BERLIN, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Minors who are being raised in radical Islamist families pose a "significant security threat" to the public in Germany, warns an analysis by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) cited by the Funke media group on Monday.
According to the BfV report, German authorities had encountered signs of a "faster, earlier and more likely radicalization of minors and young adults" whose parents already subscribed to a jihadist ideology.
Earlier, BfV president Hans-Georg Maasen had warned about risks stemming from women and children, who were sent back to Germany from the so-called Islamic State as the terror militia lost ground to Syrian and Iraqi government forces.
"Children are being raised with an extremist worldview from birth which legitimizes violence against others and degrades everyone who is not a member of the same group", the official analysis read. A resulting threat to society did not just emanate from returnees from the Islamic State but also from minors who had spent their entire lives within German territory.
The BfV estimates that the number of Islamist families in Germany is in the low hundreds. Nevertheless, the continuous jihadist socialisation of several hundred children in this relatively small group of households was still seen as a "serious concern" and "challenge" by the government agency.
Speaking to the Funke media group on Monday, Patrick Sensburg, security spokesperson for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called for changes to German law in order for authorities to be able to intervene quickly in cases of radicalized children. The BfV is currently banned from monitoring minors under the age of 14 after having achieved a lowering of the age limit from 18 previously.
"This is not about criminalizing individuals below the age of 14 but protecting our country against significant dangers such as Islamist terrorism", Sensburg said. Similarly, Stephan Mayer (CSU), secretary of state in the federal interior ministry, argued on Monday that widening the scope of BfV investigations was part of the duty of care which the German government had to affect children.
So far, Bavaria is the only state in Germany which has passed legislation to lower the age limit for observation by the BfV further from 16 to 14. Herbert Reul (CDU), interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, told press in reaction to the BfV analysis that his state was weighing whether to follow suit before any nation-wide legislation was passed.
Reul highlighted that children who were raised radicalized at home often had little inhibition to carry out violent acts. "This is why authorities need instruments to observe traumatized and potentially-violent returnees below the age of 14 as well", the CDU politician said.
