs. As well, 57 people have been convicted in Great Britain on terrorism charges since the beginning of 2007.

“There are 2,000 individuals being who are being monitored. There are 200 networks involved and 30 active plots,” she said.

But unlike Germany, where the left in the name of ‘human rights’ and a barely concealed anti-Americanism stands in the way of any stiffening of legal system to deal with the Islamist danger, Smith wants British laws changed to help police in their anti-terrorism efforts.  

Due to the obvious danger they are facing, Germans should simply ignore the left’s tiresome anti-Americanism and bleating about human rights where Islamic extremism is concerned. Germany must get its priorities straight in order to protect its citizens, who have a right to that protection, and follow America’s and Britain’s lead in devising very tough anti-terrorism laws to defeat and deport its Islamist enemies. The West is at war with militant Islam, and unfortunately in wartime sacrifices in the certain fields, like human rights, have to be made. After all, Islamist bombs do not care about the sexual orientation and union membership of the people they kill.