http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4590/germany-jihad

Supporters of the jihadist group "Islamic State" [IS] have clashed with Kurdish Yazidis in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany.
 
The violence-which comes amid threats by a German jihadist to blow up an American nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany-has counter-terrorism officials concerned that radical Muslims are deliberately exploiting the ethnic and religious tensions in the Middle East to stir up trouble on the streets of Europe.
 
Police say the Muslim-Yazidi clash was triggered after six Islamists stormed a restaurant in the eastern Westphalian town of Herford at around 4 pm on August 7. The Muslims were attempting forcibly to remove a poster inviting people to join a demonstration in support of the Yazidis in Iraq. Thousands of Yazidis, an ethnic Kurdish non-Muslim minority, were forced to flee their homes in northern Iraq in early August to escape advancing Islamic State fighters, who are forcing the Yazidis to convert to Islam or be killed...
 
German authorities have long warned of the threat posed by Salafism, a radically anti-Western ideology that seeks to impose Islamic sharia law in Germany and other parts of Europe.
 
Membership in Islamic extremist groups in Germany rose to 43,185 in 2013, up from 42,550 in 2012, according to German intelligence estimates. The number of Salafists in Germany rose to 5,500 in 2013, up from 4,500 in 2012, and 3,800 in 2011...
 
A German Interior Ministry spokesperson said that although "the threat is abstract, it may become real at any time." He said it proves that Germany "is still the focus of jihadist terrorism," especially from jihadists returning from Syria with combat experience and contacts to jihadist groups... "And this is frightening: Never before have the sympathizers of Islamic terror appeared so openly in Germany. These are the circles in which European fighters are recruited for jihad. This is also the milieu in which the Salafist ultra-radicals develop when they are back in Europe again. Therefore, police and secret service are required to monitor the scene closely...
"IS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Boko Haram-these four groups are the linchpins of the attempt to bomb an unstoppable modernity back into the Middle Ages. The means to this end are Sharia, hatred and glorification of a supposedly "holy" war-what madness!"...
 
"For far too long, Germany's political leaders, and especially the leaders of German Muslim organizations, have sat by and idly watched the proliferation of the Salafist-jihadist hatred culture, in the purported belief that it poses no danger. It is absolutely outrageous that local politicians have played down the risk of Islamism, while the capabilities of the security authorities are increasingly being overstretched by the need to deal with this threat.
"Muslim organizations should hang their heads in shame. Rather than bluntly stating that the barbarians in northern Iraq are 'not Muslims,' they whistle away to say that Islam is 'only peace.' In the future, this kind of obfuscation will no longer suffice, especially if German Muslims, who are subject to the German legal system, wish to avoid being held accountable for the killings in the name of Islam.
 
"The Islamic State under its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may not last very long; but the propaganda from his jihad certainly will survive him. This is because the seeds of hatred that 'Caliph' Baghdadi has sown are far more toxic than those of Osama Bin Laden. For disaffected youth, the Islamic State exerts great appeal, and not only in Herford."
 
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.