Islam

Another Christmas and the politics of Europe are once again roiled by one of the Continent’s newest traditions: the Christmas market terrorist attack.

Last Friday’s attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg was carried out by a Saudi-born asylum seeker. In 2016 it was a Tunisian migrant who carried out a similarly horrific attack in Berlin. It is one of the reasons why for the past 10 years these once innocent family events are surrounded by police and very often by what locals sometimes cynically call “diversity bollards”. In a macabre twist, in August this year a Syrian Islamist murdered three people and stabbed eight more at a Festival of Diversity in Solingen.

Germans are not willing to tolerate these attacks becoming ‘normal’.

Germany is still reeling from the deadly attack on a Christmas market on Friday evening. A black BMW was driven into a crowd of market-goers in the city of Magdeburg, leaving at least five people dead and over 40 critically injured. The alleged perpetrator, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was arrested at the scene. He is a 50-year-old psychiatrist who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status in 2016.

Toronto Jewish resident Meir Gerichter is told by @TorontoPolice to remove his sweater in -20 weather that shows the JDL Logo & the words "Never Again", despite the JDL not being a terrorist organization in Canada.

Meir then says he wants to leave, but the police are forcing him… pic.twitter.com/APxVOVNFqc

— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) December 23, 2024

h/t Patti Jo and XC

… Many see the perpetrator as a violent foreigner regardless of whether he left his faith, with one friend telling me: “Germany didn’t have these kind of attacks done by foreigners before Merkel opened borders in 2015.”

That message is one the Left have struggled to counter.

Europe hasn’t woken up to the barbarism in our midst.

The Magdeburg attack is depraved and puzzling in almost equal measure.

When a black BMW ploughed into a Christmas market in the German city on Friday night, brutally killing (at time of writing) four women and a nine-year-old boy and injuring at least 200 more, many, understandably, assumed this was Islamist terrorism imposing its nihilistic writ on Europeans once again.

After events in Magdeburg Austrians protest in the streets for remigration of foreigners.

They chant "remigration. I want to wash all my hands". pic.twitter.com/yFz86ls1el

— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) December 22, 2024

Germans have taken to the streets in Magdeburg tonight.

They are chanting:

"Anyone who doesn't love Germany, should leave Germany!" pic.twitter.com/vEcaJAQTUc

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 21, 2024

Friday’s attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg has so far left five dead, hundreds injured, and the script for the country’s February snap election in tatters.

The suspected perpetrator, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi-Arabia who sought asylum in Germany and has lived there for two decades, was arrested at the scene. As a consequence, a historically short election campaign season will be centred largely around migration. On social media, a debate is already raging as to whether the attack should be treated as a further example of migrant violence or a far-Right hate crime.

In such polarised times, there is a strong temptation to interpret acts of violence through the lens of one’s own biases. The attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg yesterday evening, which killed five and injured over 200 more, has revealed this impulse in the starkest terms. Already, attention has been drawn from the Right to the background of the alleged perpetrator as an asylum seeker from Saudi Arabia, and from some on the Left to his support of Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Importantly, the main suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi national and psychotherapist named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was less a “lone wolf” than a “known wolf”. Not only did Saudi authorities repeatedly warn their German counterparts that he was posting online about his desire to kill civilians, Abdulmohsen had also contacted prominent ex-Muslims such as Yasmine Mohammed and Ali Utlu. Both Mohammed and Utlu suspected he was a Saudi agent spying on ex-Muslims and dissidents, with the latter claiming today: “He acted ex-Muslim on the outside, while in direct messages he threatened ex-Muslims, especially Saudi women who had fled.”

The “Islamophobic” and “ex-Muslim” Magdeburg terrorist shouts “Allahu Akbar” during his arrest. pic.twitter.com/oyPe0T6chi

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 22, 2024

Last night …

BREAKING:

Protests against mass-immigration erupt in Germany tonight after the Magdeburg terror attack.

The protesters are chanting:

“Deportations now” pic.twitter.com/nzA2VdFdFo

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 21, 2024

A French court has sentenced seven men and a woman to prison for their roles in a hate campaign that led to the October 2020 murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb.

The sentences handed down range from three to 16 years.

The attack took place following social media posts that falsely claiming Paty had shown his students obscene pictures of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free speech.

The vibes continue to shift. Five minutes ago, “cousin marriage” was the punchline to a highbrow joke about the Hapsburg Jaw, or perhaps a lowbrow one about what counted as Normal for Norfolk. Now all of a sudden, the relative silence about it reveals the “unspeakable face of liberalism” according to Matthew Syed in The Times. And it seems lots of others agree with him.

Formerly in the historical deep freeze, it’s the fact that cousin marriage occurs disproportionately in British Muslim communities that has turned it into a hot button issue. Syed — himself of Pakistani extraction — first drew attention to its prevalence in an influential column last year, reminding us that where cousin marriage is practised over several generations, it exposes couples to a significantly heightened risk of bearing children with autosomal recessive disorders. Obstetricians in isolated rural communities have always known this, and now modern access to gene mapping is emphasising the risk.