The recent case of a madman going mad in Hamburg with a handgun in a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) meeting hall killing six people, whilst horrible and tragic is also a good example of how people read about stories like this and come up with premature exclamations and explanations. The words ‘gunman’, ‘Germany’ and ‘attack on religious building’ lined up in many people’s heads with their brains subsequently spitting out the word ‘Islam’ as a reason behind the attack. In reality it turned out that the attack was the work of an ex-JW who does appear to be somewhat mad.

I can understand why this is and why people reach this conclusion, after all Islamic extremism has been behind the majority of mass casualty attacks in Europe since the turn of the century. I must admit that when I heard of the Hamburg attack, my first thought was that this was yet another Islam inspired murder attack. But I kept silent about it because I wanted to hear more before I spoke. This is because I’d rather be making my comments later in a story’s life and be correct than being first or early and getting things badly wrong.

I must admit that there was much about this story that initially screamed ‘Islam’. There is animosity between Islam and the JW’s which you don’t have to look hard to find and the US State Department issued in 2021 a condemnation of those nations that persecute JW’s. Many, although not all, of the nations that put restrictions on the JW’s are majority Islamic. However, at least in Western nations and in modern times, there has not been any concerted violent acts aimed at the JW’s by extremist Muslims. Give a sweaty brained Islamic extremist carrying an equally sweaty backpack a choice between a JW meeting hall and a Jewish synagogue and they’d probably choose the synagogue as a target the majority of the time. From what I can gather the JW’s are more likely to be targeted by Islamic religious evangelists in order to get them to choose Islam instead of being a JW. Mind you there are mainstream Christian evangelistic groups who do similar things and target the JW’s for evangelism as they believe that the JW’s beliefs are a theological error.

The Hamburg tragedy shows the importance of waiting until there is sufficient information available before making a judgement. Premature explanations can end up being used by the enemies of those who ask awkward questions about Islam and its theology in order to discredit them, which is something to be avoided. The more demented followers of Islam have indeed committed horrendous violent terrorist attacks across Europe both West and East, these Islamic headcases have attacked in Germany and have attacked the followers of religions other than Islam. It is understandable that some people would have looked at the initial reports coming out of Hamburg and immediately thought ‘Islam’, but on this occasion they were wrong, very very wrong.  Whilst Islam is very often the cause behind terrorism in Europe, it can pay to remember that this is not always the case.