Two months before the German elections, on Dec. 20, 2024, a black BMW X5 plowed into a Christmas market filled with families out shopping for the holidays in Magdeburg, Germany, about 150 miles west of Berlin. At least five people, including a child, were killed, and nearly 300 others were injured. The perpetrator, who surrendered to the police shortly afterward, was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi refugee named Taleb Abdulmohsen.
Once the news broke, a narrative war ensued with Abdulmohsen at the center. Some assumed it was an Islamist attack, a copycat of the 2016 truck attack in Berlin’s Christmas market that killed 12 people and injured dozens more. But when Abdulmohsen’s X account was identified, his anti-Islam views did not fit those of a typical Islamist. Regardless, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party used Abdulmohsen’s attack, along with a subsequent knife attack in Aschaffenburg and a car attack in Munich, to rally against immigration. The party made significant gains and the attacks pushed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to the right on immigration in the months leading up to the elections, which at least partially explains its win.
Many struggled to define the man behind the attack, yet most still managed to find at least one post by Abdulmohsen they could use to blame their political opponents and distance themselves from him. According to the various interpretations of his X feed, Abdulmohsen was a pro-Hamas, Zionist Wahhabi convert and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps spy who sympathized with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an Islamist mole, a Saudi spy, a wanted fugitive and a confused narcissist. Even the footage of Abdulmohsen’s arrest became a point of contention. Many argued over whether they truly heard him yelling “Allahu Akbar” or whether that was a bystander yelling an apparently similar-sounding common German insult.
Abdulmohsen’s attack soon became a political problem for the right and the left, both globally and inside preelection Germany, and accusations were leveled at both social and traditional media. Germany’s Social Democrat Interior Minister Nancy Faeser admonished Abdulmohsen for his “Islamophobic” views, thus implicitly condemning her electoral opponents. The AfD and its supporters pointed to “uncontrolled migration.” The German ambassador to the U.K., Miguel Berger, blamed Elon Musk for not taking action against Abdulmohsen on the X platform, while Musk demanded that Chancellor Olaf Scholz resign. Others accused the BBC of “boosting” Abdulmohsen in an old 2019 interview. JD Vance attacked The Associated Press for its passive voice in a headline on the Christmas market attack. Equally critical of the media, albeit for different reasons, were several Muslim activists and influencers in Europe who were quick to point out Abdulmohsen was not an Islamist or even a Muslim but a far-right ex-Muslim. For ex-Muslim activists and influencers, Abdulmohsen was an especially vexing case. No clear consensus emerged.
To bypass the fact that Abdulmohsen was an ex-Muslim, a picture emerged in global right-wing circles that explained his anti-Islam views as “taqiyya,” the practice of concealing one’s religious and political beliefs when threatened. A right-leaning, ex-Muslim influencer, Maral Salmassi, posted a video stating that Abdulmohsen was actually a “radical Shia,” evident by his name, and that he was engaging in taqiyya to attack both the Saudi state and ex-Muslims. Her video has gone viral, and the taqiyya thesis has so far reached 38 million viewers, thanks in part to a quote-post from Musk.
Abdulmohsen’s shocking and brutal attack did not occur out of the blue, but it was also not inevitable. As someone who has been warning about Abdulmohsen for the past seven years, I think the narrative wars surrounding his attack were less about him and his motivations and more about the polarized political atmosphere in preelection Germany and in social media globally. Taking a step back to look at his past unethical methods and rationalizations reveals a more curious story about Abdulmohsen, one that involves an internal conflict within a religious minority group in Saudi Arabia, the rise of an unprecedented Saudi diaspora, its intertwining with the Saudi feminist movement post-2015 and intercommunity disputes within the ex-Muslim community across Europe and North America. It is also the story of a personality with a heavy dose of paranoia and grandiosity, a strong sense of duty and saviorism toward female Saudi atheists seeking asylum across the world and a persistent, seven-year record of inserting himself in just causes and pursuing just ends, only to then adopt unjust means — the latest of which was shockingly violent.
Abdulmohsen’s story is a cautionary tale about a person whose better angels finally lost a long battle against the temptation — increasingly normalized — to resort to any means as long the ends are just. At age 22, Abdulmohsen found it justifiable to hit his first and only wife to compel her family and his to accept his request for a divorce. A life-defining event, he wrote about it in Arabic several times on Twitter and in a notably cynical tone: “In [our] family, the rule is this: If you are strong, then beat the weak without mercy. And at that time, I was the weak one in front of the tyranny of her family.” Years later, this moral logic would return; he would write something similar when faced with an injustice that he felt was ignored by German authorities and society: “They only understand violence.” This same moral logic permeated his early activism. When I first encountered him online in April 2017, he was willing to incite sectarian hatred against the family of a Saudi woman asylum-seeker as revenge against the Saudi government’s forced return of the refugee. This mode of rationalization and justification of violence continued to shape his life path and led to his decision to drive through the Christmas market in Magdeburg. Far from his home country and its conflicts, when Abdulmohsen felt that once again he faced an injustice he couldn’t resolve by peaceful means — this time in a country he had deemed “enlightened” — he turned to the same pattern of rationalization. Convinced that no other options remained, he once again resorted to violence. And when Germany’s governing coalition collapsed in early November and its chancellor lost a vote of confidence in parliament on Dec. 16, 2024, Abdulmohsen’s attack was his twisted attempt to use Christmas and election season to draw attention to an ongoing legal dispute with a local ex-Muslim organization that he accused of sexually harassing Saudi ex-Muslim refugees, financial corruption and colluding with the German authorities against Saudi ex-Muslim asylum-seekers. A week after his attack, on Dec. 27, 2024, the parliament was dissolved and snap elections were set for Feb. 23, 2025.
I first encountered Abdulmohsen while involved in the Saudi feminist movement in 2017. First launched in July 2016 as the “I Am My Own Guardian” campaign, this movement demanded that the Saudi state grant women full citizenship and remove the male guardianship system. It achieved unprecedented reach and influence over the course of its first year, bringing together various groups of Saudi women and old and new activists inside the country. It even reached beyond Saudi Arabia’s borders to women who had fled to seek asylum. The immense societal and political impact of the Saudi feminist movement, with its lively debates and creative rhetoric and mobilization efforts, can still be traced in today’s Saudi Arabia. It was also an influential factor in many of the government decisions to remove restrictions on Saudi women. Notably, it coincided with a steady increase in the number of Saudi women seeking asylum in Europe, North America, Australia and, to a lesser extent, South Korea.
At the time, Abdulmohsen was active on the fringes of the movement as a Saudi ex-Muslim refugee in Germany, providing assistance to Saudi women and ex-Muslims also seeking asylum. Born on Nov. 5, 1974, Abdulmohsen grew up in the majority-Shiite village of al-Qarah, near the city of Hufuf, in the predominantly Sunni Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. He graduated from medical school in Riyadh in the mid 1990s. Later, he wrote about his intellectual and social life as a Muslim, and then as an ex-Muslim, in Saudi Arabia, admonishing his tight-knit former community of Shiites and “the monsters of Al-Abdulmohsen family,” in particular.
The most formative experience of this period was his struggle to divorce his wife. He married her when he was 22 and she was 16. According to Abdulmohsen, shortly after the marriage he discovered that his wife was in a relationship that had continued past the wedding. He wanted to divorce her, but both families objected and used their “influence” within their community to make this difficult, including, Abdulmohsen claimed, through a violent attack and death threats against him by his male relatives. Abdulmohsen decided he had to hit his wife to secure a divorce, as this, according to his later rationalization, was the only solution — especially “because of their brutality against me and their denying a peaceful divorce.” In retelling the story, he disowned many of his past decisions, yet struggled to fully disavow this decision to resort to violence. “I didn’t have any other option,” he insisted. “When I tried to divorce her peacefully, they almost murdered me. They pushed me to this choice.”
Abdulmohsen was not politically prominent in his first 10 years in Germany. He went there in March 2006 to pursue specialized training in psychiatry and psychotherapy. Before moving to Bernburg, a small town of 32,000 just south of Magdeburg, he completed part of his specialist training in Stralsund in northeast Germany. In 2010 and 2011, he published two journal articles on topics related to the etiology of depression and the symptomatology of autism.
A dispute with the medical association of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern during this specialist training was the first of Abdulmohsen’s many encounters with local German state officials, with hints of hysterical overreaction that would emerge again and again during his dealings with the state. According to the Ministry of Interior in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in April 2013 Abdulmohsen called the medical association and threatened that he would “do something” that would gain international attention. Der Spiegel reported that he alluded to the Boston Marathon bombing but that it was unclear whether he was investigated at the time because he threatened a copycat attack or because his remarks were made just two days after the bombing, carried out by two Islamists. The police searched Abdulmohsen’s apartment and electronic devices but could not find any evidence of “real attack preparation.” In September 2013, he was issued an approximately $950 fine for “disturbing public peace by threatening crimes.”
In January 2014, Abdulmohsen approached authorities in Stralsund and asked for financial support. The context of his request is thus far unclear, but he allegedly threatened to commit “an act that will be remembered for a long time,” refused to leave the Stralsund office and asked an employee whether they wanted to be responsible for Abdulmohsen’s suicide — which earned him another police visit “for dangerous speech.” Ultimately, after passing his specialist examination, the medical association issued him a certificate in September 2014. A year later, in September 2015, he had a scheduled call with the chancellery to complain about the 2013 fine. He described the judges as “racist” and “said that he would get a pistol.” In October 2015, according to the Ministry of Interior in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Abdulmohsen also contacted “judicial authorities” about that same 2013 fine issued in Rostock District Court.
Contrary to claims circulating on X and in Saudi and other media reports, Abdulmohsen was not a wanted person in Saudi Arabia in 2006. A circulating copy of his Saudi passport has an issue date of Feb. 10, 2008 and an issuing location of Hufuf, Saudi Arabia, which meant he was physically in the country. If he had renewed it outside Saudi Arabia, the issuing authority would list the consulate location. Moreover, when he posted a copy of his passport in his Indiegogo fundraising campaigns from early March 2016, he claimed: “I still have a valid Saudi Arabian passport but I am showing the expired one.” If it is true that he had a valid Saudi passport in March 2016, that would also mean that he renewed it either via a consulate or in-person at a passport office in Saudi Arabia. Again, it is doubtful that this would be possible if Abdulmohsen was a wanted person in Saudi Arabia or had been requested for extradition from Germany.
His online activities prior to 2016 also cast doubt on the claim that he was a fugitive. Before gaining refugee status in July 2016, Abdulmohsen was active in an Arabic online forum called the “Free Liberal Network,” where on Oct. 14, 2015, he apparently published a poem praising Mohammed bin Salman. The poem’s first stanza read: “Who does not fear you, O icon of the Arabs? When within your eyes is a Quran and a thousand prophets. You mended my heart from the enemies in Aden, so heal the hearts that called on you in Halab [Aleppo].”
Abdulmohsen seems to praise the prince for his role in Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen, which began in March 2015, and encourage his involvement on behalf of Syrians against the Assad regime.
This all changed in 2016, with Abdulmohsen’s online activity showing a sharp increase in his political activities, initially focused on anti-Islam debates and the ex-Muslim community. In March of that year he joined Twitter and initiated online crowdfunding campaigns for two ex-Muslim-themed projects on Indiegogo — one for a book project entitled “Creative Refutation of Islam” and the other for Ex-Muslim Academy, “a residential center for a group of ex-Muslim Arabs dedicating their time to formulating refutations of Islam and spreading them in Arabic countries until the last breath of Islam.” In early April 2016, he initiated his third project, called @SaudiExMuslims, which was mainly used as a record of asylum-seekers. Its posts featuring asylum-seekers include their name, photograph, nationality, asylum country and reasons for seeking asylum.
These projects aligned him with Germany’s far-right AfD party, and he claimed he intended to contact it about the Ex-Muslim Academy in the months following establishment of the center. Abdulmohsen then proclaimed: “I and the AfD are fighting the same enemy to protect Germany.”
This sudden surge of online activism in March 2016 coincided with his asylum interview, a key stage in the process of claiming refuge in Germany, according to another Saudi refugee and human rights activist, Taha al-Hajj, who encountered Abdulmohsen there. Abdulmohsen has repeatedly explained why he sought asylum in Germany: As an ex-Muslim, he was “threatened with death for turning away from Islam,” because apostasy is criminalized in Saudi Arabia. In bold lettering at the top of each fundraising campaign description, Abdulmohsen wrote: “I am a psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia. This is the first time I publicly speak about my beliefs since I left Islam. For this reason, I am seeking political refuge in Germany to escape the death penalty in my country.”
Abdulmohsen was disappointed by his experience with the German asylum system. “The Muslims in the West get enormous support,” he wrote in June 2016, “The ex-Muslims in the West get zero to hardly any support. … For me it was zero.” Yet in July 2016, he was granted political asylum. He posted on July 28: “Germany granted me political asylum, protection, 3-year residency, and right to work in Germany.” He added three hashtags — thanking Socrates, the “philosophers of Enlightenment” and the German people.
The same month Abdulmohsen was granted political asylum in Germany witnessed the beginning of the massive Saudi feminist online campaign against the country’s male guardianship system. A wide range of constituencies was involved in this campaign, including young women who had never before been politically active. Some had positive views on atheism and expressed support of nontraditional gender roles and sexual orientation online. Others were more sporadically active, emerging in the context of a few rare university protests and university-related demands for gender equality. Other Saudi women were part of a growing diaspora composed of Saudis fleeing political repression, male guardianship or the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. This diaspora community was growing so rapidly that Princess Reema bint Bandar, before her appointment as Saudi ambassador to the U.S., launched the counterhashtag #I_Choose_To_Stay.
One of these Saudi women who decided to seek asylum was Dina Ali Lasloom. On April 10, 2017, Lasloom managed to fly out of Kuwait, but never made it to her final destination of Australia. She was stopped in transit in Manila, Philippines, where her passport was confiscated and she was held in a room until her uncles arrived at the airport. Lasloom was then forcibly boarded onto a plane back to Saudi Arabia on April 11, 2017.
Abdulmohsen first became known in Saudi feminist circles during the Lasloom case. He was among many people who tried to prevent her forced return to Saudi Arabia. This was when I got to know him closely and see his political ethics in practice. What shocked me first was his paternalism and his ease in taking consequential decisions on behalf of others. For example, he claimed that he lied to a Filipino officer and told him that Lasloom was seeking asylum in the country. He reasoned that his claim would compel the Philippine authorities to grant protection to Lasloom because the Philippines is a signatory to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Given that Lasloom was never able to make it out of the terminal to reach the immigration desk in the Philippines, this was a risky decision to make.
Once all attempts failed and Lasloom was forcibly returned to Saudi Arabia, Abdulmohsen began advocating for morally questionable retaliatory tactics. He felt it was fair to highlight the Shiite identity of her family to incite sectarian hatred against them. When he learned that her relatives were “in a high position,” he rationalized that highlighting their minority status would help in getting them fired. He also told others that Lasloom herself was Sunni from her mother’s side. He wanted to publish Lasloom’s family home address in Kuwait. Abdulmohsen assumed Saudi feminists were sectarian and would find these tactics valid. He was mistaken in this, but went ahead alone and used a sectarian approach anyway.
As part of his “support” for Lasloom, Abdulmohsen announced several fundraising campaigns. He first requested funds while she was still stuck in the Manila airport. He told his followers that anyone interested in covering costs for a lawyer should contact him directly. By the next day, Lasloom’s plane landed back in Saudi Arabia. After announcing the news, Abdulmohsen described his own asylum work and the financial burden of “a phone, internet, costs related to launching an online forum, train tickets, international phone calls, etc.” He then introduced a round of fundraising for a “Women’s Fund” and “Ex-Muslims Fund.” He claimed he would use the funds to cover costs related to individual asylum cases and to fund an online forum dedicated to the asylum-seeking process.
Writing for his new audience from the Lasloom campaign, he explained:
I started 13 months of helping Saudi women escapees from oppression and seekers of asylum abroad. On my first day on Twitter, a woman from Riyadh contacted me. Since then, I have been surprised by the large number of Saudi women that want to seek asylum. I started a Telegram group to share information for those in need and from those who could share their own information. Hundreds contacted me, perhaps more than a thousand. We collected a large amount of important information that grows every day. It has been 13 months of full-time effort, no days off. If I was ever away from Twitter [during that period], I was completing some urgent task, like my upcoming trip to help an asylum-seeker.
Finally, Abdulmohsen had a habit of blaming others when things went wrong, including those he worked with. For example, when legal challenges arose in the asylum case of two Saudi sisters stuck in Turkey later that year, he accused the well-known Saudi activist Hala al-Dosari, along with Adam Coogle from Human Rights Watch, of incompetence. He doxxed another feminist activist and accused her of serving the interests of the Saudi state because she allegedly discouraged the use of media to campaign for the case.
When I saw his questionable ethics in practice and his accusations against Saudi feminist activists, I warned against working with Abdulmohsen in a Nov. 27, 2017 post on X. His reaction further solidified my assessment of him. He explicitly threatened me with retaliation via German police in Berlin. “Be my witnesses, my readers,” he posted, “when Nora al-Doaiji comes to Germany, I will file a complaint against her with the German police. All I want from her is to inform me when she is scheduled to arrive in Germany. Then whoever has a right will take it.” Over a year later, he claimed he would also contact the FBI and asked his followers for “any information you may have,” this time adding my middle name to his post.
Abdulmohsen gradually increased his profile and contacts among international journalists and non-Saudi activists, particularly after his involvement in the asylum case of Rahaf al-Qunun. On Jan. 5, 2019, news broke on social media that this 18-year-old Saudi woman was stuck in an airport in Thailand during her attempt to seek asylum in Australia. Like Lasloom, al-Qunun was en route from Kuwait when she was stopped in transit in Bangkok. And like Lasloom, al-Qunun’s passport was confiscated, with local officials persuading her to either take the next Kuwait Airlines flight home or wait until her father and brother could fly to the airport. Unlike Lasloom, however, al-Qunun was making her escape in a post-Jamal Khashoggi world, in which the Saudi state was under intense international scrutiny after the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, who had been living in exile as a U.S. resident since June 2017, was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. And she did so as an ex-Muslim.
Her case and the likelihood of being forcibly returned quickly garnered international media attention. A Canadian journalist, Sophie McNeill, flew to Thailand and stayed with al-Qunun as she barricaded herself in an airport transit hotel room. Thai lawyers filed an injunction against her deportation. When Thai officials attempted to deny al-Qunun asylum, McNeill’s presence deterred them. When Australia canceled her travel visa, the UNHCR got involved. On Jan. 6, al-Qunun posted a formal plea for refugee status in any country to protect her from “getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family” on Twitter. Later that day, Germany’s ambassador to Thailand commented: “We share the great concern for Rahaf Mohammed and are in contact with the Thai side and the embassies of the countries she contacted.” By the next day, al-Qunun was “under the care” of the U.N. refugee agency. Then a video leaked online showing a Saudi Embassy representative telling Thai officials, “I wish they had taken her phone instead of her passport.” On Jan. 11, 2019, Canada granted her asylum at the urging of UNHCR officials in Bangkok. She arrived at Toronto Pearson International Airport the next day, where she was warmly welcomed by Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland.
The high-profile nature of al-Qunun’s case and its successful conclusion boosted the legitimacy of many people who helped her, including Abdulmohsen. “Taleb helped me escape Saudi Arabia!” al-Qunun posted, “I remember the website he made back in 2016!” Al-Qunun’s journey began with the support of a group of like-minded female friends, including one based in Canada, and a period of online research and preparation. While she was in Thailand, Abdulmohsen’s role was not a primary one, nor was he alone in rallying activists around the world.
Nevertheless, his profile was increasing both in and outside of Germany. He was featured in an article in the February 2019 issue of Der Spiegel on a Saudi woman asylum-seeker named Sarah, and invited for a long-form interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in June 2019. He was also featured in a now-infamous BBC News video interview in July 2019, titled “The Website Helping Ex-Muslims Flee the Gulf.” On Jan. 30, 2019, he joined a panel on the Gulf Talks program of Alhurra, a U.S.-owned TV channel in Arabic. The talk was titled, “What are the causes behind the rising wave of atheism in Saudi Arabia?” He introduced himself as an activist who has “helped thousands of Saudis seeking asylum and followed the cases of hundreds of them in different countries.” In several media reports, his website earned praise during interviews with women and ex-Muslim refugees in varying countries who often described it as a useful resource.
The Canadian press was particularly interested in this topic, given that al-Qunun ultimately found refuge in Canada. In early March 2019, Abdulmohsen proudly posted a picture on Twitter where a Canadian journalist was pointing her camera directly at him, likely ahead of an upcoming story. He was featured in Canada’s premier investigative documentary program, “The Fifth Estate,” alongside “a network of [mostly Saudi and Emirati] women [who] watched over Rahaf Mohammed’s escape to the West.” Airing on CBC News in March 2019, the documentary cast the network as a response to the failed Lasloom case and included Abdulmohsen and his website. “I did everything I could to save her, but that failed,” he said in the documentary. “I thought, ‘I have to do something.’”
The case of al-Qunun was an important moment for Abdulmohsen. He was finally vindicated as an activist. At long last, he had found people that he felt worked efficiently with him and clearly favored his persistent demand for always going public and using media attention. When Rahaf was successfully granted asylum in Canada, Abdulmohsen took to Twitter to celebrate the win. He thanked “real” activists who helped in the case and others who praised his role in it, like Australia-based Sarah Ruby. He contrasted them to other activists who he implied were either incompetent or potential spies. He praised the work of Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch in contrast to that of Coogle. In concluding his lengthy thread on the al-Qunun case, he thanked two well-known Saudi dissidents in the U.K. and Canada and cited their support for the case. Even his old 2016 “projects” for ex-Muslims were seemingly coming to fruition. He could hardly keep up with sharing all the Saudi ex-Muslim “coming out” statements and photographs on his @SaudiExMuslims account. In one of his several 2019 interviews, Abdulmohsen boldly declared: “I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.”
Abdulmohsen’s radicalization can be traced to his feud with activists in an ex-Muslim organization in Germany. Following the 9/11 attacks, the ex-Muslim movement grew as part of the global rise of a “New Atheism” spearheaded by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who promoted secular humanism, scientism and biological evolution. Publishing in a post-9/11 world, the New Atheist authors declared that God was a delusion, religion held no social or cultural benefit and faith led to immoral acts. Atheists from Muslim backgrounds, like Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, became key figures in this global phenomenon, and the “ex-Muslim” label began to circulate.
Signs of internal division among the New Atheists began as early as 2011, perhaps best symbolized by what became known as “elevatorgate,” in which Dawkins mocked feminist atheist Rebecca Watson after she spoke of her experience of sexual harassment. But the splits didn’t stop the New Atheists from being an important part of prominent events like the 2015 “Je Suis Charlie” campaign, which expressed solidarity with the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo after its office was attacked for publishing a cartoon portraying the Prophet Muhammad. New Atheists were also highly visible in debates on immigration and integration amid a growing influx of refugees into Europe, particularly after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 “open door” policy allowed tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the country. Yet the splits were widening, and by November 2015, The New Republic would ask: “Is the New Atheism Dead?”
In 2020, two of the most prominent ex-Muslims, Hirsi Ali and Sarah Haider, publicly exchanged letters on “wokeism.” Writing against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ and #MeToo movements, Haider argued that, contrary to Hirsi Ali’s concerns, the “culture war” was not yet lost among youth. There was still hope. In 2023, Haider announced her departure as executive director of Ex-Muslims of North America, and on Jan. 1 of this year, she penned an essay bidding “goodbye to organized atheism altogether.” While her reconversion is not imminent, she has “become friendlier to the idea of religion as a social good.” For her part, Hirsi Ali announced her conversion to Christianity in November 2023.
Some right-wing commentators blamed the New Atheists for their role in ushering in the “Woke Mind Virus.” Countering it, these commentators claim, will entail an embrace of the “culture of Christianity,” if not religion itself. In a 2023 interview with Jordan Peterson, Richard Dawkins identified himself as a “cultural Christian.” For those New Atheists who veer to the right, they have decided that religion has social and cultural worth because its absence has led to “wokeism” and “suicidal empathy” with immigrants who threaten “Christian” civilization. On the latter point, they even find allies among some ex-Muslims — including Abdulmohsen.
While the global New Atheism wave was fading, the ex-Muslim community was on a different trajectory, with its membership growing and its issues taking on their own distinct character. In 2007, a group of female Iranian ex-Muslim refugees across Europe, joined by others from the Middle East, started building ex-Muslim institutions, the first of which was the Central Council of ex-Muslims in Cologne, Germany. Many of its founding members were from leftist and communist backgrounds. Its name was a play on the Cologne-based Central Council of Muslims, which was founded in 1994 and is the largest organization of its kind in Germany. In a 2007 interview with Der Spiegel, the ex-Muslim group’s German-Iranian chairman, political activist Mina Ahadi, was critical of the German government’s approach to Islam and Muslim organizations in the country. “I don’t think it’s possible to modernize Islam,” she proclaimed. “We want to form a counterweight to the Muslim organizations. The fact that we’re doing this under police protection shows how necessary our initiative is.” A month later, on March 25, Der Spiegel published its now infamous cover story, “The Silent Islamization of Germany.” Years later, Abdulmohsen would reference this story in his final interview with the far-right RAIR Foundation USA, which described the Der Spiegel piece as exposing “this deliberate agenda long before it became politically fashionable to dismiss such concerns as ‘right-wing conspiracy theories.’”
Soon after its founding, the ex-Muslim council would open branches in other parts of Europe. Its British branch was co-founded in June 2007 by British-Iranian activist Maryam Namazie. A Dutch branch was also founded by Dutch-Iranian activist Ehsan Jami but dissolved in 2008. In July 2013, Namazie supported the establishment of a French branch founded by Palestinian ex-Muslim activist Waleed al-Husseini. In September 2013, the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) launched independently, co-founded by Haider and another Pakistani-American activist, Muhammad Syed, in Washington, D.C. An EXMNA branch in Toronto, Canada was also founded.
One of the issues that most ex-Muslims in Europe and North America were very critical of was “multiculturalism” and its misuse by the “regressive left.” The core idea here is that there is an unlikely alliance between leftists and Islamists — an alliance that ex-Muslims believe is severely detrimental and putting the cultural and secular identity of “the West” at risk. Hence, many expressed concern over integration policies and increased immigration from Muslim-majority countries like Syria and Afghanistan.
If ex-Muslim activists have largely agreed on this core problem, they have differed on how best to solve it. Some of them have taken a slight turn to the left: They no longer hate Muslims or the Muslim community, just Islam. Their task is now a more complicated one, not least because of a rising far right that increasingly favors an idea of Christian civilization and is against immigrants of any background. Ali Rivzi has advocated a similar position since 2017, supporting both secularism and Islam as a culture. He sees the left and right conflating Islam-as-ideology with Muslim identity and community. Echoing Dawkins’ description of himself as a cultural Christian who enjoys Christmas carols, Rivzi has proclaimed that he is a cultural Muslim because he enjoys the Eid holiday. This is an uneasy position for ex-Muslim atheists to take and is still debated. In practice, their rhetoric may have shifted on the point about hatred toward the Muslim community, but their concerns remain the same. For them, the far left is still enabling what they perceive as the detrimental aspects of Muslims and Islam, even if the far right may not be a viable alternative. Immigration is not a conspiracy against the West, but it should include better vetting of immigrants to ensure their compliance with “Western values.”
Other ex-Muslims have felt compelled to turn firmly to the right. Some still adopt more liberal stances on issues like LGBTQ+ rights, but others do not. Like Abdulmohsen, they find far-right figures to fit their desired degree of frank criticism of Islam, Muslims and immigration from Muslim countries. And they agree with notions of liberal “hypocrisy” on free speech. For instance, the ex-Muslim British Pakistani Nuriyah Khan spoke with Tommy Robinson on his Silenced podcast in June 2024. After the episode, titled “Britain’s Islamization,” Nuriyah questioned the “far-right” label: “There’s a glaring similarity with the concerns that Tommy Robinson has for his country with what vocal ex-Muslims expose about the nature of Islam and why we should fear it ever amassing any power. … nearly every single liberal ex-Muslim will say pretty much the same thing as Tommy about Islam.”
Given these complexities within the ex-Muslim community, Abdulmohsen was not an outlier in holding what may initially seem to be inconsistent ideological and political positions. He identified himself as a liberal ex-Muslim and was also pro-LGBTQ+ rights. While he often praised any news stories that suggested Muslim countries could be modernized and their Islamists contained, he typically tried to “enlighten” Muslims to leave Islam rather than reform it, and he was also comfortable writing posts they might find blasphemous. His overall paternalism toward them suggests he may not have necessarily hated them. Yet he had no qualms allying himself with far-right groups to counter what he viewed as the Islamization of Europe.
In Abdulmohsen’s final interview, his Dec. 12 appearance with RAIR Foundation USA on Rumble, he claimed that his work was supporting asylum-seekers. Surprisingly, he said that he helped both Muslims and ex-Muslims. He also mentioned that he did not have an issue with “postmodern” issues like affirmative action. The host, who uses the pseudonym “Vlad Tepes,” probed Abdulmohsen about his experience with “legitimate refugees” versus “the throngs of people just showing up in boats” in German and European states. In drawing this contrast, Vlad asked: “Do you find that there is a discrepancy between the people that you are trying to help and how the state is dealing with the people that are trying to march through Christmas markets this weekend?”
The case of the three al-Mogbel sisters, who left Saudi Arabia and sought asylum in Germany, ignited a feud between Abdulmohsen and other ex-Muslims in Germany that would ultimately lead to his violent act. On Jan. 25, 2017, the sisters posted their full names and “coming out” statements as ex-Muslims on social media. By 2019, their public accounts were either inactive or deleted. Abdulmohsen claims that it was around that time that the three women first contacted him with complaints about the Atheist Refugee Relief (ARR) organization.
ARR, or Saekulare Fluechtlingshilfe in German, was co-founded in Cologne by the Syrian ex-Muslim refugee who uses the pseudonym Rana Ahmad, along with Dittmar Steiner and Stefan Paintner. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to providing nonreligious refugees with practical assistance, including “finding a place to live, administrative visits, psychological counseling, language courses, etc.” It also “supports them in their travels to conferences and networking meetings as well as in their appearances in the press, radio, and television.” ARR is supported by the Central Council of ex-Muslims in Germany and the Giordano Bruno Foundation, a “think tank for humanism and enlightenment.”
ARR built its identity primarily around the story of Ahmad, whom Abdulmohsen later would consider one of his main enemies. A Syrian woman, Ahmad lived in Saudi Arabia for 29 years and, upon leaving Islam, fled to Turkey. From there, she traveled to Germany on a boat and claimed asylum in 2015. Her journey was supported by Armin Navabi of Atheist Republic, Imtiaz Shams of Faith to Faithless and Namazie, the British-Iranian activist, in addition to Dawkins and the Ex-Muslims of North America. Ahmad quickly immersed herself in the ex-Muslim and New Atheist groups in Europe and North America. She spoke at conferences, co-founded an organization, launched campaigns and grew her network. On Feb. 25, 2019, Dawkins interviewed Ahmad — introducing her as a “Saudi Arabian atheist” — to promote her book “Women Aren’t Allowed To Dream Here.”
Abdulmohsen’s relationship with ARR and the Central Council of ex-Muslims in Germany fluctuated over the years. Starting in December 2017, he worked with members from ARR and the council on at least one asylum case. Despite their joint effort, a Saudi ex-Muslim named Ahmad al-Asmari was deported from Germany in mid-January 2018.
Perhaps this failed joint effort was a trigger. By November and December 2018, Abdulmohsen posted about “the destructive role of Rana Ahmad, Mina Ahadi, and Stefan Paintner, which, in my opinion, can best be explained by the hypothesis that it serves the interests of the Saudi government.” He argued that the organization was “spreading fear and anxiety” among Saudi ex-Muslim women, suggesting that they should not “come out” online because it “puts you at huge risk” in Germany and claiming that simply stating “ex-Muslim” in their asylum applications was sufficient to gain refugee status. Abdulmohsen insisted that “atheism alone cannot guarantee asylum.” He reiterated these critiques as part of his victory lap on Twitter following the case of al-Qunun. Capitalizing on his newfound legitimacy among some audiences, he contrasted his winning activist strategy in the case of al-Qunun with what he described as the “misleading information” on asylum-seeking spread by Ahmad. To back up this claim, he cited a short video Ahmad made in November 2017 on the asylum process for Saudis in Canada; “hear Rana herself say that you must be on Canadian territory to apply for asylum in Canada,” Abdulmohsen said. He gloated, “If Rahaf [al-Qunun] had believed her, she would have given up and never reached Canada.”
It is possible that Abdulmohsen’s growing popularity after the case of al-Qunun and his repeated criticism of ARR are what first led the three al-Mogbel sisters to approach him about ARR sometime around March 2019. The sisters complained that when they relocated from Magdeburg to Cologne, ARR offered them residence in the studio apartment of the co-founder, Steiner. The women were allegedly given a room but then moved to either a hallway or a walk-through living room space, with one mattress on the floor. Eight months later, in August 2018, they moved out to live in their own apartment. During their search for a new residence, they were turned away from a homeless shelter and received no replies from women’s shelters. The three sisters complained about their negative experience while living with Steiner. They claimed that this experience included many instances of sexual harassment and that they were encouraged to try drugs and alcohol and to go out to clubs or a bar. They recorded a video of a man who appears to resemble Steiner standing in a kitchen, leaning against a counter and wearing a T-shirt and underwear or boxers, but no pants. Their complaints also allege inappropriate behavior from Ahmad, including what they claimed was normalizing unwanted physical touch from Steiner in at least one instance.
Upon hearing their story, Abdulmohsen did not waste a minute. After several attempts to get the police involved, he was frustrated with the lack of response. As he has done in the past, he took matters into his own hands. In December 2020, he posted the sisters’ recorded video of a man who appeared to be Steiner. Shortly afterward, the sisters allegedly received an angry phone call from Paintner telling one of the sisters that she “should think about the consequences.” Later, Ahmad allegedly showed up at another sister’s workplace and “asked if [she] wanted to lose her job.”
Between December 2020 and February 2021, Abdulmohsen’s actions went into overdrive. In December, he filed a criminal complaint, writing “Stefan Paintner contacted [al-Mogbel] and she is very afraid of Stefan Paintner and Dittmar Steiner.” He also referred the police to earlier reports he filed about ARR and Ahmad. “Please ensure the protection of the girls,” he wrote. “This abuse should not continue indefinitely.” In January and February 2021, he also submitted complaints about “potential fraud” and “breach of trust” by Ahmad and Paintner in the context of two specific fundraising campaigns on behalf of Saudi women asylum-seekers.
These actions went nowhere. The financial fraud case was closed in May 2021. Abdulmohsen requested that the case be reopened in November 2021 in light of “new evidence” in the form of a 12-page fax, but he claimed on social media that “the Cologne Police didn’t investigate again.” Initially, his 2020 criminal complaint against Steiner compelled the Cologne Police to obtain witness statements from the al-Mogbel sisters. The complaint was ultimately closed by the Cologne Public Prosecutor in February 2023, however, because the sisters did not want to file their own complaints against Steiner. “After two years of investigation,” Abdulmohsen wrote on X, this decision came “without interviewing Dittmar, Stefan, or Rana Ahmad, not even for a minute!”
Meanwhile, Steiner initiated a civil defamation case against Abdulmohsen. Abdulmohsen found it suspicious that the Cologne Public Prosecutor decided to formally close his 2020 criminal complaint against Steiner just two months before the latter’s testimony in the defamation case, which was scheduled for April 2023. “It was like they were giving him a ‘green light’ and reassurance before he gave his testimony under oath,” he wrote on social media.
Abdulmohsen did not give up, though, and on Feb. 27, 2023, he submitted what he called “new evidence” to various offices in an attempt to reopen the financial fraud complaint. He sent a 30-page fax to the public prosecutor, claiming that the first page “shows that Rana Ahmad didn’t send the donations to the four Saudi women until Nov. 21, 2021, which is about two years after raising the funds and about seven months after she told police ‘I can prove to you that I sent the funds to the four women.” He headed to various offices, handing over a USB with this evidence at the Cologne Police station, and made phone calls demanding to be heard and that his evidence be preserved.
His attempts to follow up on his complaints became more threatening during his contact with the office of the minister of interior, seen in snippets from a confidential 16-page report on the Magdeburg attack from the German Ministry of Interior’s Federal Criminal Police Office, posted by WELT’s Tim Rohn on Twitter. After calling repeatedly and stating, “In all honesty, if you block all peaceful methods for justice, what is left?” Abdulmohsen claimed Ahmad “or someone in her office” filed a complaint against him. In a written response to the office, he concluded: “The prosecutors only act quickly against me. I am disappointed. I am puzzled.” A month or so later, he met with the Cologne deputy prosecutor to follow up about the fax, but he was told it hadn’t arrived yet “due to bureaucracy.”
Two significant setbacks in August 2023 caused Abdulmohsen to lose what remained of his faith in Germany’s institutions and prompted his final decision to pursue violence. First, he lost in the defamation lawsuit brought against him by Steiner. Abdulmohsen said it was at this moment that he “realized the agenda of the police and the prosecution in this investigation. No matter what the victims’ statements said, the investigation would be closed so that Dittmar could win his civil lawsuit against me … this was their dirty goal.” He also accused his lawyer of not using proper evidence and making it difficult for Abdulmohsen to obtain relevant police records that he deemed crucial. Moreover, he accused the judge of making up statements attributed to Steiner and Ahmad to benefit them, while making it impossible for him to respond. He also claimed that the judge altered dates to downplay an alleged donations scheme.
ُThe second setback was when he learned that the prosecutor’s office was no longer entertaining his concerns about Ahmad’s alleged financial corruption and that his old criminal complaint would remain closed. Abdulmohsen found this out in a way that he clearly found personally offensive. Having submitted his new evidence in late February 2023, he last heard from the prosecutor’s office in April, when the office mailed him a letter with his USB stick, stating the evidence was insufficient. On Aug. 16, 2023, he went to the prosecutor’s office to follow up about the 30-page fax and whether they had accepted his appeal and restarted their investigation. In response, Abdulmohsen claimed he was “simply handed a copy of the May 2021 decision” that closed his complaint. This sent him into a fit of rage. Turning to X just days later, he pinned a now infamous “poll” to the top of his profile: “Below you will find evidence that Rana Ahmad [he included her doxxed legal name here] hid donations collected on behalf of four Saudi women … and how the Prosecution evaded a serious investigation.” He added, “A poll for theoretical purposes: would you blame me if I murdered 20 German people at random because of what Germany is doing to the Saudi opposition?”
After these setbacks, Abdulmohsen became an increasingly enraged and violently bitter individual, vowing revenge against the German authorities in a marked change from previous years. Previously, when he was threatened online he often responded with confidence in the German system, directing people to meet him at the Magdeburg police station and even sharing its full address once, as he did in July 2019. And when speaking in a YouTube video about the asylum-seeking process in Germany, he said, “In Germany, the process is very straightforward, whether you requested asylum at the airport or the reception center. If it’s a slow day and there’s no long line ahead of you, you could even find yourself housed at the [refugee reception] center within 30 minutes.” And while he acknowledged that the asylum interview may be difficult because the officer doesn’t always understand the nuances of Saudi women’s asylum cases, he nonetheless reassured prospective asylum-seekers. After being granted asylum and leaving the reception center, they would have various German state resources available to empower themselves, starting with the job center, he said. He encouraged asylum-seekers to adopt lawful habits like never boarding a train without a ticket, always paying back state loans and finding a translator to keep up with letters from the job center.
Even as late as spring 2022, Abdulmohsen had not yet written off the German authorities entirely. By his own admission, he claimed that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, had taken over his fraud complaint. He welcomed this alleged BfV involvement and took credit for it as “because of my [12-page] fax,” submitted to Cologne Police in November 2021. Alongside a screenshot of what he claimed were messages between Ahmad and a Gulf-based campaign donor, he proclaimed that she “thought she was being investigated by the Police, but it was the BfV. They notify me because I am the original filer of the complaint, so they update me that BfV was investigating.” In May 2022, he also claimed his evidence led to ARR’s internal restructuring, which he claimed included the three co-founders handing over their responsibilities in November 2021. As of May 2020, ARR no longer listed Steiner as on its board of directors. In English, Abdulmohsen wrote in May 2022: “Do you think corrupt people of such magnitude, who did everything to destroy Saudi asylum cases, will suddenly announce ending their activism to facilitate ‘generational change’? I don’t think so.”
This all began to change between February and August 2023. Having engaged with several bureaucracies and different offices across varied cities for years, he increasingly saw them all as one actor, a perception that was foundational to his later justification of violence against an even broader target: the German citizenry. Abdulmohsen began to see the trajectory of his two complaints, each of which had its own set of documents, files and assigned staff, as a result of coordinated actions stemming from one “political agenda” and one actor — namely, the “German authorities.” This “agenda” was to protect ARR as an organization, disregard harm toward Saudi asylum-seekers — whether from ARR or the Saudi state — and work to cover up any paper trail that could have allowed him to file complaints against the German state itself.
Given his growing resentment toward “German authorities,” it is no wonder then that Abdulmohsen began to find the AfD’s objection to “state censorship” and “crackdowns” and accusations of “hypocrisy” more and more appealing. A clear example of this is a June 2024 post in German that he addressed to the co-chair of the party, Alice Weidel, on X: “In my experience, the German police are the real drivers of Islamism in Germany. My experience is 7 years of police using dirty tactics against me and other critics of Islam, most recently in March 2024, to destroy our anti-Islam activism. The left are crazy. We need AfD to protect the police from them.”
He also began alluding to the possibility of resorting to violence in his communication with state officials. In an email to the Cologne public prosecutor’s office on Aug. 21, 2023, he wrote: “Therefore, I have no guilty conscience for the events that will happen in the next few days, in order to restore justice.” This earned him a warning from Magdeburg police. In the warning, the police warned Abdulmohsen about his claims that judges and prosecutors in Germany are corrupt: “You are hereby requested to refrain from such letters, in particular threatening consequences as a result of decisions of a public prosecutor’s office enforced under the rule of law. Even if you have not threatened any concrete consequences in this case, you are hereby urged to refrain from writing in this form. This could possibly lead to criminal charges.”
Abdulmohsen’s conspiratorial, right-wing and violent tendencies intensified in 2024 as it became increasingly clear that he was losing his civil lawsuit appeal. He claimed that “strange” issues began to arise with his second lawyer, beginning in February 2024. And while the appeal was ongoing, he began to seriously alienate his ex-Muslim circles. In May 2024, when Salwan Momika, an Iraqi anti-Islam refugee in Sweden, wrote a post in defense of Abdulmohsen, the Tanzanian-Australian ex-Muslim Zara Kay called him out for “quite literally working for the Saudi government” against ex-Muslims After she wrote that, “all hell broke loose,” as she noted on X. “In the name of the Saudi military opposition,” Abdulmohsen wrote in a direct message: “I ORDER you to delete your comments about me. Otherwise, the Saudi military opposition will consider your comments an act of aggression against the Saudi nation.” (The “Saudi military opposition” is a group Abdulmohsen declared to exist sometime after August 2023, with no known members other than himself.) She replied, “So you’re threatening me now? I’ll surely send this to all the lawyers you’re trying to contact, including Amnesty, HRW. But go ahead.” In response, Abdulmohsen simply wrote: “You will regret your attack on the Saudi nation.” Alarmed, she told him that “maybe this should be reported to Swedish and German governments as well.” In a final message, Abdulmohsen declared to Kay: “By the end of the year, I won’t exist anymore. Because I would have brought justice to Germany. But other members of the Saudi military opposition will take care. WE PLEDGE.”
When he finally lost his appeal against the civil lawsuit in August 2024, Abdulmohsen reached out to several people in his network, including ex-Muslims, human rights lawyers and journalists, sharing his “evidence” in the hope they would help spread his version of events. As he sought this public support with mixed results, his justifications of violence intensified.
In September 2024, he contacted Rivzi, who rebuffed him. Abdulmohsen responded: “Translation of what you say: stop protecting Saudis from [Rana Ahmad]. … The probability that I slaughter random German citizens, due to the cover up played by German authorities, is higher than the probability that I stop my activism against this corrupt organization.” (Rizvi didn’t notice the message until after Abdulmohsen’s attack.) Abdulmohsen also contacted the Berlin-based British journalist James Jackson. Along with tweets of translated witness statements, he sent a video, with the AI-generated likeness and voice of Musk, that fully outlines his case. Jackson messaged back, “Dude I am not watching anything with AI Elon Musk.” It seems Abdulmohsen left it at that. Reflecting back on this exchange after the attack, Jackson recently commented: “I still can’t believe the terror suspect DM’d me his video and I told him I wouldn’t watch anything with AI Elon Musk.”
It is unclear when exactly Abdulmohsen decided to turn his verbal threats into violent action. In August 2023, he publicly declared on X: “My decision at that moment was final: either justice, or justice. … I bear no moral responsibility for the conclusion we have reached; my conscience is clear. … it is not I who has put us in this situation. [And] those who led us here should accept the consequences.”
This rhetoric around justice would soon become more explicitly violent. On Aug. 6, 2024, Abdulmohsen posted a message in a Telegram channel he launched in January 2023 under the title “The Case of Rana Ahmed.” He wrote: “Today, all evidence was sent to the Court. After that, either justice in the simple way, or justice that makes global headlines. … We do not fear death, rather we pledge that we will bring justice at any cost.”
Once it became clear he would lose his appeal later that month, his rage reemerged online, filled with his most angry, violent threats against the German state and its citizenry. Abdulmohsen frequently referenced “the full case files from the Prosecutor’s Office,” which he claimed to have obtained “for the first time … only a month earlier.” It held documents that he alleged he had never seen before, confirmed his earliest suspicions and revealed new “conspiracies” involving a stolen letter, USB stick and two internal records from Cologne’s police and deputy prosecutor. Collectively, he argued on X, these documents revealed a pattern of German authorities refusing to investigate his complaints, tampering with a paper trail so he couldn’t sue them for negligence and pressuring his lawyers to conceal “the Dittmar case file” to protect ARR. “They didn’t realize I would get a copy of this Cologne Police document!” he proclaimed on X. Now, he felt he had “clear proof” that German authorities were culpable. In an Aug. 13, 2024 public conversation, or “space,” on X, Abdulmohsen mused openly about the supposed irony that “blowing up embassies or murdering innocents with a knife” would make him a terrorist when, he claimed, “there is no method for justice except explosion and murder. … If they were [committed to justice], they would have commented on the evidence in the Prosecutor’s file…. Page 111! My lawyer wrote this page. Don’t tell me it is something unconvincing or unclear … they ignored it all.” Clearly, Abdulmohsen’s radicalization was complete.
The decision to resort to violence is rarely a clear-cut moment, but a labyrinthine process in which one’s conscience is gradually silenced. Sometime during the end of his appeal process, Abdulmohsen allegedly threatened one of his lawyers, his family and his law office employees. In response, the Magdeburg police delivered a warning to Abdulmohsen at his workplace on Oct. 4, 2024. He then took holiday and sickness leave, starting that month, and repeatedly stayed at a Magdeburg hotel in December, potentially to scout out the area.
Just six days before his attack, on Dec. 14, 2024, Abdulmohsen wrote several messages on his Telegram channel called “The Case of Rana Ahmed.” He wrote:
If I am assassinated, the culprit is the German authorities. And if they accuse Daesh, that is a lie because I haven’t received any serious threats from Islamists over the 9 years of my rights activism on Twitter. Last year, I received serious threats from supporters of the Saudi government and I reported them. Since then a year has passed and I haven’t faced any harassments, except from German authorities due to my insistence on exposing a corrupt organization that the German police created specifically to destroy Saudi atheist asylum-seekers.
He then wrote his will, donated his belongings to Germany’s Red Cross and made his final videos to be released just after his attack.
If we were to believe the terrorism expert Brian Jenkins’ claim that “terrorism is a theater” and that “terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at the actual victims,” then Abdulmohsen’s act was designed to attract the attention of the global far right. Before his attack, he presented his case by speaking through an AI-generated video designed to appeal to Musk’s far-right followers. He then spoke with RAIR Foundation USA, a media organization founded by far-right influencer Amy Mek in 2016, to reach its right-wing audiences in the United States. Through these far-right appeals, Abdulmohsen wanted to “expose” ARR-affiliated ex-Muslim activists for their “destructive role” against three Saudi women refugees, but also for their relationship with German authorities that were facilitating the “Islamization of Europe.” These ex-Muslims aren’t who you think they are, Abdulmohsen wanted the far right to understand. They are hypocrites who critique the left-Islamist alliance which they themselves precipitate. How else could he explain what he perceived as a cover-up of sexual harassment and financial corruption within an ex-Muslim organization?
What Abdulmohsen apparently failed to anticipate is that the AfD and the far right more broadly would not necessarily take him seriously or easily recognize him as one of their own. Given his refugee, Muslim and Arab background, his position in the far right was a precarious one. When Abdulmohsen — a refugee from Saudi Arabia — violently drove into a Christmas market ahead of Germany’s February elections, he sealed his own political fate and personal legacy. For the AfD and far right more generally, and even for their ex-Muslim supporters, Abdulmohsen was and always will be simply an Islamist, albeit practicing taqiyya, no matter his alleged evidence of sexual harassment and financial corruption against ARR, his long public profile as an ex-Shiite Muslim or even what he posted online in support of far-right European politicians. No AI Elon Musk will ever change that.
On Dec. 23, the AfD’s Weidel held a rally at Magdeburg. While on stage before a large crowd, she spoke with full confidence as she gave the party’s final word on Abdulmohsen: “We are gathered here one day before Christmas Eve to remember the victims of a senseless act … an act of an Islamist filled with hatred toward the very essence of human solidarity. Toward us as humans, toward us as Germans and toward us as Christians.”
Even the few ex-Muslims who still believed that he was one of them disowned him. Following his recent attack, al-Qunun, whose case was the main reason for his popularity, stated on X: “The day will come when Europe will not accept ANYONE from the Middle East, whether they are muslims or ex muslims. … Honestly, shame on you Taleb. You ruined ex muslims’ image.”
But it was the Saudi women refugees in Germany and elsewhere who felt the immediate consequences of his attack, despite his pretense of saving them. One of them, who uses the pseudonym Sally, faced a flood of taunting and threatening messages online. One asked, “How does it feel to watch the closing of the [open] door on asylum?” She felt the need to issue a statement asserting that “Taleb A.’s allegations about Saudi refugees in Germany are not true. … From my own experience, neither I nor any refugee that I know, whether from Saudi or any other country, have faced any of the things he has alleged” about targeted mistreatment by the German state. Then she added that even if Abdulmohsen’s allegations about the German authorities were true, “that wouldn’t have justified in any shape or form a terrorist act committed against innocents in Germany or anywhere else in the world.” And to her concerned X followers, Sally also confidently asserted: “Asylum is a human right protected in constitutions, don’t overreact. Yes, Taleb is a Saudi refugee, our asylum cases may be affected. [But] German law is fair and doesn’t collectively punish you for another’s actions.” We will have to wait and see whether Sally’s optimism trumps Abdulmohsen’s cynicism about Germany in the long run. Based on its recent federal election results, Germany did not fully embrace the AfD, but the far right did leave its mark on German parties’ policy platforms and rhetoric, especially on immigration.
Abdulmohsen’s attack had its strongest impact in the electoral district where it took place, Magdeburg, where support for the AfD jumped to 32.2% — up from 15.1% in 2021. Across Germany, the AfD garnered 20.5%, nearly double its previous strongest showing of 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered Germany’s national parliament. The center-left party of Scholz and Faeser experienced a “bitter defeat,” its worst result since World War II, while the conservative bloc won the election with 28.4% of the vote.
After shifting his party rightward on immigration, Germany’s center-right opposition leader Friedrich Merz is poised to be the country’s next chancellor. In reaction to Abdulmohsen’s attack in Magdeburg and a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, Merz declared in a late January speech that these attacks would not be “the new normal” and promised stronger border controls through imposing an “effective entry ban” for all individuals lacking travel documents, including asylum-seekers, starting “on the first day of my tenure as chancellor.”
This attack had an impact on German politics and society — though it’s far from the one Abdulmohsen intended. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) may have lost, as Abdulmohsen would have hoped, but not because he exposed its role in a supposed cover-up by German authorities. The party lost for the same reasons that incumbents typically lose power in elections and, rather than vote for the AfD, most SPD voters chose the CDU. Merz may have suggested stricter immigration at the close of campaign season, but not without objection from thousands of Germans marching in street demonstrations and a rare public rebuke from his CDU party colleague and former chancellor, Angela Merkel. And while the anti-immigration AfD made significant gains among first-time and young voters, so did the pro-immigration and similarly anti-establishment Left Party (Die Linke). Ultimately, the support of Elon Musk, Abdulmohsen’s favored AI voice, and the Trump administration for the AfD not only failed to appeal to German society, it was wholly rejected across Europe as election interference. In a postelection speech, Merz declared: “The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my absolute priority now really is to create unity in Europe.” Violent attacks like that of Abdulmohsen in Magdeburg and foreign support for far-right parties have the potential both to divide and unify societies. The German election results reveal a political landscape of competing visions but — for now — voters have leaned more toward unity.
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