Islamic fundamentalists who patrol the streets of Germany acting as “Sharia police” and scolding people not to drink, gamble or listen to music aren’t doing anything illegal, a court ruled. The ultra-conservative Muslim group around the German Salafist convert Sven Lau sparked public outrage with their vigilante patrols in the western city of Wuppertal in 2014, but prosecutors have struggled to build a case against them. The city’s district court ruled that the seven accused members of the group did not breach a ban on political uniforms when they approached people while wearing orange vests bearing the words “Sharia Police”. Judges said there could only be a violation of the law – originally aimed against street movements such as the early Nazi party – if the uniforms were “suggestively militant or intimidating”, a court spokesman said. The court also noted that police in Wuppertal did not find anything criminal about the men wearing the vests, which were not seized by officers at the time. In a debate on RT, Maximilian Krah of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party said that the verdict showed that Germany’s courts are unprepared for the culture clash with its Muslim minority. Read more

The men, all aged between 25 and 34, sparked anger by patrolling the streets of Wuppertal in 2014, telling nightclub goers to refrain from drinking alcohol and listening to music, and arcade customers not to play games for money, so as not to contradict the strict Muslim religious code of conduct known as Sharia law. Sven Lau is being tried for allegedly supporting the terror group "Jamwa" in Syria

Lau is a controversial Islamist preacher and is currently on trial for backing a terror group fighting in Syria. So-called “sharia patrols” by sometimes violent radical young Salafists have also been seen in other European cities such as London, Copenhagen and Hamburg.
A German court acquits seven Islamists who formed a "Sharia police force" in the city of Wuppertal in 2014 after determining that they were not violating a law against "intimidating or militant uniforms".