The perpetrator’s motives were not completely clear on Sunday. He is said to have had psychological problems and was even temporarily admitted to a psychiatric ward for threatening and insulting behaviour. However, there are also several indications that he sympathises with the IS terrorist militia. According to media reports, corresponding material was found in the accommodation where he lived in Würzburg. According to an eyewitness, he shouted “Allahu Akbar” – “God is greater” – during the attack. During his interrogation, Spiegel reported, he spoke of his “personal jihad”.
The German government, however, initially saw the attack as an attack against “any religion”, as government spokesperson Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter. Migration researcher Ruud Koopmans is critical of the government’s stance: “The ideological basis of this violence is not taken seriously,” Koopmans says in an interview with CH Media.
The Berlin sociologist draws a comparison: “In the issue of Islamism, we have to come to a similar analysis as in right-wing extremism”. Here, no one would think of saying that right-wing extremist violence has nothing to do with political ideologies. Especially among mentally unstable people, Islamist ideology is caught and often prepares the breeding ground for violence.
The fact that the alleged perpetrator of the Würzburg attack apparently targeted women fits the picture for Koopmans. Degradation of women, but also of homosexuals, is part of the ideology. At the end of 2020, a self-confessed Islamist attacked a gay couple in Dresden, one man died, the other was seriously injured.
A second circumstance that is often only reluctantly discussed in Germany is the fact that the alleged perpetrator of Würzburg came to Germany as a refugee in 2015 – just like the perpetrator of Dresden, a young Syrian, and just like the young man allegedly from Pakistan who attacked five people in a regional train near Würzburg in 2016 with a hatchet and a knife, injuring some of them seriously.
Koopmans quotes the federal crime statistics: “We know that since the beginning of the refugee crisis, perpetrators who came to us as refugees have been greatly overrepresented in serious violent crimes and rapes. This has to do with the fact that a relatively large number of young, single men have come with poor prospects on the labour market. A not inconsiderable number are rejected. “Under the prevailing system, however, it is almost impossible to deport these people.” The system rewards all those who manage to set foot on European soil, says Koopmans. And these are often young men and not old people or children who need our help more urgently. The problem: “Germany and Europe have no control over who comes to us.