The report further looked into the various factors that had led to fighters becoming radicalized in Germany, listing multiple reasons for each person evaluated. More than half (54 percent) had been at least partially radicalized through friend groups, 48 percent through radical mosques, 44 percent through internet propaganda, 27 percent through attending seminars and 24 percent through the “Lies!” Koran distribution programme, banned earlier this month alongside countrywide police raids.

 “Radicalization happens predominantly in concrete social spheres,” the study states.

 Hesse state interior minister Peter Beuth told Die Welt that he and his colleagues feel heightened pressure to prevent more radicalization.

 “We want to prevent people from drifting towards extremism,” Beuth said.

 This is why in 2013, his state founded the HKE, which falls under Beuth’s interior ministry. The state of Hesse was also where the largest number of raids took place on the Lies! programme run by the banned group The True Religion on November 15th.

 Around 200 addresses across ten states were raided in connection to the group, which was also newly categorized as a banned group at the time. The Lies! programme distributes copies of the Koran in German, which experts say are translations with particularly strict versions of the original Arabic texts. The Interior Ministry said at the time that around 140 people influenced by the group had gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.