German Officials Seek Ban Of Scientology

(AP)  Germany's interior minister called the Church of Scientology "an unconstitutional organization" and said the nation's domestic intelligence agency would move to ban the group, a report said Sunday.

Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's remarks followed a unanimous decision Friday by interior ministers from Germany's 16 states to seek a ban on Scientology, accused of threatening "the peaceful democratic order" of the country.

"Scientology is an unconstitutional organization," Schaeuble was quoted as saying by the Bild am Sonntag weekly, which featured a picture of Scientology's most prominent member - Tom Cruise - on the front page with the headline "How dangerous is the Cruise cult?"

Schaeuble accused the organization of restricting "essential basic and human rights like the dignity of man or the right to equal treatment," and said federal and state intelligence agencies would begin collecting evidence to seek a ban on the group.

Sabine Weber, president of the Church of Scientology in Berlin, called Schaeuble's remarks "unrealistic" and "absurd."

She said the interior minister based his evaluation "on a few sentences out of 500,000 pages of Scientological literature." She did not give specific examples.

"I can also find hundreds of quotes in the Bible that are totalitarian but that doesn't mean I will demand the ban of Christianity," she said.

"From my point of view, it is not Scientology that violates the constitution but the interior ministers themselves because by trying to ban our organization, they are violating our constitutional rights," Weber said.

Scientologists have long battled to end the government surveillance, calling it an abuse of their right to freedom of religion. The U.S. State Department regularly criticizes Germany in its annual Human Rights Report for the practice.

Germany's state interior ministers gave no specific examples for their decision Friday, but the most recent annual report on extremism compiled by their agencies criticized the Church of Scientology for disregarding human rights.

Scientology "seeks to limit or rescind basic and human rights, such as the right to develop one's personality and the right to be treated equally," the report said.

The magazine Spiegel on Saturday quoted unnamed domestic intelligence sources as saying a ban seemed unlkely.

"I doubt that one will find enough proof to be able to ban Scientology," Sebastian Edathy, head of the interior committee of the German parliament, told the daily Tagesspiegel.

The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

It first set up in Germany in 1970, and officials estimate it has some 6,000 members in the country.

By Kirsten Grieshaber

[denn034]

Shame on Germany for this assault on religious freedom. David Miscavige, the Scientology leader, has led Scientology towards reform and putting it''s unsavory past behind it and things like this don''t help matters much. Leave Scientology alone!

[keithle1]

"I''d like to thank the man upstairs. L. Ron Hubbard."

[nggr]

www.xenu.net

[grazinggoat]

I was browsing through a Scientology book in the bookstore a few years back out of curiosity, it looked interesting, in that brief encounter it seemed like Scientology was treating a human like a kind of bio-computer that could be programmed with its mental programming techniques and philosophy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by tbweb at 03:57 AM : Dec 10, 2007

- Odds and chance science is a complete and whole law/science that is on the verge of being dicovered by Humans. But it is already mastered by the Creator of this Law/Science. Humans are another Success-trial-Failure process which is occuring despite us, and having us Humans as a matrix for better Creation, parallelly to other lines of slow Evolutionary process. Time being an artifical artefact is just another way of a breaking away like the rest areas, from the main highway of existence. The Creator must feel ashamed when he sees what Humans (Fairytaledly Created at his image) are doing at each others.

[grazinggoat]

that there was a Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and nasty fruit tree. Both stories are just as ridiculous.
Posted by SgtRDS

-But believing that all life sprung from absolutely nothing "millions of years ago" from a single-celled organism is completely logical right?

Believing you came from an ape is logical right :)?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by singinrick at 01:50 AM : Dec 10, 2007

-What else to expect from such a sick idjiott?

[b-easy63]

Believing that mankind evolved from prions, viruses, and single celled animals is a leap in science; a place where premises are proven with evidence. No faith.

But don''t leave out the premise for that science which has NO basis in evidence: That the prions, viruses and single cells exist because one day, some matter in the universe happened to collide in a big bang--and that is how we thinking humans and animals in our complexity got here. just a happy accident. Oh yeah and those assertions about the sun and temperature or the age of it--we don''t know, none of our drones have reached the sun or will reach it in our life time. Just a theory (which is another way of saying educated best guess) which may or may not be debunked in the future--like a lot of our Scientific "facts" are. LMAO

[b-easy63]

Germany. At IT again. On that slippery slope. First they ban a belief, next ''subversive political org. that threaten democracy'', after that, which group gets full persecution? Muslims? They may not be the Jews, but they are a semetic people and easier to smart with those distinctive eyes and skin color...or shall they go for the blacks or the ever popular Romany first?

Our latest tactics gave them the excuse to go back to their WWII halcyon days....after all, if the great USA tortures and targets racial groups for persecution--why can''t they?

[johngoodnews]

Scientology is a cult cult.

[sevenveils]

believing that mankind was spawned from Adam and Eve, who was made from a rib of Adam is a leap in faith. Who started this story anyways? This sounds like a bedtime story. At any rate its just a story. Just like the many recorded stories of a boss god who knocks up a mortal woman and the worlds savior is born with god like properties.

Believing that mankind evolved from prions, viruses, and single celled animals is a leap in science; a place where premises are proven with evidence. No faith.

Believing that mankind evolved from billions of paralyzed bodies stacked near volcanoes and bombed with hydrogen bombs is science fiction gone wrong.

May truth and science overcome fear and superstition.

[searingtruth]

"We need not fear the beliefs of others, only their imposition upon us."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com