{"id":32095,"date":"2017-01-26T01:44:12","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/anis-ben-hatira-darmstadt-release-player-over\/"},"modified":"2017-01-26T01:44:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:44:00","slug":"anis-ben-hatira-darmstadt-release-player-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/anis-ben-hatira-darmstadt-release-player-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Anis Ben-Hatira: Darmstadt release player over Islamic charity link"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Bundesliga club Darmstadt have released Tunisian midfielder Anis Ben-Hatira by mutual consent following criticism of his ties with an Islamic charity.}<\/p>\n<p>Ansaar International has been criticised in Germany with media reports alleging it was linked to the controversial Islamic Salafist sect.<\/p>\n<p>Salafism is an ultra-conservative branch of Islam.<\/p>\n<p>German authorities say &#8220;almost all&#8221; terror networks in the country have evolved out of the movement.<\/p>\n<p>However, there is an important distinction to be made between the vast majority of its followers, whose aim is simply to bring Muslims back to an earlier interpretation of their religion.<\/p>\n<p>German politicians have also spoken against Ansaar International.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Beuth, interior minister of the state of Hessen, where Darmstadt is located, said on Tuesday: &#8220;You cannot let a professional footballer like Ben-Hatira carry on when he&#8217;s in the vicinity of extremist organisations that are being observed by [Germany&#8217;s domestic security agency] the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Darmstadt&#8217;s president said the club felt Ben-Hatira&#8217;s involvement with the organisation was &#8220;wrong&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Further co-operation makes no sense,&#8221; Rudiger Fritsch added. &#8220;We wish Mr Ben-Hatira, who has always behaved impeccably, every success in his future sporting career.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, Darmstadt fans unfurled a banner calling on Ben-Hatira to distance himself from Ansaar International.<\/p>\n<p>The Berlin-born player responded the next day on Facebook, describing the fans&#8217; actions as a &#8220;smear campaign&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Ben-Hatira defended his work with Ansaar, who have projects in Syria, Somalia, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anyone who looks at my CV will quickly see that I am socially involved and fight for equal treatment between people of different skin colour, ethnicity or faith,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;Are you not ashamed? Do you really think I&#8217;ll let myself be intimidated by that?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the real scandal is that there is now an attempt to sabotage my sports career in Germany.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17816 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_93810506_anis_ben-hatira_getty2.jpg\" alt=\"Ben-Hatira has made 11 appearances and scored once since joining from Eintracht Frankfurt in August\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Bundesliga club Darmstadt have released Tunisian midfielder Anis Ben-Hatira by mutual consent following criticism of his ties with an Islamic charity.} Ansaar International has been criticised in Germany with media reports alleging it was linked to the controversial Islamic Salafist sect. Salafism is an ultra-conservative branch of Islam. German authorities say &#8220;almost all&#8221; terror networks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32095"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32095"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}