A photo sparked a scandal. A gesture was the driving force behind the accusations and cross complaints. Antonio Rüdigerthe central marker of Real Madridpublished an image of himself on the social network Instagram in which he is seen making a gesture with his finger that the German journalist Julian Reichelt links to the greeting of the terrorist group ISIS. This situation led to the German footballer denouncing the journalist for making his own interpretation of the gesture, a demand that was also joined by the German Football Federation (DFB).
Rüdiger filed a complaint with a Berlin prosecutor’s office for “insult, slander, inflammatory insult and sedition”. The Real Madrid defender, dressed in white and pointing upward with the index finger of his right hand, greeted the beginning of Ramadan like this and in his post he was accompanied by a phrase: “May the Almighty accept our fasting and our prayers”. The DFB (German Football Federation) also filed a complaint and reported Reichelt’s tweet to the prosecutor’s office as “hate speech.”
The reaction to this post by Rüdiger is what sparked the scandal, because it was the journalist Reichelt who responded on his social networks in this way: “For all those who do not want to recognize Antonio Rüdiger’s Islamist salute as an Islamist greeting: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls this gesture ‘the ISIS finger’ and sees in the index finger a clear sign of Islamism”.
The “ISIS finger” is the gesture used by Islamic State militants as a symbol of their cause. It is a symbol of power and victory. According to Reichelt, the ISIS finger gesture was adopted by terrorists over the past two decades. It has become indisputably the greeting of ISIS and “de Islamist murderers around the world, of people who also murdered in Berlin and bring disaster and immeasurable suffering to the world”.
Julian Reichelt, far from retracting, redoubled his accusation against Rüdiger with a publication on his social networks: “I just found out from the media that Antonio Rüdiger and the DFB denounced me because in an Instagram publication I pointed out that Rüdiger showed the greeting of the Islamists. This gesture has been completely co-opted by terrorists over the last two decades. It has become indisputably the greeting of ISIS. Anyone who shows this greeting as an adult and who has liked Islamist posts at least once knows this very well.”
He continued: “The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution and its state offices see the raised finger as a sign of Islamist radicalization. The Minister of the Interior describes the gesture as “unacceptable.” Whoever poses like this in public consciously shows a fanatical greeting and not an innocent and spiritual gesture.. It is a normalization of a terrible ideology that has already taken up too much space in this country. Furthermore, and especially because this is a popular national player, you should not be intimidated. It is important to note that this political ideology goes against everything our values are. What Antonio Rüdiger and the DFB use here are methods of intimidation. No one should dare to express criticism anymore when Islamism and its symbols advance. You should never subject yourself to it.. The raised index finger of Islam, with which terrorists around the world celebrate their murders, does not belong to Germany. “I will never let anyone stop me from saying that.”