New Year’s Eve garbage: “If I leave, who will clean here?”

In the late morning of New Year’s Day 2026, around 30 men and boys stand in the middle of Hermannsplatz in Berlin-Neukölln and shout “Allahu Akbar”, “God is great”. Behind the group there are shovels and brooms, in a wheelbarrow there are wooden tongs like the ones you use at barbecues, and next to them there are some huge, orange garbage bags filled to the brim with the remains of firecrackers. Someone is taking a group photo, the men and boys are holding two large banners in front of them; “Love for all, hate for none,” is written on one of them, “Cleanliness is half of faith” on the other. Almost all men wear orange warning vests from the Berlin city cleaning service with the words “Kehrenbürger” written on the back.

Every year on January 1st, the Muslim reform community Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat has been organizing a New Year’s cleaning in German city centers to clear away the remains of firecrackers and rockets from New Year’s Eve for more than thirty years. According to the association, more than ten thousand people in more than 240 cities have taken part in the campaign in recent years. And although the New Year’s cleaning has always had at least a socio-political level, after a year in which the AfD became the second strongest force in the federal election and Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly and (intentionally) whispered about the German “cityscape”, it suddenly seems maximally political. “We don’t talk about the cityscape. We improve it,” the Berlin Ahmadiyya community titled its press release. The aim of the campaign is to set an example for a sense of responsibility, integration and social cohesion.

You will understand that the New Year’s cleaning is not just a PR campaign if you attend the first official prayer of the year in the Khadija Mosque in Berlin-Pankow a few hours before the group photo in orange. Outside in the darkness, the last explosions of the New Year’s Eve fireworks are slowly trickling down; around fifty men are sitting in the prayer room and listening to Sharjil Khalid, one of the mosque’s two imams, giving his sermon. He talks about how 2025 was a difficult year, a year of much hostility against Muslims. But he also talks about how important it is to start the year righteously. For a good Muslim, love for creation is just as important as love for God, and that is also the reason for today’s action, he explains. New Year’s cleaning is a service to creation, practically a New Year’s resolution that you fulfill immediately. After the sermon, a community member reads out the New Year’s greeting from the Federal Chairman of the Ahmadiyya Muslims in Germany. He also urges those present to set good examples through their actions – but also recommends paying attention to regular exercise and a healthy diet in the new year.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which has around 55,000 members in Germany, is a relatively young Muslim faith. Founded in the late 19th century in India, the Reform congregation differs from other movements primarily in that its members revere founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the promised returned Messiah, or Mahdi. In Islam, however, this does not mean the son of God, but simply a prophet of God. Their followers call themselves Ahmadis.

In Pakistan, the homeland of many Ahmadis since the partition of India, the community has faced severe reprisals. In 1974, the Pakistani parliament officially declared the reform community to be non-Muslims, and since 1984 it has been illegal for its members to call themselves Muslims and publicly follow Islamic commandments.

Many of the Ahmadis who now live in Germany therefore came here as asylum seekers. And that’s exactly what makes the current social situation in Germany particularly threatening for them, says Imam Sharjil Khalid while the community members have breakfast. But 2025 was also a difficult year for members with German citizenship, he says. “It was a year marked by many debates in which Muslims were also in the spotlight, particularly as a group at risk and as a problematic group,” says Khalid.

He himself had a falling out with a columnist last year BZ to each other. It was about the Middle East. Khalid had in a guest article in the Berlin newspaper on anti-Muslim racism accused Israel of “murderous racism” and accused Germany of supporting it with arms deliveries. The columnist’s accusation: Khalid means the war against Hamas, and he also didn’t mention October 7, 2023. Khalid wrote a reply. He explained that his accusation against Israel was not referring to the war against Hamas, but to the deaths of Palestinian civilians. He also pointed out to the columnist that Ahmadiyya is the only Muslim association in Germany with its own community in Israel, and that it had organized peace prayers with Jewish communities in several German cities following the October 7 attack. The columnist wrote no reply.

Among Muslims, says the imam, he generally notices a certain alienation from Germany due to the social developments of the past months and years: “Many tell me: I no longer have any great expectations of politics. The way the federal political development is, we are now the scapegoat.”

After breakfast, the men put on their BSR vests in front of the mosque. A short prayer, then the group splits up, half want to clean up in front of the Pankow town hall, the rest go to Neukölln. A few camera teams are already waiting in front of the town hall, Khalid gives interviews in which he repeatedly explains that this action is not primarily taking place as a statement. A few elementary school boys with black caps that say “Muslims for Peace” and “Sweepstakes Citizen” vests play with two brooms, the community chairman hands out shovels and garbage bags. The group moves towards Sonnenallee, which perhaps looks less devastated today than on other New Year’s days due to the no-firecrackers zone. The men clean themselves forward, in some places they really have to scrub before the red firecracker paste comes off the asphalt. In the Bierbaum 2 pub it’s still New Year’s Eve, at least in terms of atmosphere, a woman comes to the door, thanks her in a hoarse voice and gives the community leader ten euros for the community treasury. The imam says they haven’t experienced much hostility while cleaning for the New Year. “Too few people are awake for that – and most people think of us as city cleaners anyway,” he then adds and laughs.

Farhad Tahir films everything with his cell phone. The 28-year-old comes from Mainz; his parents moved to Germany from Pakistan before he was born. Here in Berlin he works as a freelance director and takes care of the community’s social media platforms on a voluntary basis. An Instagram post that reported on the New Year’s cleaning this year received more than 5,000 comments, he says: “95 percent were negative.”

Two years ago, Tahir briefly considered emigrating, he says. Maybe to England, he thought at the time, because there was a large Pakistani community there and he hoped that it would be easier to find work as a director in England than here. Then he didn’t do it – “because if I leave, who will clean here? If every third person who is here leaves, then there will hardly be any people left to clean for the New Year.” Besides, Germany is simply his country. “I’m German through and through – I love my homeland,” he says and laughs.

After a little more than an hour, the cleaning crew arrives at Hermannplatz. There are now orange garbage bags on the left and right of the street, which the BSR will pick up later. The men pose for the final photo, they joke, then they pray briefly. Then they all shout “Allahu Akbar” together – then one shouts “Berlin” and everyone laughs. Because they did all of this not just as Muslims or residents of the Federal Republic, but as Muslims and residents of the Federal Republic.