On Monday, March 19, the Kitsap Patriots Tea Party (KPTP) hosted an internationally-known speaker who promotes anti-Muslim misinformation and bigotry. Some 50 people showed up to the Baymont Inn & Suites in Bremerton, Washington to hear Heidi Mund disparage Muslims and promote Christian nationalism. Outside the KPTP event about 50 diverse community members showed up to reject Mund’s bigotry and support the Muslim community.
Heidi Mund of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, became a far right celebrity after disrupting a 2013 event held at the Memorial Church of the Reformation in Speyer, German to build bridges between Christians and Muslims. When a Muslim imam offered a prayer, Mund shouted, “Jesus Christ alone is Lord of Germany…I break this curse.” Mund continued that, “Allahu Akbar is what Muslims scream while murdering people.” The KPTP event will be held at the Baymont Inn & Suites in Bremerton, Washington.
A video of Mund’s bigoted display went viral and she became a regular speaker at far right events under the moniker, “The Brave German Woman.” Mund later said of the incident that,
“They should have thrown the imam out and not me because I am a believer in Jesus Christ, but he serves another god…This is, for me, worship to an idol, to their god. And when a Muslim calls ‘Allahu Akbar’ in a church, that means this church is not a church anymore, it’s a mosque.”
Heidi Mund at 2015 Kitsap Patriots Tea Party Event
The Kitsap Patriot Tea Party previously hosted Heidi Mund in November 2015. Mund disparaged Islam and appeared to call for banning the Koran. Mund stated that one group in European refugee camps,
“is ISIS – these are the real Muslims…and they follow the example of Muhammad. And I say it again, today, those books have to be prohibited. There are no other books where there are general commands to kill people. It’s written in those books and we should not have those books in our country. And if we don’t stop it, they will kill us, because it’s a command from Muhammad…The history of Islam is always, is only, only bloody, only bloody.”
Mund also voiced a Christian nationalism and repeated the bigoted falsehood that Islam is not a religion:
“In our Constitution… yours also, when our forefathers wrote about religion there was only one religion. They never meant Islam or anything else…This [Islam] is not a religion, it is a political system…we should not call it religion – they want to take over the whole world at any price it costs, they lie until they have it.”
In 2017 the Tacoma Narrows Tea Party promoted a Mund speaking event in Gig Harbor, Washington. Mund failed to appear at the announced location, but 100 community members gathered to support religious freedom. Pierce County and Spokane, Washington Act for America chapters publicized Mund appearances in 2015 and 2016, respectively. In 2014 Mund spoke at the Sequim Bible Church in Sequim, Washington.
Act For America promotes anti-Muslim bigotry around the country. The group’s chair, Brigitte Gabriel, said in 2007 that “a practicing Muslim who…goes to mosque…who prays five times a day…who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.” The far right paramilitary Oath Keepers and Three Percenters provided security at Act for America anti-Muslim events in 2017.
