Right-wing attacks | Racism after attack in Magdeburg: "You can feel it so much!"

You don't pass by the Al-Rahman Mosque in Magdeburg by chance. It is located at the end of a side street that you only turn into if you have a good reason to do so. Between the prefabricated buildings that surround it, the former boiler house seems inconspicuous; only the emerald green facade stands out. You could call it inconspicuous, but you could also see it as a form of repression, of making something invisible . The location of the place of worship of the Islamic community of Magdeburg reflects how many people with a migration background feel in the capital of Saxony-Anhalt .

At the latest since December 20, 2024. Since the day on which a 50-year-old Islam critic and AfD sympathizer from Saudi Arabia drove a car into the Magdeburg Christmas market, killing six people and injuring around 300 others. More than 1,200 people are now known to have been affected by this attack.

A city sinks in hatred

A few steps from the Old Market, where the market stalls stood, towards the Elbe, stands St. John's Church, a former church building with two unequal towers. A memorial has been created at its entrance gate. It is full of candles, white roses and stuffed animals - a nine-year-old boy also died in the attack. Next to the doors, painted stones form a heart.

No trace of the hatred that has gripped some Magdeburg residents since December 20. The racist attacks began that same evening. An unprecedented series of violent acts against people with a supposed immigration background followed. How are these people and their communities doing today - two months after the attack?

Mamad Mohamad, co-founder and managing director of the State Network of Migrant Organizations Saxony-Anhalt (Lamsa), is waiting at the end of the external staircase that leads to the upper floor of the Al-Rahman Mosque. He has come out to greet us, standing in the February cold in a long-sleeved shirt. Nevertheless: a warm smile, a hearty handshake. Then we go inside, taking our shoes off in the entrance area. Mohamad explains: Lamsa usually hears of six to seven racist attacks a month throughout Saxony-Anhalt. Since the attack, there have been 34 in Magdeburg alone. The number of unreported cases is many times higher.

A man is beaten up by several assailants in the dark. A woman is spat on in the main train station. An unknown person is said to have poured chlorine over the vegetable and fruit display of an Arab grocer .

The police department did not comment to »nd« on registered attacks, »out of respect for the work of Parliament«, as it writes, since the Interior Committee wants to deal with the events.

Visible and Invisible Violence

In a carpeted room above the prayer room of the mosque, four other people are sitting next to Mohamad: Mika Kaiyama, also from Lamsa, and three representatives of the Islamic communities of Magdeburg and Halle. They are eating chicken shawarma with chips and ayran. While one of those present fetches cutlery, the others talk about what has changed for the community since December 20th. There are incidents like this: A man storms into the mosque, tears up the prayer clothes and books, and dumps garbage on the floor. Everything is recorded by surveillance cameras. But there is also another form of violence. One that creates less frightening images, that takes place in secret, but spreads just as much fear.

Since the attack, Moawia Al-Hamid's wife prefers to stay in the car while her husband goes shopping. Women who wear headscarves are particularly often exposed to hostility. Al-Hamid is the chairman of the Islamic community in Magdeburg. On this evening after Friday prayers, he is wearing a typical imam's garment, a white prayer cap, the taqiyah, and a long robe. "I pray every day that no Muslims are attacked," says Al-Hamid. "The fear remains - a constant psychological burden, day and night."

"I pray every day that no Muslims are attacked. The fear remains - a constant psychological burden, day and night."

Moawia Al-Hamid Chairman of the Islamic Community of Magdeburg

Many people no longer feel safe even in their own four walls, reports Mohamad. He knows of cases in which names that do not sound "typically German" have been scratched off doorbells and front doors have been smeared with swastikas. "Your own living space should actually be a place of protection," says Mohammad. "The bitter reality is that for many people, living with fear has become the norm."

A normality that those affected often silently accepted in the past. But the attacks after the attack changed that. "Now those affected want to tell their story," says Mohamad.

Fatima speaks

Fatima is one of those who no longer wants to remain silent. She lives with her husband in a terraced housing development not far from the mosque. The two of them moved in here a year and a half ago. It was their first shared apartment. They are sitting close together on the sofa in the living room. Fatima has made tea. She is wearing a grey tracksuit and a necklace with a Dhū l-faqār, the sword of Imam Ali. The sword represents strength and security for her. A security that no longer exists for Fatima since the attack.

The 22-year-old intensive care nurse's real name is different, but she does not want her real name to be made public for fear of further attacks - and also because parts of her own family do not know what happened to her on Christmas Eve.

She volunteered to work that day because she doesn't celebrate Christmas. The effects of the attack were still clearly felt in the university hospital. Fatima herself cared for several of the victims of the attack. Volunteers brought food and flowers. They offered to talk to people and thanked the staff for their work. "It was such a nice sense of solidarity," she says.

Outside the clinic, this solidarity had long since broken down . As soon as she found out on the evening of the attack that the perpetrator was not German, Fatima knew how the situation in the city would develop. In the days that followed, she only left her apartment when she had to. Fatima talks about the looks she received while shopping. Looks that made her feel that she was not wanted here, that she was partly to blame for the terrible events. "You can feel it," says Fatima. "You can feel it so much!"

Fatima knew that a tram ride home from the clinic could be unpleasant. She asked her boyfriend to pick her up in his car. When they stopped briefly to get a kebab, a man - "dressed entirely in black, blond" - ran up to the car and started smashing the window of the driver's door. He shouted racist slogans and gave the Hitler salute. Fatima and her husband did not want to just drive away. What if the man attacked other people? The two felt safe in the car. They called the police. When her husband opened the driver's window to speak to the occupants of another car, the attacker appeared again. He began to beat him through the open window.

While Fatima tells how she tried to grab the attacker's "giant hands" from the passenger seat, she puts her hand on her husband's thigh. As an intensive care nurse, she knows the effects a hit to the head can have. It took 15 minutes from the call to the police arriving, says Fatima. Her husband's face was "scratched and bleeding" from the attack, while she only got "a little bit of a blow to the lower jaw."

The permanent uncertainty

But some wounds are invisible: In the days and weeks that followed, Fatima had trouble sleeping. She isolated herself. Riding the tram alone was no longer an option. But she said to herself: I can't always be afraid, that would mean letting them win and I don't want that. Today, Fatima dares to go out again. But it's not like it used to be. "I look around more often, I don't wear headphones on the tram because I have to make sure my surroundings are secure. I always watch everything." Fatima has bought pepper spray.

It is a constant feeling of insecurity. Fatima is reminded of the past. "When my family fled Iraq, they had everything except security." Fatima grew up in Germany. Magdeburg has long since become a home for her. "We always had the option of moving somewhere else, but we never did," she says. "We are from Magdeburg."

But how much weight does this feeling of home carry when the fear that once forced the family to leave everything behind takes hold again?

Last resort: emigrate

"What can this country offer us to ensure that Muslim doctors, engineers and skilled workers stay here?" asks Al-Hamid, who heads Europe's largest university testing laboratory for electromagnetic compatibility in Magdeburg. He says: "We want to hear from the state government that we are welcome, that we belong here." Many Muslims lack this feeling.

Saxony-Anhalt is the only federal state, apart from Saxony, that still prohibits Islamic burials in cloths. In Islam, the deceased are traditionally buried without a coffin. In January, it was announced that the CDU is sticking to the coffin requirement, contrary to previous agreements. "Abolishing it would be an important sign of recognition for the Muslim community in Saxony-Anhalt," says Al-Hamid. Many bereaved people would like to be able to bury their loved ones close to them and according to their religious traditions. He knows a lot of people with a migration background who are thinking about moving away from Saxony-Anhalt. Or out of Germany altogether.

Fatima also says: "We have decided to emigrate in the next few years. Because of racism. I don't want my children to have to grow up here." It is stories like these that have convinced Lamsa founder Mohamad: "Remigration to East Germany will succeed." Not necessarily through laws, he says, but through pressure from the majority society. A sentence that is followed by a telling silence in Magdeburg's Al-Rahman Mosque.