Turek mocks support for Palestine, whilst Hraba speaks of ‘incompatible’ people. Who is actually defending queer people following the attack in Berlin?
Not so long ago, it was the ‘respectable gay people’ who supposedly had no need for Pride. Marriage for all was seen as an attack on the traditional family, rainbow flags as an ideology, and the public visibility of queer people as an unnecessary provocation. However, following the attack linked to Berlin Pride, some conservative politicians and commentators have transformed into staunch defenders of the LGBTQ+ community. Suddenly, they care whether queer people can move safely through the streets of European cities. There is, however, one condition: the suspect must be a Muslim.
Then the queer victim becomes a useful political prop. Their fear, injury or death can be paraded on social media as proof of the alleged failure of liberalism, migration and multicultural society. And people who routinely deny the queer community equal rights can pretend, for a few hours, to be its greatest defenders.
What really happened in Berlin
On Saturday 25 July, at around 10 pm, a white van ploughed into a group of people on Ahornsteig street in the Großer Tiergarten park. The location is not far from the Brandenburg Gate and close to the closing events of Berlin’s Christopher Street Day, one of Europe’s largest Pride festivals. According to the information available so far, the van came from Potsdamer Platz, struck several people and then crashed into a tree. According to German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, the perpetrator then attacked other people with a weapon resembling a machete. One woman died and a total of 29 people were injured, some seriously. The Berlin police initially stated that more than one person may have fled the vehicle. The exact role of any other individuals involved remains under investigation.
However, it is not accurate to say that the van drove through the parade itself. The attack took place on the outskirts of the closing celebrations in Tiergarten, where Pride visitors and other people were present. Similarly, it is not yet possible to say with certainty whether each of the victims belonged to the LGBTQ+ community. However, the time, place and nature of the attack naturally lead investigators to question whether the queer event was targeted deliberately.
The police have identified 21-year-old Abdul B. as the main suspect. He was a German citizen, born in Berlin in 2005, and came from a family with Lebanese roots. He was therefore not a newly arrived refugee, as some social media posts began to claim almost immediately. According to German media reports, he was known to the security services as a radicalised Islamist. In 2025, he is said to have attempted on several occasions to travel abroad to join the armed wing of Islamic State. In May 2026, he received a sentence under juvenile law and was released on condition that he complete a deradicalisation programme.
On Sunday, the police tracked down the suspect in an allotment garden in the Spandau district. According to the police account, when he charged at members of the SWAT team with a stabbing or slashing weapon, the officers shot him dead. His death means that a number of questions regarding the planning of the attack, possible accomplices and the specific motive may remain unanswered.
The main suspect’s Islamist radicalisation has been documented. However, this does not automatically mean that investigators know the full motive behind the attack, the exact method used to select the victims, or any links to a specific organisation. Nor is there any confirmation that the attack was linked to support for Palestine. The linking of the perpetrator to the pro-Palestinian movement, which has appeared on social media, is, at this stage, mere speculation.
Following the attack, the organisers of Berlin’s CSD cancelled several accompanying events scheduled for Sunday. Despite the rain, thousands of people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate for a memorial service; flowers and candles were laid in Tiergarten; and Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig also attended the memorial service. At the same time, the organisers called on the public to refrain from speculation and not to blame specific groups of people. They pointed out that queer people face oppression from both religious and far-right ideologies.
Ali Darwish, a gay Berlin police officer of Lebanese and Palestinian heritage, also spoke out strongly. Speaking to the AP, he described a twofold concern – that the attack would deepen the fear felt by LGBTQ+ people whilst also fuelling further racism directed against the Muslim community. A single person, simply by existing, shatters the convenient image of two irreconcilable camps. He is simultaneously gay, Muslim, German, a police officer and a person of Arab origin. And the attack affects him in all these identities at once.
It took just a few minutes to go from sympathy to an indictment of liberalism
In the Czech context, the attack very quickly turned into an argument against migration and liberal politics. Senator Zdeněk Hraba wrote on social media platform X: “An attacker from the ranks of the ‘incompatible’ drove into participants at an event in Berlin that liberal politicians have long supported. It is a bitter paradox.”
The phrase “from among the incompatible” is striking. It does not refer to any specific ideology, organisation or act. It creates a vague mass of people who are allegedly incompatible with European society. Who belongs to this group? Islamists? All practising Muslims? Arabs? People of migrant background? Citizens born in Germany whose parents or grandparents came from elsewhere?
It is precisely this vagueness that is politically useful. Under the term ‘incompatible’, the reader can imagine an entire group towards which they already felt mistrust even before the attack. A single perpetrator fades into the background and is replaced by a collective suspect.
Politician Filip Turek was even more explicit. On Facebook, he asked: “Did the LGBT activists promoting a borderless Europe and migration as the future carry Palestinian flags as well as rainbow flags during their march, or did they forget them this time?”
In a single sentence, he managed to link migration, Pride, Palestine and the alleged hypocrisy of LGBTQ+ activists. The only thing missing is the most essential detail: the main suspect was not a refugee, “Europe without borders” was not part of his personal history, and no pro-Palestinian motive for the attack has yet been substantiated.
Moreover, Turek had previously claimed that Prague Pride “doesn’t help decent gay people”. However, as soon as queer people can be used as evidence against migration, their safety suddenly becomes a political priority.
Similar tensions have also emerged in Germany. René Powilleit, the Berlin chairman of the organisation Lesben und Schwule in der Union, which operates within the CDU, rightly warned in a commentary for Euronews that criticism of Islamism is sometimes automatically conflated with Islamophobia. At the same time, however, he called for checks on residence permits and possible deportations. Yet the main suspect was a German citizen born in Berlin. In this specific case, therefore, the rhetoric of deportation does not address the perpetrator. It diverts attention away from the radicalisation of a German citizen and the failure of domestic institutions, and back to the familiar narrative about foreigners.
Yes, Islamist homophobia exists
Criticism of these reactions must not lead to the opposite denial of reality. Radical Islamism is incompatible with the equality of LGBTQ+ people. Traditional conservative interpretations of Islam often reject same-sex relationships, and in many Muslim families or communities, queer people may face coercion, exclusion, forced marriages or violence. According to academic studies, Muslim migrants and their descendants in Western Europe, on average, hold more negative attitudes towards homosexuality than the majority population, with the level of rejection increasing with religious conservatism.
Religiously motivated homophobia cannot be excused on the grounds of cultural differences. European societies are under no obligation to accept the notion that human dignity depends on a partner’s gender, the faith of one’s parents or the interpretation of a sacred text. Freedom of religion protects the right to believe. It does not protect the right to threaten, humiliate, discriminate against or attack others.
Parts of the European liberal establishment do indeed sometimes behave as if highlighting homophobia within Muslim communities automatically plays into the hands of the far right. The result can be a silence that harms queer Muslims themselves the most. It is precisely they who need the opportunity to criticise their own family, community or religious authority without being forced to pretend the problem does not exist, or, conversely, to prove their loyalty to people who hate all Muslims.
However, it would be equally disingenuous to speak of Muslims as a monolithic homophobic bloc. Research by the German Bertelsmann Foundation shows significant differences depending on the intensity of faith, the nature of religious thinking and the environment in which people grew up. In a study based on data from 2012, 67 per cent of less religious, 60 per cent of moderately religious and 40 per cent of highly religious Sunnis living in Germany supported same-sex marriage. Among highly religious respondents, who often engaged in critical reflection on their faith, support stood at 58 per cent.
Among Muslims, there are liberals, conservatives, the religiously indifferent, feminists, queer people and even open homophobes. Just as there are among Christians or people with no religious affiliation. An Islamist fanatic is no more representative of all Muslims than a Christian extremist is representative of all baptised Europeans.
Queers for Palestine and the question of solidarity with those who do not accept you
The Berlin attack also immediately reignited mockery of initiatives labelled ‘Queers for Palestine’. This is not a single, centrally controlled organisation, but a broad and diverse community of queer activists who support Palestinian self-determination, the rights of civilians and an end to the Israeli occupation or war. Some use radical anti-Zionist language, whilst others focus primarily on the humanitarian situation.
Criticism of this movement is not without reason. The position of LGBTQ+ people in Palestinian society is very difficult. The organisation Human Dignity Trust reports that a provision of the British Mandate Penal Code of 1936 remains formally in force in the Gaza Strip, under which sexual relations between men can be punished by up to ten years’ imprisonment. At the same time, it points out that there is little evidence of this law being enforced in practice. In the West Bank, consensual same-sex relationships are not criminalised, but queer people there face social violence, discrimination and official crackdowns on public events.
Hamas is not a liberation organisation for queer people, but an authoritarian Islamist movement. Its ideology leaves no room for the equality of LGBTQ+ people. Activism that glosses over, romanticises or dismisses this reality as Western propaganda is failing. Queer solidarity cannot mean turning our backs on queer people living in Gaza itself or in Palestinian communities.
At the same time, however, there is something that opponents of Queers for Palestine often refuse to understand – a civilian’s right to life is not a reward for holding the ‘correct’ view on marriage for all.
A Palestinian child does not need to pass a test of liberal values to deserve safety. A person who might reject my sexual orientation does not thereby lose the right not to be killed, tortured or subjected to collective punishment. Human rights that we defend only for those with whom we agree politically are not universal rights. They are membership benefits of our own club.
Solidarity with Palestinian civilians therefore does not mean support for Hamas. Just as opposition to Russia’s bombing of Ukraine does not mean agreement with every opinion held by every Ukrainian citizen. We can simultaneously reject Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ rights, Hamas’s terrorism and homophobia within Palestinian society.
This multi-layered position is, in fact, held by queer Palestinians themselves. The organisation alQaws has long been building the Palestinian LGBTQ+ community whilst rejecting the use of Israeli queer rights to justify violence against Palestinians. In its text *No Pride Without Dignity*, it points out that the phrase “try organising a Pride event in Gaza” is often used not out of concern for queer Palestinians, but to claim that Palestinian society as a whole deserves its suffering.
However, the term ‘pinkwashing’ must not be allowed to function as a magic word that shuts down any discussion of Palestinian homophobia. It is possible to misuse LGBTQ+ rights for propaganda whilst at the same time truthfully stating that queer people in Gaza are not free. One fact does not negate the other.
‘Queers for Palestine’ makes sense when it defends Palestinians as people, not when it idealises their political leaders or conservative social norms. The most genuine form of queer solidarity must be able to say, at the same time, ‘Palestinian civilians have the right to live’ and ‘neither Hamas nor religious homophobia are our allies’.
Who really cares about the safety of queer people?
The Berlin attack forces us to accept several uncomfortable truths at once. Some Muslim communities have serious problems accepting LGBTQ+ people. Islamist extremism poses a real security threat to the queer community. European states must take action against violent extremists, rigorously monitor dangerous individuals, and support liberal Muslim voices as well as queer people within these communities.
Some in liberal circles, sometimes out of fear of being accused of racism, use caution as an excuse for silence. The result is not tolerance, but the abandonment of people who face homophobia within their own families and communities.
And some on the conservative political spectrum exploit queer victims only when their suffering can be turned against Muslims. Yet these same people at other times label Pride as an ideological provocation, campaign against equal marriage, question the legitimacy of trans people, or argue that ‘decent homosexuals’ have no need for demonstrations.
It is therefore appropriate to ask a simple question: do these politicians really care whether two men can hold hands without fear of being attacked?
If so, they should also protect queer people from neo-Nazi violence, from bullying in schools, from transphobia, from domestic violence in religious families, and from discrimination enshrined in the law. They should support their equality not only when the perpetrator has an Arabic name, but also when the hatred comes from a Christian pulpit, a conservative political campaign or their own electoral club.
Rejecting Islamism does not mean rejecting Muslims. Defending Muslims against collective guilt does not mean excusing homophobia. Supporting Palestinian civilians does not mean supporting Hamas. And fighting for queer people does not mean that we are allowed to use their dead bodies as a billboard against migration.
