MEMBERS of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have called on Germans to boycott the film Mission: Impossible because its star, Tom Cruise, is a Seientologist.
The campaign has been accompanied by calls for the sect to be banned and a move by the state of Bavaria to prevent Scientologists from joining the civil service.
Bavaria's conservative prime minister, Mr Edmund Stoiber, describes Scientology as "a subversive, intolerant, racist organisation that wants to replace our society with a totalitarian regime". From November 1st, applicants for jobs in Bavaria's civil service will be questioned about links to Scientology and will be rejected if they are associated with the group. Many politicians would like the measure to be adopted throughout the country as part of an official crackdown on the sect.
Scientologists say their critics are misinformed and claim that the Bavarian measure threatens religious freedom. The American State Department recently criticised the German response to Scientology as disproportionate and the United Nations Human Rights Commission censured the state of Baden Wrttemberg last year following the cancellation of a concert by the pianist Chick Corea simply because he was a scientologist.
Illustrious Scientologists include John Travolta and Priscilla Presley and the soprano Julia Migenes. The organisation has between 10 and 20 million members in 74 countries, about 30,000 of them in Germany.
Founded in 1954 by the science fiction writer Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the Church of Scientology teaches an extraordinary belief system called Dianetics, which combines elements of Buddhism, Christianity and Freudianism with a touch of Star Trek astral history. "Thirty five billion years ago, an evil lord called Xenn solved the problem of over population on another planet by sending two billion Thetans to earth," explains a Scientology text book.
The sect believes that each human contains a Thetan clement which must be liberated from earthly encrustations. Using an "E meter", similar to a lie detector, Scientologists detect and destroy "engrams" and "aberrations". Once a disciple is deemed "clear", he can become an "Operating Thetan", master of material, energy and space and, according to Hubbard, immunised against illness, nuclear radiation and homosexuality.
Hubbard's bizarre theories have become the basis of a highly profitable worldwide empire which made an estimated £60 million in Germany last year from the sale of books and training courses alone.
The Confederation of German Industry and Commerce describes Scientology as "a worldwide commercial enterprise with a military structure comparable to the Mafia".
The confederation claims that the organisation uses conventional businesses, especially estate agents, as front groups, demanding that up to 18 per cent of the profits be paid to its central fund.
"Because of the immense pressure to succeed, the firm is practically forced to swindle its customers," according to a report by the confederation's Cologne branch.
At least 20 firms linked to Scientology have been set up in Berlin since reunification to capitalise on the property boom that followed the fall of the Wall. Rival estate agents claim that Scientologists exert pressure on tenants to buy their apartments outright or to move out.
"If the tenants refuse, they are systematically harassed. Older residents and those unfamiliar with the law are often put under pressure," said one.
The Church of Scientology has complained to the UN about what it calls a campaign of religious discrimination in Germany. The group launched an expensive advertising campaign in US newspapers two years ago to accuse Germany of returning to the intolerance of the 1930s.
"Such a shameless policy of discrimination and exclusion has not been seen in Germany since the end of the Nazi dictatorship," the organisation said last week.
Although few Germans express any sympathy with the Scientologists, some liberal commentators warned last week of the danger of over reacting to the threat posed by the group. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit this week called for the sect to be combated through information campaigns and better consumer protection rather than by new repressive laws.
"The State of Bavaria has now departed from the narrow ridge between unlimited tolerance and a false perception of state security. The Bavarian measure will only create liars and martyrs. Liars, because nobody is going to admit to being a member of L Ron Hubbard's pseudo religion in a job interview. Martyrs, because psychosects can present hostility as evidence that they have beer chosen," the paper wrote.
