A Real Madrid star is now understood to have taken legal action after shock claims that he has links with a terrorist group.
The German Football Association (DFB) has taken the side of centre-back Antonio Rudiger after he was slammed by former BILD editor Julian Reichelt for showing an "Islamist" symbol on social media recently.
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Earlier this month, the 31-year-old uploaded a picture to Instagram in which he can be seen pointing his index finger to the sky while wearing a white robe and sitting on a prayer mat.
The defender made the post as a welcome to Ramadan, a month in which Muslims observe fasting.
"Ramadan Mubarak to all Muslims around the world. May the Almighty accept our fasting and prayers," he wrote in the caption of the picture.
Reichelt, however, associated the position of his index finger with a terrorist organisation, taking to X to express his views.
"For everyone who doesn't want to recognize Antonio Rüdiger's Islamist greeting as an Islamist greeting: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls this gesture the 'IS finger' and sees the index finger as a clear sign of Islamism," he wrote at the time, per the Daily Mail.
The Los Blancos star, who is said to felt severely insulted by the former editor's comments, has now reportedly submitted a criminal complaint against Reichelt, while the DFB is believed to have reported the case to the Berlin public prosecutor's office too.
The initial post on X by Reichelt is believed to have been reported as hate speech by Rudiger, while the Germany defender's lawyers have also sent Reichelt a letter regarding his statements about their client.
Reichelt then wrote in response: "This gesture has been completely co-opted by terrorists over the last two decades. It has undisputedly become the greeting of ISIS and Islamist murderers all over the world, of people who also murdered in Berlin and bring disaster and immeasurable suffering to the world.
"Anyone who poses like this in public is consciously showing the greeting of fanatics and not an innocent, spiritual gesture. It is a normalisation of a terrible ideology that has already taken over far too much space in this country.
"Also and especially because it's about a popular national player, you shouldn't allow yourself to be intimidated. It is important to point out that this political ideology goes against everything that our values are.
"The raised index finger of Islamism, with which terrorists around the world celebrate their murders, does not belong to Germany. I will never let anyone stop me from saying that."
Soeben habe ich aus den Medien erfahren, dass Antonio Rüdiger und der DFB mich angezeigt haben, weil ich hier darauf aufmerksam gemacht habe, dass Rüdiger auf einem Instagram-Post den Gruß der Islamisten zeigt. Diese Geste ist in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten von Terroristen… pic.twitter.com/6fX1GYN4VR
— Julian Reichelt (@jreichelt) March 25, 2024
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