By now you’ve heard about the horrendous attack on the CSD pride march on Saturday night. A van drove into Tiergarten a few hundred metres away from the event’s locus at the Brandenburg Gate. A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed, 29 people were injured, including the deceased woman’s daughter.
Thanks Maurice for the heartfelt and informative reporting. Thanks also for both hiding but allow ing us to see if we want a moderated comment. Although I agree angry enough not to want it to be casually observable, I also am very glad to have read the perspective. I too was shocked by the police failures both in letting this young man go and also in killing him rather than shooting a knife-wielder in the legs like they usually do. I appreciate that your post went into that, but also into the other unaddressed causes, and gave more detail on the victims and the perpetrator's situation than I've seen anywhere else – I'm reading the Guardian, La Monde, the Washington Post as well as DW on this. I do think we need to be honest about the problems in our religious communities too – apparently Syrians were shocked when they got here in 2015 by how extremist many mosques were, I hope they are helping moderate the mosques, or helping their communities by providing alternatives.
I just want to say how unfathomably disappointed I am in your focus on the Muslim community in your coverage of the CSD attack.
As a queer person, I am beyond angry at your choice to scapegoat an entire religious community in our name. There are extremists from every conservative background and the overwhelming majority of attacks on Pride marches around the country come from Neo-Nazi and fascist organisations.
You do not mention once the reactionary actions of this government, the defunding of queer institutions, the demonization and ridicule of the queer community by the chancellor himself (refusing to fly a pride flag, saying that the Bundestag “ist kein Zirkuszelt”).
This government and regime tacitly condones violence and discrimination against queer people and the AFD openly voices hateful homophobic messaging - and these people are paid by our taxes to do so. This is the environment this man grew up in; a Germany where AFD voters and politicians currently sitting in our government loudly call for violence against queers and no one lifts a finger.Muslims and Arabs are a marginalized and demonized minority themselves. Laying blame at the feet of the Muslim community when the government does NOTHING to deradicalize the increasingly right wing and hateful German population at large - or even themselves - is appalling.
What’s more - the police had this man on a watch list and even flagged him as at high risk of committing a violent crime. Where’s the condemnation for the police? Those same police who arrested 9 queers at IQP?I’m so disappointed that you’ve decided to toe the CDU line and perpetuate their garbage line. You have to know the German government will use this an excuse to further strip residents and citizens of their rights. I can’t believe you’d be so naive to regurgitate their Islamophobic garbage. “Christians” preach homophobic nonsense every day and there’s not a peep about that. The AFD runs entire election campaigns on a similar platform and it’s considered all in a day’s work.
This is not a problem of a religious minority. This is a German problem. Shame on you for singling out an already targeted and excluded minority. Do not do this in our name.
I think you're cherry-picking from Maurice's newsletter and ignoring large swaths. He didn't lay the blame at the Muslim community. He reported the perp's history AS WELL AS the MASSIVE German institutional failure that led to him being free. Maurice's last line -- his summation if you will -- was that Germany needs to do a better job of combatting extremism, regardless of its source.
"Berlin and Germany need to devote massive resources and get real about combatting the extremism infecting young people — whether it’s coming from Islamists or neo-Nazis, birds of a feather, it would seem."
You ask where the condemnation of the police is:
"The insane thing is that Ballout himself was classified as a “high-risk threat” and yet was allowed to walk free with a suspended sentence."
We have been nothing but critical of the current government, which seems to be defunding everything diverse, social and important while ignoring handouts (sometimes in the billions) for its buddies.
We are all angry and upset ... and we are on the same side.
Maurice’s mentions of structural failures are framed predominantly as a failure to police “Islamist extremism”, and not extremism at large. Mentions of far-right violence and “Potential right-wing terrorists” are footnotes and asides to the larger story of the number of identified “Islamic extremists” in Berlin and he doesn’t mention the rising number of cases of documented extreme right violence and intimidation. He doesn’t mention the over policing of IQP and he doesn’t mention at all this government’s systemic defunding of queer institutions and initiatives. No, I don’t think I’m cherry-picking - I’m simply taking note of the points he has chosen to highlight and focus on in his piece.
Perhaps get a Muslim person to read this and ask them if they take away the message from this that “we’re all on the same side”.
His politics have been obvious for a while. He is the co-founder of The Berliner, whose management took Hasbara to run ads for the propaganda Nova exhibition, then laid off the writers and editors in the magazine who took issue with that.
Just take the L here, man instead of digging a deeper hole and apologize for getting this one wrong. I would be shocked if the 2015 version of both of you would think Maurice‘s anti-Islam rant would be remotely appropriate to publish in these circumstances.
Calling it a an “anti-Islam” rant rings hollow. It's neither anti-Islam nor a rant. It just points to the extreme religious ideology that propelled the CSD perpetrator to murder an innocent person and injure many others. That ideology was radical Islamism, not to be confused with Islam. The guy was a salafist with links to extreme groups IRL and online. In my piece I cite Güner Falci, who grew up in Neukölln and knows her stuff. Or else check out feminist imam Seyran Ateş. Both say extremist preaching is a problem in some mosques and that homophobia is widespread in some Muslim communities. There is nothing controversial about this. If you don't identify the problematic ideology behind the attack how can you prevent crimes like this in future?
It reads as an anti-Islam rant when you SOLELY refer to a radical form of Islam as the reason behind this tragedy. There was clearly a multi-system failure with regards to this event. Where is the deserved outrage that the police was surveilling him that very day and did not prevent this attack? Where is the outrage that the event was not sufficiently protected? Where is the outrage that Merz did not mention the LGBTQIA community by name in his address- and solely referred to Western values? If you truly have sympathy for the victims why aren't you talking about the CDU's abysmal record with gay rights?
The decision to focus on an extreme minority alone is frankly bizarre and for sure does not read as caring about the victims. Just look at the feedback above from someone from the community, and you all double down instead. I am not disputing what you wrote above, I am saying that you come across as pushing an agenda, not being supportive of the community that has just been attacked and seeming like bigoted boomers who don't want to grow.
Thanks Maurice for the heartfelt and informative reporting. Thanks also for both hiding but allow ing us to see if we want a moderated comment. Although I agree angry enough not to want it to be casually observable, I also am very glad to have read the perspective. I too was shocked by the police failures both in letting this young man go and also in killing him rather than shooting a knife-wielder in the legs like they usually do. I appreciate that your post went into that, but also into the other unaddressed causes, and gave more detail on the victims and the perpetrator's situation than I've seen anywhere else – I'm reading the Guardian, La Monde, the Washington Post as well as DW on this. I do think we need to be honest about the problems in our religious communities too – apparently Syrians were shocked when they got here in 2015 by how extremist many mosques were, I hope they are helping moderate the mosques, or helping their communities by providing alternatives.
I just want to say how unfathomably disappointed I am in your focus on the Muslim community in your coverage of the CSD attack.
As a queer person, I am beyond angry at your choice to scapegoat an entire religious community in our name. There are extremists from every conservative background and the overwhelming majority of attacks on Pride marches around the country come from Neo-Nazi and fascist organisations.
You do not mention once the reactionary actions of this government, the defunding of queer institutions, the demonization and ridicule of the queer community by the chancellor himself (refusing to fly a pride flag, saying that the Bundestag “ist kein Zirkuszelt”).
This government and regime tacitly condones violence and discrimination against queer people and the AFD openly voices hateful homophobic messaging - and these people are paid by our taxes to do so. This is the environment this man grew up in; a Germany where AFD voters and politicians currently sitting in our government loudly call for violence against queers and no one lifts a finger.Muslims and Arabs are a marginalized and demonized minority themselves. Laying blame at the feet of the Muslim community when the government does NOTHING to deradicalize the increasingly right wing and hateful German population at large - or even themselves - is appalling.
What’s more - the police had this man on a watch list and even flagged him as at high risk of committing a violent crime. Where’s the condemnation for the police? Those same police who arrested 9 queers at IQP?I’m so disappointed that you’ve decided to toe the CDU line and perpetuate their garbage line. You have to know the German government will use this an excuse to further strip residents and citizens of their rights. I can’t believe you’d be so naive to regurgitate their Islamophobic garbage. “Christians” preach homophobic nonsense every day and there’s not a peep about that. The AFD runs entire election campaigns on a similar platform and it’s considered all in a day’s work.
This is not a problem of a religious minority. This is a German problem. Shame on you for singling out an already targeted and excluded minority. Do not do this in our name.
I think you're cherry-picking from Maurice's newsletter and ignoring large swaths. He didn't lay the blame at the Muslim community. He reported the perp's history AS WELL AS the MASSIVE German institutional failure that led to him being free. Maurice's last line -- his summation if you will -- was that Germany needs to do a better job of combatting extremism, regardless of its source.
"Berlin and Germany need to devote massive resources and get real about combatting the extremism infecting young people — whether it’s coming from Islamists or neo-Nazis, birds of a feather, it would seem."
You ask where the condemnation of the police is:
"The insane thing is that Ballout himself was classified as a “high-risk threat” and yet was allowed to walk free with a suspended sentence."
We have been nothing but critical of the current government, which seems to be defunding everything diverse, social and important while ignoring handouts (sometimes in the billions) for its buddies.
We are all angry and upset ... and we are on the same side.
Maurice’s mentions of structural failures are framed predominantly as a failure to police “Islamist extremism”, and not extremism at large. Mentions of far-right violence and “Potential right-wing terrorists” are footnotes and asides to the larger story of the number of identified “Islamic extremists” in Berlin and he doesn’t mention the rising number of cases of documented extreme right violence and intimidation. He doesn’t mention the over policing of IQP and he doesn’t mention at all this government’s systemic defunding of queer institutions and initiatives. No, I don’t think I’m cherry-picking - I’m simply taking note of the points he has chosen to highlight and focus on in his piece.
Perhaps get a Muslim person to read this and ask them if they take away the message from this that “we’re all on the same side”.
His politics have been obvious for a while. He is the co-founder of The Berliner, whose management took Hasbara to run ads for the propaganda Nova exhibition, then laid off the writers and editors in the magazine who took issue with that.
That's a very intricate sentence to circumvent the truth. The Ex-Berliner was sold to Yoram Roth's Tip Media Group in 2020.
Maurice has had nothing to do with it since.
Birds of a feather, Mr Bulkeley.
Just take the L here, man instead of digging a deeper hole and apologize for getting this one wrong. I would be shocked if the 2015 version of both of you would think Maurice‘s anti-Islam rant would be remotely appropriate to publish in these circumstances.
Calling it a an “anti-Islam” rant rings hollow. It's neither anti-Islam nor a rant. It just points to the extreme religious ideology that propelled the CSD perpetrator to murder an innocent person and injure many others. That ideology was radical Islamism, not to be confused with Islam. The guy was a salafist with links to extreme groups IRL and online. In my piece I cite Güner Falci, who grew up in Neukölln and knows her stuff. Or else check out feminist imam Seyran Ateş. Both say extremist preaching is a problem in some mosques and that homophobia is widespread in some Muslim communities. There is nothing controversial about this. If you don't identify the problematic ideology behind the attack how can you prevent crimes like this in future?
It reads as an anti-Islam rant when you SOLELY refer to a radical form of Islam as the reason behind this tragedy. There was clearly a multi-system failure with regards to this event. Where is the deserved outrage that the police was surveilling him that very day and did not prevent this attack? Where is the outrage that the event was not sufficiently protected? Where is the outrage that Merz did not mention the LGBTQIA community by name in his address- and solely referred to Western values? If you truly have sympathy for the victims why aren't you talking about the CDU's abysmal record with gay rights?
The decision to focus on an extreme minority alone is frankly bizarre and for sure does not read as caring about the victims. Just look at the feedback above from someone from the community, and you all double down instead. I am not disputing what you wrote above, I am saying that you come across as pushing an agenda, not being supportive of the community that has just been attacked and seeming like bigoted boomers who don't want to grow.