Daily Inspiration Quote by Otto Schily

Schily’s sentence is engineered as both diagnosis and assignment of responsibility. “This fanaticism” is deliberately unspecific: it names a cause without naming perpetrators, a move that lets him condemn extremist ideology while keeping diplomatic room to avoid sounding like he’s indicting Islam as a whole. Then he snaps the frame into place with “precisely why,” a bureaucrat’s rhetorical hammer that signals: we’ve moved from description to prescription, and the policy conclusion is non-negotiable.

The subtext is harder-edged. By insisting that “Muslims must” act “in their mosques,” Schily shifts the center of gravity away from the state’s traditional tools (policing, intelligence, prosecution) toward community self-regulation. That can read as empowerment, but it also functions as a subtle outsourcing of counterterrorism labor to a religious minority, with an implied suspicion that the mosque is a primary site of radicalization. Even the phrase “hate sermons” is doing double duty: it names something morally obvious to condemn, while also quietly expanding the category of what might count as dangerous speech.

Context matters: Schily, as Germany’s interior minister in the post-9/11 era, spoke from inside a European security climate rattled by homegrown jihadist networks, immigration debates, and anxieties about integration. The line isn’t just about stopping violence; it’s about policing the boundary between acceptable religion and unacceptable politics. Its effectiveness comes from that tension: it offers inclusion (“Muslims” as partners) while simultaneously putting Muslims under a brighter, more conditional spotlight than everyone else.