Islamism still haunts us

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.

But within a few hours, the plot thickened. The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, is a 50-year-old Saudi-born refugee who has been in Germany since 2006. He is also – according to his social-media activity and numerous press interviews – an anti-Islam, ex-Muslim activist of a peculiarly conspiratorial bent. He appeared to be convinced that the German government was pursuing a covert project of ‘Islamification’. His own efforts to bring Saudi ex-Muslims to Germany, he alleged to an American anti-Islam website recently, were being thwarted by a German state that would rather open its doors to Syrian Muslims.

He has been telegraphing his violent intentions for some time. In a post on X in December last year, Abdulmohsen said: ‘Revenge will come soon. Even if it costs me my life. I will make the German nation pay the price of the crimes committed by its government against Saudi refugees.’ Both X and the German authorities stand accused of failing to even notice his blood-curdling threats. In private messages, he spoke of killing ‘random German citizens’.

Abdulmohsen was seemingly paranoid, volatile and potentially on drugs, which all might go some way to explaining what appears to be a nonsensical, murderous act – mowing down innocent Germans at a Christmas market, echoing the 2016 ISIS-claimed truck attack in Berlin, in order to strike a blow against German ‘Islamification’.

Not that this has stopped the terminally online denizens of X from insisting he is an Islamist anyway. As Rakib Ehsan writes elsewhere on spiked today, the evidence for this – at present – is weak, to put it mildly. From what I can tell, it amounts to one confusingly worded tweet about Hamas; a video, made by an Iranian German techno DJ, claiming Abdulmohsen is a Shia extremist, based largely on his surname; and a video from the scene of the attack in which, if Abdulmohsen is shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as many online claim, he must be whispering it inaudibly.

The consensus curdling among the Very Online right – that Abdulmohsen’s years of very public anti-Islam activism were just an elaborate ruse to further the jihad – seems rather implausible. I’m always up for being proven wrong, but I dare say he’s more likely to turn out to be a deranged, murderous scumbag, rather than a jihadist sleeper agent playing 3D chess with the kafir.

Those of us who recognise Islamist extremism for the fascistic menace that it is – those of us who know that, despite all the umming, ahhing and deflections from the establishment, it remains Europe’s main terror threat by a country mile – would do well not to go tumbling down rabbit holes. For while Magdeburg seems not to have been an Islamist terror attack, there are plenty others that have been mounted and foiled in Europe in 2024.

Germany alone has been rocked by one horror after another this past 12 months or so. In May, in Mannheim, a suspected Islamist extremist stabbed six people at an anti-Islam rally, killing a police officer. In August, a failed Syrian asylum seeker – a suspected member of Islamic State who was slated for deportation – slashed at the necks of people in Solingen, who were gathered to celebrate their city’s 650th anniversary. He killed three and injured eight more.

Then there were all the near misses. Last December, four suspected Hamas members were arrested, on suspicion of plotting to attack Jewish sites. In March, two Afghans were arrested in Germany for allegedly planning to attack the Swedish parliament, reportedly with the backing of Islamic State. In April, three teenagers were arrested on suspicion of glorifying the Islamic State and conspiring to attack churches. In June, a suspected Iraqi ISIS member was arrested near Stuttgart. In July, an ISIS plot was foiled mere hours before the Euros final between England and Spain in Berlin. In October, a Libyan citizen, another suspected ISIS supporter, was arrested on suspicion of plotting an attack on Israel’s embassy in Berlin.

As for Christmas markets, a cherished institution in Germany and increasingly a target of Islamist killers, a 15-year-old was sent to youth custody for four years in June for his plan to attack a market in Leverkusen. Earlier this month, a 37-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker was arrested on suspicion of planning a massacre at a Christmas market in Augsburg, and three young suspected Islamists were arrested, the police seizing knives and an assault rifle, for their plot to attack a market in Frankfurt or Mannheim.

That’s just Germany. 2024 was a grotesquely successful year for Islamist terror on the European continent at large. Tajik gunmen backed by ISIS-K, the ISIS franchise operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, slaughtered 145 people and injured more than 500 at the Crocus City Hall near Moscow. It was the deadliest terror attack on Russian soil since 2004. If it wasn’t for a tip-off from US intelligence, similar horrors could have been inflicted on Vienna in August, where two teenagers, who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, were planning to bomb and slash their way through a Taylor Swift concert.

Massacring concert-goers. Mowing down families at Christmas markets. Slashing at people’s necks as they gather together in their city centre. This is a barbarous war on our very way of life, waged by death cults and their sadistic fanboys. And yet Europe’s rulers have come to treat such attacks as akin to natural disasters – as awful, tragic, oh-so-sad things that just happen from time to time.

They seem to have convinced themselves that confronting the Islamist threat too forcefully risks whipping up anti-Muslim hatred, as if the majority are a pogrom in waiting, or risks ‘alienating’ European Muslims, as if they are all terrorist sympathisers. In their supposed efforts to quell bigotry, the elites reveal their own.

The horror in Magdeburg is a reminder that barbarism comes in many different packages. But as we head into 2025, we cannot lose sight of where the primary threat lies. We must refuse to be cowed by Islamist terror – and we must refuse to be condescended to by an establishment that would rather see us as the problem.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater