Hijabi woman murdered in front of her three-year-old son in Germany

A further instance of the disparity in media reporting of comparable incidents involving hate crimes is this abominable story of an Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death in a courtroom in Dresden, Germany by the man against whom she was due to give evidence.

Marwa Al-Sherbini, who was four months pregnant, was in court to testify against her German neighbour for calling her a terrorist merely because she wore a hijab when he stabbed her 18 times inside the courtroom in front of her 3-year-old son.

Egyptians, who gathered in their thousands for her funeral yesterday have been shocked by the German government and media’s blithe reaction to the incident.

Marwa’s husband, who is in Germany on a research fellowship, tried to help her but was also stabbed by the neighbour and, incredulously, shot in the leg by a security guard who initially mistook him for the attacker. He is now in critical condition in a German hospital.

A German Muslim group criticized government officials and the media for not paying enough attention to the crime.

“The incident in Dresden had anti-Islamic motives. So far, the reactions from politicians and media have been incomprehensibly meagre,” Aiman Mazyek, the general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims, told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel daily.

Egyptian commentators said the incident was an example of how hate crimes against Muslims in Europe are overlooked in comparison to those committed by Muslims against Westerners. Many commentators pointed to the uproar that followed the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Muslim and the comparably little attention that Marwa’s murder has received in the European press.