It was easy to predict; it didn't take long for the whole thing to garner two different points of view from the left and right-wing in German politics.
Now we have the first information about the reason for the attack (not hard to guess either):
She said the suspected attacker, a 25-year-old Afghan national and nine-year German resident who was shot by police and remains in the hospital, is suspected to have wanted to prevent critics of Islam from exercising their right to freedom of expression.
This is the essence of the action: Islam cannot be criticized, not even one bit. You can criticize anything else, but Islam is above critique. It needs to be accepted by anyone without questioning. And this is not actually happening in Muslim countries but in the heart of Europe. Open discussion and critique are part of freedom of expression, which is (or more likely was) one of the pillars of Western democracies in Europe, but that doesn't seem to mean much in this context.
What is even harder to understand is why politicians are downplaying this. For example, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann of the Free Democrats (FDP) made one confusing statement:
Islam belongs to Germany, but Islamism does not" and said that "the danger posed by religious fanaticism and radical Islamism remains large.
That's next level wordplay. It's like you say Christian religion belongs to Germany, but not Christianity. Doesn't make too much sense, isn't it?
And why Islam actually belongs to Germany? Is there any reason for this? In which aspects the Western (or more generically, European culture) and Islam are overlapping? There is not even one part from Islam that can be easily identified with the Germans or with the rest of Europe.
A couple of hundred years ago, the Ottoman Empire was pushing into Europe, conquering a large part of it. Eventually Europe redeemed itself, and found its way, fortunately not under Islam. And today is part of Germany? How about declaring being part of Poland? Or Hungary?
But hey, if Islam belongs to Germany, maybe Christianity belongs to Saudi Arabia as well, right?
Meanwhile, around 8,000 people gathered in Mannheim on Monday to pay their respects to the 29-year-old police officer who on Sunday succumbed to injuries sustained from stab wounds.
The event was organized by a broad cross-section of Mannheim society including Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders and local politicians
Source: euronews.com
That's very noble of the religious leaders, but also kind of sad facade. Muslim and Jewish communities are not quite friends - everyone knows that and since Gaza it became worse - , and the last years show that it's specifically one religion popping up in the news following the terrorist attacks all over Europe.
Far-right activists from the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) youth movement took to the streets of Mannheim on Sunday, where the attack occurred, demanding stricter asylum and migration policies.
AfD MP Nicole Höchst said "People who come here and don't appreciate our hospitality have to leave. And we need to finally have a conversation about that too.”
You don't have to be a "far-right" activist to actually ask something that should be common sense: a strong and strict migration policy. Importing people from poorer countries, with some more extreme views of life, that have been at war, or where women are perceived as inferior to men, is not going to bring anything good to anyone. However, the left-wing believes this is "extremist" and "undemocratic".
Greens MP Gerhard Fontagnier says far-right party is using the incident as a political weapon. "It is simply undemocratic. That's why we're here today," he said.
And to put things in perspective:
German government records have shown that the country naturalised over 200,000 immigrants in 2023 alone, which amounts to more than the entire population of more than half of its cities (75,485 immigrants from Syria receiving German citizenship in 2023)
Violent crime exploded in Germany:
Statistics from the German Interior Ministry released on Tuesday show that the number of foreign suspects rocketed up to around 923,000 in 2023, correlating to a whopping 18 percent increase in just one year.
The data further shows that 41 percent of all crime suspects in Germany are foreigners, despite only representing 15 percent of the total population.
Overall there has been a massive 14.5% increase in the number of non-German suspects of violent crime.
This is Germany? Syrian migrant raped a 23-year-old woman just hours after being immediately released for his arrest for attempting to rape a senior citizen.
German Politician Fined $6K For Pointing To Government’s Own Stats On Rapes By Migrants:
A German politician has been found guilty of ‘incitement’ by a district court after she posted a link to the government’s own statistics on crimes committed by migrants, specifically rape, and asked why they are so disproportionately high.
As a more recent update :
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan.”
“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.
“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she added
Is hard to believe Germany will find the strength to do this. The political class is weak and deportations might happened only in small numbers and only after the facts (killings, rapes, etc). The most important part of the solution is to seal all Europe's borders and perform a serious scrutiny over the already existing visas. But that's (according to the left wing), extremism and human rights infringement.
How long until Germany will implode?
