[Skybird]

And another critic, also living under police protection since years. Ahmad Mansour is a psychologist and Islamism expert who has lived in Germany since 2004. In the fall of 2022, he will publish "Operation Allah: How Political Islam Wants to Infiltrate Our Democracy. The politcal caste hates him as much as it hates Abdel-Samad - they are party poopers at the political correctness party.

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The assassination of Rushdie has the effect of disrupting Europe. For the continent has grown tired of defending its fundamental values

Critics of Islam are a yardstick. As long as they can speak freely, the West is intact. If they feel threatened here or even have to go into hiding, the compass in Europe is askew.

Salman Rushdie has not only created great literary works and described the reality in the Muslim world in an impressive, unsparingly honest way. He has broken Muslim taboos and shown groundbreaking courage. He is a role model for many people, including Muslims who do not want to follow the revelation to the letter. But Rushdie was wrong in one respect: his desire for freedom and normality led him to underestimate his hateful opponents in their murderous endurance - with fatal consequences.

The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie has an Islamist background. This must be noted, even if relativizations can already be heard and there is an attempt at victim-perpetrator reversal, according to which the act fuels anti-Muslim racism. This is an attempt to suppress the bigger picture of which this act is a part. In fact, this attack must be added to the now very long list of terrorist actions and intimidation attempts, all of which have the same perpetrators and accomplices, and all of which are legitimized by an understanding of Islam that creates the basis for such acts.

Already in 1984 attack on Nobel Prize winner

The victims are always the same. It hits those who dare to look critically at Islam and break Muslim taboos that are considered untouchable. Just a few prominent examples in recent years: the murder of film director Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands in 2004, the violent protests following the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark in 2005, the attack on the editorial offices of "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris in 2015, the bestial murder of Samuel Paty in 2020 and the subsequent calls for a boycott of France in the Muslim world. Egyptian Nobel laureate Nagib Mahfuz was also hit by an assassination attempt back in 1984 because he was declared an apostate by Islamists. He barely survived.

These and many other attacks show how life-threatening it has become, even in the West, to criticize Islam, and how people branded in this way remain a target over long periods of time. But the perpetrators are concerned with more than just revenge against critics of Islam. They are concerned with imposing their own standards and taboos on the European West.

In doing so, they pursue two strategies to prevent criticism of Islam: a soft and a hard one. In the soft strategy, political Islam activists pose as democrats and anti-racists in order to then discredit any criticism of Islam as Islamophobic, racist and intolerant. The hard way, on the other hand, simply chooses the path of intimidation and violence. In the past seven years, I have had to experience firsthand that it is hardly possible today to speak such truths objectively, because just like Hamed Abdel-Samad and Seyran Ates, to name just two names, I live under police protection.

Under the father's thumb

The advocates of the hard-line strategy are part of a group that identifies itself exclusively through religion. Their image of God is the mirror image of their fathers, who expected blind obedience and ruled over them by suppressing any individual desires. In such an environment, it is hardly possible to develop a healthy self-esteem. Instead, characters are formed who are deeply insecure and unreflective, and who seek their support in the outside world, especially in religion.

In addition, they grow up with violence, whether at the family, religious or possibly even state level. This is because most of them live in or come from authoritarian countries that lag far behind the West in every comparison, whether it is a matter of prosperity, democracy, freedom, equal rights or technical progress. The majority of Muslim countries have been stuck in a self-inflicted crisis of purpose for decades.

In this social and political environment, politicized Islam offers a way out. "We are the solution," it promises, "we are strong, for our God is strong! We renew the glory of the past!" This psychic dynamic, however, is not about Islamic spirituality, not about religion itself. Rather, it is about twisted and obdurate interpretations of Islam that dock with authoritarian and patriarchal systems, and that promote primarily immaturity and literalism instead of self-awareness.


Children who question or doubt are considered "disobedient." In the schools of the countries of origin, children learn by heart instead of discussing. In the mosque, only the revelation of the Holy Scriptures is valid - questioning and critical thinking, on the other hand, nothing. Individuality has no value. Only the collective identity, the family, the large group, the religious community is valid.

When societies glorify their actual or supposed past, they lack energy and imagination for the present and future. Political Islam could not and cannot deliver what it promised, neither in Egypt nor in Iran, nor even in Turkey. But it is impossible to blame the infallible holy message or the way it is dealt with - it is always others who are to blame, the West, the state of Israel, criticism of Islam.

This is why people who have grown up in this way approach both the West and themselves with inferiority complexes and a deep-seated fear of being exposed. For them, religion is a kind of burka that covers their weaknesses and gives them a clear collective identity that sets them apart from others.

Faith and religion are all they have to hold on to. To criticize this religion seems to them as if their entire existence were being called into question. But this is how progress and innovation, and above all any individuality, are prevented. Ultimately, Salman Rushdie's opponents do not want to protect Islam or their God. In any case, very few have read his books and thought about his statements. No, they basically want to protect themselves alone.

Europe unprepared despite everything

Just as when Salman Rushdie published his best-known work, The Satanic Verses, in 1988 and a murder fatwa was pronounced against him the following year, according to which all Muslims were called upon to kill the British-Indian author for his insults to the Prophet and Islam, the latest assassination attempt on Rushdie has caught Europe completely unprepared.

At that time, the knowledge and experience with this kind of fanaticism was almost non-existent. At that time, few thought that such thoughts and deeds could also gain significance in and for Europe. But even now the attack comes at the apparently most inopportune time. Even now, in 2022, when knowledge and experience with Islamist fanaticism have grown considerably in the meantime - and due to terrible events - the attack on Rushdie seems more like a disturbance. For Europe seems to have grown tired of defending its own fundamental values. Apart from a few Sunday speeches after each attack, little can be heard.

The spokesmen of the public discourse are now actors who follow a simple black-and-white ideology. An ideology according to which only white, old, European men can be perpetrators. Muslims, on the other hand, are always just victims of discrimination. Criticism of them, their beliefs and actions is not considered an achievement of the Enlightenment, but is reviled as an expression of anti-Muslim racism, as right-wing ideas, and consequently as grist to the mill of populist parties.

Rushdie as a yardstick

And when Muslim actors like Salman Rushdie express this criticism? That irritates and is viewed with suspicion. Thus, a network of "leftists" tries to "protect" a majority of Muslims in Germany from the minority of their Muslim critics. The fact that they thereby make common cause with Islamist actors and, intentionally or unintentionally, become their useful accomplices does not seem to bother anyone. This anti-racism ideology is too tightly knit.

The fact that criticism by believers and non-believers alike of a religion that is misused as an instrument of domination was once a core element in the self-image of the political left has increasingly been forgotten. It seems all the more absurd, then, when Muslim critics of their own religion are dismissed by the Greens, by leftists, and even by social democrats.

Salman Rushdie and his intellectual comrades-in-arms are a yardstick for the West. As long as they can speak freely, as long as they are listened to, Europe is healthy. But as soon as they feel threatened in Europe or even go into hiding, it means that the compass in Europe is askew. Only with enlightenment, clear communication and a determined defense of values, including the consistent enforcement of the principles of the rule of law, can this culture war be won.