Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the alleged perpetrator of the horror attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, does not, Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, observed, “fit any existing mould”. He had acted in “an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner, like an Islamist terrorist, though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam”.
Faeser is not alone in her confusion about how to understand Abdulmohsen.