By Yussuf Abdel Hadi, Hamburg
“This country has lost me,” says a German-Palestinian business consultant. “I’ve lost trust in Germany, politics, and the media,” adds a Palestinian IT consultant in Berlin. “What is happening to this country?” asks an engineer, who fled from Lebanon more than thirty years ago and now resides in Frankfurt. All of them prefer to remain anonymous — out of fear of hostility, as often happens when the Middle East conflict is discussed.
The millions of Muslims in Europe are not a homogeneous group: cultural influences differ, family histories are diverse, and political preferences are changeable. Yet since October 7, such sentiments can be heard across all social classes, regardless of age, gender, education, or profession.
Muslims living in Europe are not simply turning away. In the wake of the Gaza war, a new parallel society has emerged, which we cannot afford to ignore. This process of alienation is especially pronounced among young, aspiring, and academically educated Muslims. Similar patterns are visible in the United States. Election researchers are already speaking of a “Gaza generation” — a generation that risks being lost to Western democracies.
Since the Islamist Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, many Muslims feel they are under general suspicion. Even before, many were reminded of the post-9/11 era. Back then, Muslims were asked to condemn the terror of Osama bin Laden. Today, Muslims are expected to distance themselves from antisemitism, Hamas, and now also from the knife murders carried out by IS — as though they had ever approved of them.
This is painful for many, as it echoes deeply. Does Islam belong to Europe or not? Is Europe abolishing itself because too many Muslims live here? And which Muslims truly belong? The insinuations from politicians can perhaps be ignored with some effort, but the real threats cannot: No Muslim in Germany has, for instance, forgotten the NSU murders, the Hanau attack, and the long list of right-wing extremist attacks on refugee shelters. The ritualized demands for declarations of distance must feel to them like a trick by the majority society. The underlying message was and remains: You don’t truly belong.
And yes: A migration background cannot simply be discarded. The yearning for clarity — more pronounced in Germany than in countries with longer histories of immigration — can only be satisfied at the price of self-denial. A residual loyalty, a sense of responsibility, and a connection to the homeland of parents or grandparents persists for most people.
This feeling is often not purely joyful, but overshadowed by helplessness regarding conditions in their families’ countries of origin. Erdogan may portray himself as a strongman, but inflation and his brutal actions in Kurdish areas show the price of his rule. In the Arab world, spring has turned into an Arab Winter. The consequences: wars, instability, repression, and poverty. Lebanon, Libya, and Syria are “failed states.”
Gaza is destroyed. In many countries in the Middle East and Africa, there is no order, no democracy, and no freedom. Compared to that, Europe, with its values, rule of law, and liberalism, seemed like a safe haven. This makes the feeling of exclusion all the more painful, and the double alienation even more bitter: alienated in Europe, and alienated in the parents’ homelands.
The sense of not being accepted is only the culmination of a long historical experience. Wounds and the impression of inferiority have shaped the relationship between the Islamic world and the West for centuries. British and French colonialism laid the foundation for much of the disorder in the Middle East, with arbitrary borders drawn. Military interventions have continued to this day; the disastrous Iraq War (2003) and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal still resonate. Today, when images circulate online of bound, half-naked Palestinian men at the feet of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, almost every Arab, every Muslim, is reminded of Abu Ghraib.
Israel has become the most tension-filled projection screen for this conflict. From an Arab perspective, the country has been a symbol of Arab weakness and disunity since its founding. Even as an alliance, the Arab states failed to prevent its creation in 1948; in 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrian Golan Heights during the Six-Day War. Arab commentators call this the “mother of all defeats.” At the same time, it is the source of all propaganda. Radical Islamists and antisemites know that the Middle East conflict deeply stirs Muslims emotionally, ensuring the wounds never heal.
The “Palestine problem” serves as a projection screen where many — whether Kurds, Turks, Arabs, or Africans — express their desire for liberation and change, but also their resentment toward the West. What unites them all is a profound solidarity with the Palestinians; everyone can identify with the seemingly boundless suffering of the victims in Gaza. This identification with Palestinians as “universal victims” is the primary driving force.
The downside, however, is a chilling indifference often seen when it comes to Israeli and Jewish victims. Most reject Hamas’s atrocities, but there are also hundreds who celebrate the genocidal slaughter of Jews. When Hamas attacked Israel, the Palestinian network “Samidoun” handed out sweets on Sonnenallee in Berlin’s Neukölln district “to celebrate the victory of the resistance,” as they called it. And there are many more — thousands — who either don’t see or refuse to see the celebrations of murder, massacres, and horror.
In Britain, an April survey by the neoconservative think tank Henry Jackson Society found that only a quarter of British Muslims believed Hamas was responsible for the murders and rapes on October 7, 2023. Young, well-educated Muslims were the most likely to say that Hamas did not commit the violence. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 47% expressed this view, compared to 40% of Muslim academics.
What is clear: Antisemitism, particularly among Muslims, has been rising since October 7. Jewish children who must attend school under police protection — or stay home out of fear of being insulted, spat on, or beaten. Jewish institutions that become targets for attacks and terrorism. Yet Muslims predominantly share videos and images from destroyed Gaza on social networks; for the other side — the suffering of hostages, the relatives of the victims of October 7 — there is little space. And people do not trust the media anymore, accusing them of biased reporting. This aligns with a recent survey from Germany, which found that nearly half of respondents have little or no trust in German reporting on the Gaza war. As a result, many turn to Arabic, Israeli, or English-language media. Some are even considering emigration.
