TGerman Interior Minister Nancy Feser said Alev al-Abdelmohsen, the alleged perpetrator of the horror attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, “does not fit the mold”. He was acting in an “incredibly cruel and cruel manner, like that of an Islamist terrorist, even though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam.”
Fazer is not alone in his confusion about how to understand Abdul Mohsen.
Abdulmohsen, who was born in Saudi Arabia, came to Germany in 2006 to train in psychiatry before applying for asylum. He has described himself as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history”, accused Germany’s immigration policy of not doing enough to guard against Muslim asylum seekers, and became a defender of the far-right AfD. He claimed that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open borders” policy was an attempt to “Islamize Europe”.
How could someone so hostile to Islam carry out a murder that hints at Islamist terrorism? For many on the right, especially those who have a habit of repeating anti-Muslim bigotry, the answer was simple. Whatever the evidence, Abdul Mohsen is an Islamist. Many accused him of “taqiyya,” or deception, and authorities of “denial.” Some thought his opinion was irrelevant. The mere fact that he was a foreigner and from a Muslim-majority country was enough to condemn him as a deadly threat.
Perhaps the best way to understand the seemingly inexplicable horror of this attack and the all-too-predictable response is to understand it as the intersection of two developments: the changing nature of terrorism and the rise of “anti-politics.” It is. All those in power are insidious, corrupt, and hostile to the needs of ordinary people. And the best place to understand that intersection is through the work of French sociologist Olivier Roy.
A leading thinker on modern radical Islam, Roy has long criticized conventional theories about how young Muslims in the West become radicalized. Abdul Mohsen was not a jihadist, no matter what conspiracy theorists say. Nevertheless, understanding Western jihadism may help elucidate his actions.
Roy argues that in order to understand Islamic extremism, we need to look at the problem “cross-sectionally” rather than “vertically.” It can be seen not only from the perspective of Islamic history and theology, but also in comparison to contemporary identity movements and other forms of political radicalization.
It is the politics of identity that shapes contemporary discontent.
What initially drives most jihadists is rarely politics or religion, but a search for something intangible: identity, meaning, and belonging. There is nothing new about young people’s search for identity and meaning. The difference is that we live today in a more fragmented society and at a time when many people feel unusually alienated from mainstream social institutions.
In the past, social dissatisfaction may have led people to join movements demanding political change. Today, most such organizations appear to have collapsed or become unreachable. It is identity politics that shapes contemporary grievances, encouraging individuals to define themselves in increasingly narrow ethnic or cultural terms. A generation ago, “radical” Muslims held more secular views, and their radicalism may have been expressed through political movements. Many now vent their frustrations through a fierce and often murderous tribal vision of Islam. The key issue, Roy suggests, is not so much the “radicalization of Islam” as the “Islamization of radicalism.”
In the process, an already corrupt ideology became even more corrupt, with jihadism often degenerating in Europe into an “extension of urban gangs” and leading to the emergence of “low-tech” terrorism over the past decade. Knives and cars begin to be brandished with murderous intent. The line between ideological violence and sociopathic anger has all but disappeared.
This begins the second important development: the rise of “anti-politics.”
In his seminal 1989 essay “The End of History,” Francis Fukuyama suggested that the victory of the West in the Cold War brought an end to ideological struggles. “Idealism,” he wrote, would be replaced by “economic calculation” and “the endless solution of technical problems.”
Indeed, post-Cold War world politics became less a conflict of ideologies and more a debate about how best to manage the existing political order. This was an era of neoliberalism, underpinned by a consensus that there was no alternative to liberal democracy, free market economics, and globalization.
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However, what Fukuyama underestimated was the importance of politics and collective ideals. “Economic calculation” and “endless solution of technical problems” cannot and cannot replace “ideological struggle”. He also overestimated the authorities’ ability to solve technical problems and improve people’s lives.
The financial collapse of 2008 sparked a resurgence of political protest and populist challenges to established power. From Tunisia to Chile, Brazil to Hong Kong, Vincent Bevins suggests in his chronicle of the 2010s, If We Burn, that more people were taking part in protests around the world than ever before. There is. Still, little seemed to have changed. The unchanging anger reinforces the sense that politics itself is the problem.
We may never know Abdul Mohsen’s motives or his state of mind when he unleashed the carnage, but somewhere along his political journey he expressed his hatred for Islam, his hostility to Islam not enough. This seems to have been replaced by hatred towards Germany. His feeling of being ignored by political authorities, like similar violence, may be inexplicable in rational terms, but it expresses an era of anti-politics, a nihilistic violence rooted in the idea of protest. It may have drawn him into the act. A spectacle, often a horrifying, murderous spectacle. “Is there a way to achieve justice in Germany without indiscriminately slaughtering the German people?” he asked in a recent memorable social media post. He was “looking for this peaceful path” and “couldn’t find it.”
Abdel Mohsen must be an Islamist, and his claim that “mass immigration is destroying Europe” stems from anti-political politics. Muslims are not alone in their isolation from society and their grievances shaped by narrow identities. Many white working-class communities feel similarly apathetic and angry, and often view their issues through an identitarian lens, paving the way for far-right advocates to frame their anger in bigoted ways. I am. This summer’s riots in Britain showed how quickly grievances can become twisted and directed against Muslims and immigrants.
Jihadism, racist populism, and nihilistic terrorism may seem like separate phenomena, but they all reflect the frustrations of being trapped in a cage of identity in an age of anti-politics. It’s an expression of anger, expressed in a completely different way.
Kenan Malik is a columnist for the Observer.
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