Islamism and the silence of the ‘progressives ’

As the Berlin attack showed, Western liberals are still turning a blind 
eye to the violent intolerance in their midst.


The German state cannot fairly be accused of inattention when it came to 
Abdul Ballout. It had been observing him for the better part of a 
decade. It had convicted him three times and had, by the start of July, 
arrived at an assessment of his character that turned out to be entirely 
accurate. The counsellors of the deradicalisation programme into which a 
Berlin court had released him in May had logged their misgivings, 
concluded that his cooperation was a performance, and set about drafting 
a recommendation that he be removed from their books. They were still 
drafting that recommendation on Saturday 25 July, when the 21-year-old 
drove a white van into the closing party of Christopher Street Day, a 
part of Berlin’s Pride season, a few hundred yards from the Brandenburg 
Gate. He killed one person and injured 29 others, and then proceeded to 
set about the survivors with a machete.

The failure, in other words, was not one of assessment. Everything 
necessary had been perceived, written down and filed. What could not be 
managed was to convert an accurate judgement into an action within a 
period shorter than the one a young man needs to hire a vehicle.

His record showed that he posed a threat to civilians...

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/08/22/islamism-and-the-silence-of-the-progressives/