German market attack: Europe's far right uses attack to tap into fears despite suspect's Islamophobic views
When a Saudi Arabian national was accused of ramming a car into a German Christmas market, members of the frequently anti-Muslim European far right said it proved their point.
When a Saudi Arabian national was accused of ramming a car into a German Christmas market, members of the frequently anti-Muslim European far right said it proved their point. The deadly incident in Magdeburg was another example of Islamist terrorism, they said — and a result of the mass immigration they so vehemently oppose.
Except it wasn’t that simple.
The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, was in fact scathingly critical of Islam and immigration, according to his past posts on X. He aligned himself with the far-right, anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is endorsed by Musk and monitored by German intelligence agencies for suspected extremism. While authorities say the motive is not yet clear, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect “was obviously Islamophobic.”
Al-Abdulmohsen’s complex worldview, in which he criticized the Saudi Arabian government but also Germany’s alleged failure to protect Saudi immigrants from the Middle Eastern kingdom’s repression, has muddied attempts to use his alleged killing of five people and injuring 200 others as an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim cautionary tale. It comes at a time when immigration is the most polarizing issue in Europe, where far-right parties are surging on a wave of discontent, and immigrants are blamed for job scarcity, housing shortages and cultural changes.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits the site of the deadly attack.Craig Stennett / Getty Images fileThere has been “zero” contrition from those on the right who sought to capitalize on the incident, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit international group focused on radical ideologies.
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