Why the Media Spin on the German Christmas Market Attack Can’t Be Trusted

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What the establishment media wants us to believe about any given event is usually more indicative of the media’s own world view than it is of the actual facts on the ground, and the vehicular attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany on Friday is no exception. In fact, the media spin is even more pernicious than usual on this one.

The claim that’s going around is that the attacker, a Saudi doctor named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen who has lived in Germany for years, is an ex-Muslim who hated Islam and was enraged at German authorities for letting so many Muslims into the country. The Washington Post reported that Abdulmohsen “had expressed anti-Islam views and described himself as a Saudi dissident.” The Wall Street Journal said that he was “a well-known anti-Islam activist who seems to have felt increasingly persecuted by Germany.” The New York Post likewise called him an “anti-Islam activist.”

Others, however, presented numerous facts that don’t fit the media spin. Maral Salmassi, who calls herself a “politically incorrect, Iranian/German entrepreneur and producer,” wrote:

Despite claims made by the German press, Taleb Al Abdulmohsen is not an ex-Muslim atheist, nor is he a fan of the AfD or Elon Musk. While he may have spread this misinformation himself, it aligns with the practice of Taqqiye, an Islamic doctrine that permits lying and deception to advance Islamic objectives. 

In reality, he is a radical Shia Muslim, as evidenced by his name and numerous tweets and chat leaks circulating on Arabic-speaking platforms like X. Disturbingly, his plans to carry out mass killings of Germans were brought to the attention of German authorities by a Saudi woman. Tragically, the police ignored her warnings. 

Salmassi presented evidence that Abdulmohsen supported Hamas, that he threatened a Saudi ex-Muslim, and that he was even reported to German authorities for stating that he was going to carry out his attack (those authorities ignored the warning).

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Nevertheless, Abdulmohsen did cultivate a presence in circles that were critical of Islam, presenting himself as an ex-Muslim. So what is going on here? There are several possibilities and considerations to keep in mind.

1. Vehicular jihad is a well-established practice going back years. ISIS has called for it. It is not a common practice among any non-Islamic criminal or terrorist sector.

2. Saudi Arabia, where Abdulmohsen is from, is a hotbed of jihad activity. That, of course, doesn’t mean that he was a jihadi, but it almost certainly means that he was exposed to the jihadi perspective. 

3. Islam has doctrines calling for warfare against unbelievers. See Qur’an 8:39, 9:5, 9:29, and many other passages. For a summary of just some of them, see here. This is not just a matter of a few proof-texts, either. It is foundational in Islamic theology across all sects and schools of jurisprudence. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

4. Islam has doctrines calling for deception under certain circumstances. 

5. Jihad groups have been calling for attacks on German Christmas markets for years.

6. Several jihad plots against Christmas markets have already been foiled this year.

7. Muslims recently marched through a German Christmas market screaming “Allahu akbar” and “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”

8. Yet still, the perp has been claiming to be an ex-Muslim — and a Zionist! — and has contacted several anti-jihad media figures, asking them to interview him. This leads to several possibilities.

a. That he was a sincere ex-Muslim and Zionist, and decided to attack a target of jihadis in a manner in which jihadis often attack, for no clear reason.

b. He was lying, in preparation for his jihad attack.

c. He was a genuine ex-Muslim, but in a moment of personal crisis returned to Islam, and realized that he had to do a great deed to outweigh his apostasy on Allah’s big judgment scales (Qur’an 21:47). Muhammad teaches that no deed is greater than jihad, so he went for a jihad attack.

d. Or alternatively, he just snapped, has some psychotic episode, etc. In that case it’s noteworthy that his desire to seek “revenge” led him to emulate a common practice of the warriors of the religion he professed to have left.

Of those four possibilities, the first one is the least likely. Why? Because if he was an ex-Muslim who went mad, he would be much more likely to have targeted Muslims, rather than choosing a favored target of the very jihadis he despised. The establishment media will be insisting that he is an ex-Muslim and never consider the possibility of deception or a return to Islam. That’s because they don’t know about those possibilities and because they always do whatever they can to distance Islam from the violence done in its name and in accord with its teachings. But their claims in this case are quite flimsy. At best. As always.