A brutal knife attack in Mannheim. In broad daylight, a suspected Islamist jumps on the well-known Islam critic Michael Stürzenberger and obsessively stabs him with a large knife. This falls to the ground. He is seriously injured with stab wounds to his leg and face.
A helper pulls the attacker away, who then throws himself at a police officer who has just senselessly brought a colleague of Stürzenberger to the ground. The bearded killer stabs the police officer directly in the neck twice before being shot and eliminated by oncoming officers.
Memories of the murders of Islam critics Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh are awakening
The brutal attack on Stürzenberger immediately reminds us of the assassination attempts on the Dutch Islam critic and politician Pim Fortuyn on May 6, 2002 in Hilversum and the murder of the Islam-critical director Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004. Also the knife attack by an Islamist on the writer Salman Rushdie on August 12, 2022, who lost an eye, reminds us of this attack.
In these cases there is always a tacit and perverse perpetrator-victim reversal. Why did those attacked have to criticize Islam so harshly? Why did they have to hurt the feelings of billions of Muslims?
Stürzenberger is styled as the perpetrator
This can now also be read in the first statements in the case of the attacked Michael Stürzenberger, while he and the police officer undergo emergency surgery and fight for their lives. After the highest representatives of the Federal Republic of Germany rolled up their sleeves in the case of a tasteless drinking song on Sylt: Will we now hear loud solidarity with Stürzenberger?
Chancellor Scholz responded quickly. What about the Federal President, the President of the Bundestag and the Minister of the Interior? https://t.co/Zix4BCUGeW
— Dieter Stein (@Dieter_Stein) May 31, 2024
Will we see special programs on evening television about the danger of Islamist extremism in Germany? Will there be large demonstrations against violence against those who think differently? Will the deportation of criminal perpetrators who have no right of residence finally be enforced? Will we finally take rigorous action against Islamist extremism?
Will there be similar loud reactions now as after the Sufflied of Sylt?
Not only the Stürzenberger case, but also the excesses at Humboldt University this week by pro-Palestinian extremists who destroyed the university grounds and widely defaced the interior spaces with anti-Semitic slogans could be a reason for this.
Stürzenberger simply exercised his fundamental right to freedom of expression and demonstration. Hundreds of times he sought and discussed direct confrontation in marketplaces with people who thought differently. Even those who do not share his style and his exaggerations must now show solidarity with him. Freedom of expression in Germany is dying step by step if it is not consistently defended.