The Magdeberg Christmas Market Attack

 

There is a perverse confusion among commentators about the motives of the serial killer who recently drove a car into the Magdeberg Christmas Market. Of course this was a Muslim terrorist attack, right?

But then int runs out that, although born in Saudi Arabia, he was a militant atheist, and anti-Islam.

So, confused, the piundits ask, what possible motive could he have? He must be lying. He must really be Muslim, and was deep under cover for these many years. Or he is Shia, and only anti-Sunni, not anti-Muslim. And so on. 

After all, why on earth would an atheist be anti-Christian?

Stop and think for a moment.

In the real world, an atheist is far more an enemy of Christianity than a Muslim fellow monotheist. Consider the treatment of Christians in North Korea, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China. Compare the Christians living relatively peaceably in the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim Levant for millennia.

Modern jihadists are always at best lukewarm about Islam. Calling them “extremists” is an anti-religious alibi. They are westernized secular middle easterners suffering from culture shock.