On 1st July 2009, Marwa El-Sherbini was supposed to have her day in court. The previous year, El-Sherbini had asked Alexander Wiens to allow her son Mustafa to use a park swing. Wiens replied with Islamophobic abuse, calling her a “terrorist”, an “Islamist” and a “slut.” He threatened the then 2-year old Mustafa with violence. El-Sherwini sued Wiens for verbal abuse, and he was fined €780. On 1st July, El-Sherbini and Wiens met again in Dresden district court after he appealed the fine.
As El-Sherbini left the court, Wiens stabbed her at least 16 times with a 7-inch knife. She, and her unborn child, died immediately. When her husband Elwy tried to intervene, he was first stabbed by Wiens then shot in the leg and critically wounded by a policeman. As a result of the shooting, Elwy was in a coma for 2 days. Lawyer Nadja Samour told Al Jazeera: “once the security officer arrived, they saw of course a white man and a brown man fighting and the first reaction they have was to shoot the brown man.”
El-Sherbini’s murder took place at a time of rising racism and Islamophobia in Germany and elsewhere. The court case took place a few days after French president Nicolas Sarkozy had denounced the burka. The following year, former Berlin finance minister Thilo Sarrazin published his book “Deutschland schafft sich ab”. The book claimed that the education level of people from Turkey and Arab countries was damaging Germany, and ranted about “headscarf girls”. The book sold 1½ million copies.
Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has only made things worse. From October 7, 2023 to December 8, 2023, 142 anti-Islamic crimes were reported, 3 times more than the previous year. Women were affected in 62% of the cases. Marwa El-Sherbini’s murder should teach us that our different fights – against Islamophobia, against sexism, for Palestine – are intertwined, and that we cannot trust the German state to support us.
