What unites Islamists and right-wing extremists

Following the attack on a Berlin Pride festival, the focus in Germany is turning to Islamist terrorism. An expert warns: Looking only at Islamists overlooks the parallels with right-wing extremism.

The terror attack on Berlin's Pride parade has shocked Germany. The perpetrator, 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, was a German national and known to German security forces as an Islamist who had tried to join the "Islamic State" group. He had already been convicted of criminal offences twice and was awaiting a decision about a possible prison sentence at the time of the attack.

The LGBTQ+ community is not a surprising target, according to Jakob Guhl, director of policy and research at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who has studied Islamist extremism for many years. "The ideology is deeply homophobic and hostile to the queer community. The 'Islamic State' terror group, when it held territory in its so-called caliphate, executed people it accused of homosexuality," Guhl told DW.

In recent years, there have been several attacks on Pride events, Guhl said, including in London, Oslo, Zurich and Vienna.

Parallels between different extremist movements

Guhl has also noticed that Islamist extremism has a close relationship with far-right extremist movements. Both ideologies strengthen each other and profit from one another, he argues: "Both are of the view that peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims is impossible."

Young Muslims' experiences of discrimination in Germany, being marginalised, and negative reporting about Islam are cited as proof of the German state's hostility towards Islam, according to Guhl.

"In the view of the Islamist extremists, right-wing extremists are representative of Germans as a whole, and on the other hand the right-wing extremists say that Islamist extremists essentially represent Muslims," Guhl says. "There is an attempt to split society into two camps."

Both ideologies overlap in numerous attitudes: contempt for Western liberal society, the propensity towards conspiracy theories, mistrust of government institutions, anti-feminist attitudes, and hatred of the LGBTQ+ community.

"Their reasons for disliking the LGBTQ+ community do vary. On the one hand, from the religious ideological perspective, they believe it goes against the instructions of God," Guhl explained. "On the far-right extremist side, it mostly stems from a biological-racist perspective that it lowers the birth rate and weakens the health of the nation."

In Germany, security authorities have for years observed the formation of a new generation of young, violence-prone, far-right extremists who are mobilising against Pride parades.

In a 2018 study entitled "Loving hate: Anti-Muslim extremism, radical Islam and the spiral of polarisation", Guhl and other authors described the common interest of both ideologies: social division, itself a breeding ground for extremism.

Fuel for extremism: Hate speech on social media

To combat the proliferation of such ideologies, the authors recommended a tougher approach towards hate speech on social media. They also call upon traditional media to avoid one-sided reporting and finger-pointing, which only fuels the polarisation spiral.

According to Guhl, one example of this is the current discussion about the background of the attacker at the Berlin Pride event. "I find the question of the nationality of the perpetrator problematic: You quickly run into the danger of creating a two-tier society between different affiliations. That is counterproductive when it comes to the dynamics of radicalisation."

For Guhl, it is also important to keep pointing to what Muslim and non-Muslim communities have in common: "We share many more things than those which divide us."