When fear becomes faith and justice turns into revenge, everyone loses
I was walking past a halal butcher shop in Neukölln last week when I overheard two young men arguing. One had just come back from a protest. The other was upset—not about the war, but about the graffiti he saw someone spray outside a synagogue: “Free Palestine = Death to Zionists.” He said it made him feel ashamed.
The first man shrugged and said, “Well, they deserve it. Look at what they’re doing in Gaza.”
That stuck with me. It scared me too.
Because I follow Islam. I pray. I fast. I believe in justice.
But this?
This isn’t justice.
Berlin’s streets are speaking—but who’s really listening?
In the past few months, Berlin has seen a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks. Synagogues defaced. Jewish schools under lockdown. Orthodox Jews warned not to wear religious symbols in public. Much of this has come in the wake of the Gaza war—and yes, many of the perpetrators are reportedly young Muslim men.
This hurts me to write. But it would be worse to stay silent.
We, as Muslims, have every right to be outraged by what’s happening in Palestine. The deaths, the destruction, the decades of dispossession—these are not small crimes. And many of us carry that pain in our bloodlines, in family stories of exile or war.
But there’s a line. And we’re crossing it.
From empathy to vengeance—how does that happen?
How does a religion that begins every chapter of its holy book with “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” produce a teenager who throws a firebomb at a Jewish school in Berlin?
The answer is not simple.
Some of it is rage.
Some of it is trauma.
Some of it is online radicalization.
And some of it, let’s be honest, is imported hatred—shipped in from political regimes that use anti-Jewish rhetoric as a rallying cry for everything from nationalism to religious authority.
It doesn’t come from the Prophet.
It doesn’t come from the Qur’an.
It comes from power. From politics. From poison.
Muslims should know better—because we’ve been there
When mosques were burned, hijabis spat on, boys named Muhammad denied jobs—we asked others to stand with us.
When the AfD marches in Saxony or the French ban headscarves in schools, we say: This isn’t about “Islam,” it’s about prejudice.
So how can we now look at every Jew on a Berlin U-Bahn and see only a Zionist?
How can we turn our pain into their fear?
Have we learned nothing?
What I want to say to fellow Muslims in Berlin
You don’t have to be silent about Gaza.
You don’t have to support Israel.
You don’t have to like Zionism.
But you do have to draw a line.
Because the moment we target Jews in Berlin for the crimes of a state thousands of miles away, we are not defending Palestine.
We are betraying Islam.
The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) signed treaties with Jews. Protected them. Lived among them.
What would he say if he saw us now?
And to my Jewish neighbors: I see you. I grieve for Gaza—and I grieve for the fear you now feel here, in what was supposed to be your refuge.
Berlin has long been a haunted city.
Let’s not haunt it again with silence.
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