Three women were stabbed in central Paris on Monday by a man who allegedly told police he had been ‘sent by Allah’. The victims were aged between 19 and 36 and one of the women was pregnant. All three suffered serious wounds and are in a stable condition in hospital.
According to eyewitnesses, the assailant was heard to say ‘he had been sent by Allah to kill women’. One of those witnesses, a young man called Mohamed, used his judo skills to bring the attacker to the ground. The suspect was then restrained by police officers.
‘He wasn’t just wandering around aimlessly,’ Mohamed told reporters. ‘He was targeting women exclusively.’
France’s interior minister, Laurent Nunez, said the attacker had made ‘incoherent statements’ and he urged people not to jump to conclusions.
The incident occurred 48 hours after a woman was murdered in Berlin by an Islamist who also injured 29 people. The victim died when a 21-year-old German of Lebanese origin drove his car into a crowd celebrating the gay pride parade and then ran amok with a machete.
German Chancellor Frederich Merz described the atrocity as an ‘attack on our society’.
Last week police in Paris arrested six men who were allegedly planning an attack, which was potentially linked to a synagogue in the north of the city. Earlier this year five people were detained as they prepared to bomb the Bank of America in Paris, an attack linked to the conflict in the Middle East. ‘This is reminiscent of other, very similar incidents that have taken place in other countries – the UK, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands,’ said Laurent Nunez. ‘It is not France that is being targeted’.
It is Europe that is being targeted. On Monday a mosque in northern Paris – ten miles from the scene of the stabbing – was closed by authorities. The prefecture said the decision had been taken because the mosque ‘propagates a radical Islamist ideology that echoes the rhetoric of terrorist organisations, legitimises jihad and glorifies death as martyrdom’.
The mosque was closed a day after many of France’s political elite gathered in a Normandy church to remember Father Jacques Hamel. On July 26 2016, the 86-year-old priest was stabbed 18 times in his church as he celebrated Mass. His killers were two teenage Islamists.
Emmanuel Macron wasn’t in attendance but the president posted a message on X, saying: ‘We have not forgotten Father Jacques Hamel… In the face of Islamist terrorism, France remains united.’
France is not united. Last week a well-known Jewish DJ had to abandon her set in Grenoble after 20 minutes when she was pelted with bottles and anti-Semitic abuse. On Sunday a Franco-Israeli singer cancelled his concert in Marseille for ‘security reasons’. Last year in France, 1,320 antisemitic acts were logged by the authorities.
Anti-Semitism is also rife in Germany. In 2024 the chief of police in Berlin warned Jews and gays to hide their identity if they entered ‘Arab neighbourhoods’. The situation in Britain is no better. ‘Living in the UK now for Jewish people is very uncomfortable,’ explained one British Jew to the BBC recently.
In his tribute to Father Hamel, Emmanuel Macron declared that France is ‘resolute in yielding nothing to those who seek to divide us’. It is true that since 2021, more than 700 establishments in France have been closed temporarily or permanently for disseminating Islamic extremism. These include places of worship, schools, sports clubs and community centres.
The figure underlines the scale of the problem facing France, and most of western Europe. To paraphrase Frederich Merz, European society is under attack, physically and ideologically.
Comments