It's sad that in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, so many jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the perpetrator was an Islamist fanatic. It's an object lesson that's even more important in the Internet age that waiting for the facts to emerge in a story before rushing to judge the situation is necessary.
PJ Media does not have a deadline for breaking news. While it would be nice if we could be one of the first to tell the story, that story has to be accurate or we fail in our mission to inform our readers.
Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, the suspect in the vehicular assault in Magdeberg, fled Saudi Arabia because he rejected Islam. Stories circulating on the Internet claim this was false, that he was actually engaged in the Koran-approved practice of taqiyya, or deception.
Some, including PJ Media's Robert Spencer, are advancing this theory. Robert is an expert in Islam and a very smart fellow, but I think in this case, he is seeing something that isn't there.
The evidence is overwhelming that Abdulmoshen was an anti-Islam activist, as fervent in his beliefs and actions as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the noted campaigner for women's rights in Muslim countries.
He ran a website, wearesaudis.net, offering advice for Saudi and other prospective asylum seekers, especially those who wished to distance themselves from Islam, explaining how to navigate Western asylum systems.
“I’m the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs,” he said in a lengthy 2019 interview with the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
That year, he told the Jerusalem Post he spent 10 to 16 hours a day helping people in the Middle East who had renounced Islam find asylum in the West.
He has more than 43,000 followers on X. He ran a website offering advice to Saudis and other asylum seekers from Muslim countries how to navigate the bureaucracy.
In a 2019 interview with a conservative German newspaper, he said “I’m the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs."
So what happened? It appears that Abdulmoshen became increasingly embittered by the way that Germans were treating him and other Saudi refugees. He claimed he was being censored, which seems entirely reasonable. Critics of Islam have a hard time in Germany and most of Western Europe.
He claimed the German government was committing “deliberate crimes” against refugees from Saudi Arabia. He retweeted anti-Islam comments by other activists and far-right supporters in Germany.
If it was a "deception," it was one of the most elaborate and longest in history.
"He claimed that German police enforcing 'socialist laws' had sent a 'man with a knife' to steal data from his home, and said Berlin was responsible for the death of Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher," according to the Journal.
Some of his earlier comments were supportive of the anti-immigration AfD party, and he weighed in on U.S. politics too, criticizing Democrats for allegedly rejecting America’s Christian heritage. The banner of his X profile showed an automatic weapon emblazoned with a U.S. flag.
“After 25 years in this ‘business’, you’d think nothing would surprise you,” Peter Neumann, a lecturer at King’s College London and a terror export, wrote on X. “A 50-year old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in eastern Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists—I really didn’t have that on my radar.”
No one else did, either.
In recent months, Abdulmoshen became increasingly paranoid, believing he was being "persecuted" by the German authorities. He criticized the government for implementing a policy of "Islamization," and echoed what many on the right in Germany have been saying; the government wants to turn Germany into a Muslim country. His postings on X became so unhinged that even far-right activists began blocking or ignoring his posts.
Abdulmoshen is mentally ill. We don't know the exact "motivation" for his rampage, but whatever it was, it wasn't done to glorify Allah or advance the jihad in the West.
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