Hundreds of people took to the streets in Hamburg on Saturday to protest against Islamism and anti-Semitism and in support of the liberal values of Germany’s democratic constitutional order.

The demonstration in Hamburg was planned as a counter-rally to a march organized by Islamists last week which caused nationwide outrage. Participants in the Islamist march had made calls for a caliphate.

The caliphate as a form of rule originated after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD and refers to a system based on Islamic law. As the representative of Muhammad, the caliph acts as both a religious and secular ruler.

According to the police, around 800 people took part in the counter-rally. The organizers had expected up to 1,000.

“No one harms the Islamic religion and Muslims more than the Islamists themselves,” said Ali Ertan Toprak, the national chairman of the Kurdish Community advocacy group, which represents Kurds in Germany and which helped organize the rally.

At the same time, Toprak accused politicians of neglecting the problem of political Islam for too long for fear of anti-Muslim sentiment and leaving it to right-wing populists.

Toprak dismissed the extremists who had called for a caliphate at last week’s demonstration as “little wannabe trainee caliphs” and called on them to take down the preachers’ raised index finger.

A man wearing a headscarf caused a commotion at Saturday’s protest when he demonstratively raised his index finger after Toprak’s words in apparent sympathy with the Islamist demonstrators.

The man was led away by the police to the applause of the crowd.