The warping of the Magdeburg Christmas attack

On Friday, a man rammed his car into a crowd of people at a German Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany. At least five people were killed, including a nine-year-old child. More than 200 people were injured, many critically. The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was arrested at the scene and has been detained pending trial.

So what do we know about the suspect so far? Abdulmohsen is a 50-year-old psychiatrist who originates from Saudi Arabia. He relocated to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status in 2016. He ran a website nominally helping former Muslims from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf seek asylum in Germany.

Based on an analysis of his social-media content, it appears this former Muslim was angry with what he considered to be the ‘Islamification’ of Europe – and he blamed Germany for encouraging this alleged process. Indeed, several of Abdulmohsen’s public statements clearly express a profound hatred of his adoptive homeland. He seems to believe that Saudi refugees and ex-Muslims are being betrayed, if not persecuted, by their new society. Just four months ago, he posted on X asking whether ‘justice’ could be truly administered against the German state, ‘without blowing up a German embassy or indiscriminately massacring German citizens’. He was a clear and obvious threat to the German public.

His anti-Islam activism was extensive and well-documented, yet this hasn’t stopped prominent online commentators from claiming that he was really an Islamist all along. Some point to the nature of the act – using a car to mow down Christmas shoppers – as intrinsically Islamist. In 2016, a Tunisian asylum seeker allied to ISIS ploughed his truck into a Christmas market in Berlin. But the evidence so far points to a hatred of Islamism and the German state as the primary motive in Magdeburg.

Another theory doing the rounds is that Abdulmohsen was engaging in taqiyya – an Islamic practice of concealing one’s religious beliefs and practices to protect oneself or one’s community from harm. A video by Maral Salmassi, a former techno DJ, has gone viral on X. In it, she asserts that Abdulmohsen was lying about being an ex-Muslim. Specifically, she claims that he was actually a Shia extremist. Her proof? His name. Despite such meagre reasoning, the video has been retweeted 33,000 times, including by X CEO Elon Musk.

Others claim that the suspect can be heard chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ in a video of his capture by the police. Not only is this chanting anything but clear in the audio, numerous native-speaking accounts have also pointed out that the entire exchange is in German.

The taqiyya discourse surrounding the Magdeburg atrocity is conspiratorial nonsense on steroids. For this theory to make sense, you have to believe that Abdulmohsen pretended to be an atheist and ex-Muslim activist in Germany for at least 18 years before he finally made his move this Christmas. The attack itself, however deadly, was not an especially complex one to organise. Police reports also suggest he carried it out alone. If he really was an Islamist extremist, then why wait so long?

The Magdeburg atrocity has led to some incredible mental gymnastics among the Very Online right. Some cannot quite comprehend that there is a possibility that an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam atheist has committed such a horrific atrocity. Perhaps peddling taqiyya-centred conspiracy theories is a coping mechanism for their obvious disappointment over the fact that a clear Islamist motivation has not emerged.

Ultimately, the Magdeburg attack should be a major wake-up call. Many in Western Europe have yet to truly grasp the extent to which violent ideologies from the Middle East have taken root in our societies. Islamism clearly poses the largest threat of these, but it is not the only threat. This has contributed towards an increasingly complicated terror-threat landscape.

If we truly care about protecting the public from terrorism, the diversity of ideological threats facing our societies must be recognised and better understood. Rushing to judgement, or attempting to force every attack to fit a pre-determined narrative, won’t help us defeat the threats in our midst.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.