What brought Emrah Ibrahimovic, the son of Muslim refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), who found refuge three decades ago in Austria from the horrific civil war, to carry out an attempted attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich earlier this month on the 52nd anniversary of the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics?
What caused the religious radicalization of the 18-year-old young man who was born in Austria and grew up in a family that could serve as a model of successful integration of Muslim immigrants in a Western country?
The Ibrahimovic family – parents and two children – recently moved to a private house with a large garden in a picturesque, calm small town on the banks of a lake near Salzburg. The mother had her own business. It is an almost bourgeois atmosphere – a dream come true for many refugees and immigrants. Despite all that, there came the Munich attack, the consequence of which the Ibrahimovic son lost his life.
Emrah Ibrahimovic’s religious radicalization did not stem from poverty and economic suffering or his family’s difficulties of absorption in the country it chose to settle in instead of returning to its homeland. Nor did his radicalization begin as a reaction to media reports on the suffering of the Arab population in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
Already at the beginning of 2023, ten months before the Hamas pogrom, the Austrian police conducted an investigation against Ibrahimovic following complaints of violent behavior at the technical high school he attended.
The Austrian police found ISIS Islamist propaganda and video games of shooting training on Ibrahimovic’s confiscated phone. In addition, Ibrahimovic was known to be interested in weapons. Despite these findings, the authorities in Austria decided in April 2023 to close the investigation against him, stating that he did not pose any “security risk.”
However, the young man was prohibited from purchasing weapons until 2028. The ban did not prevent Ibrahimovic from buying the old Swiss rifle that he used during the attempted attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich.
Since Ibrahimovic was shot dead by the German police at the scene and so far, there is no information pointing out that he was a member of an active terrorist network, the investigation into the circumstances that motivated the young Austrian-Bosnian to attack the Israeli consulate is still ongoing.
Radicalization in Bosnia fuels migration
Was he reacting to an ISIS call for jihad, which was released a few days before the Munich attack on its Al-Naba media channel, encouraging “lone wolves” to carry out attacks in Europe against Jewish, Israeli, and Christian targets in light of the situation in the Gaza Strip? Did Ibrahimovic receive detailed instructions from any operatives to attack the Israeli consulate in Munich on a date of great symbolic significance?
What caused his religious-ideological radicalization, which began before October 7? What did his family know, exactly, about the radicalization that the young man went through? Before learning about the attempted attack in Munich, the family reported their son’s disappearance to the police. He was supposed to arrive at a new workplace, where he had started working only a few days before, but he did not show up. The family’s quick reaction to Ibrahimovic’s disappearance may indicate that the parents had suspicions regarding their son’s behavior.
According to Bosnian media reports, the Ibrahimovic family came to Austria from the Bosnian-Muslim city of Zenica. This city is considered one of the strongholds of radical Islam in BiH – a multi-ethnic federal state with a majority of Muslim citizens. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the descent of BiH into a bloody civil war between the three ethnic groups that make it up (Bosniak-Muslims, Serbs, and Croats), and the Dayton peace agreement of 1995 that brought the war to an end, the Muslim population in BiH has become significantly influenced by radical Islamist elements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and Iran.
The European Union and the United States, who, in practice, manage this fragile confederation, willingly ignore the process of religious radicalization of the Bosniak Muslim population that has been taking root, especially among its younger members.
A SIGNIFICANT part of this radicalization process is the cultivation of identification between the Bosniaks and the Palestinians, strengthened by the invention of direct comparisons between the sufferings of the Bosniaks during the civil war in their country and the sufferings of the Palestinians.
In their historical narrative, the Bosniaks tend to completely suppress the massacres they were responsible for during the civil war and present themselves solely as the victims of a genocide committed mainly by the Serbs, while the West kept silent. That, they suggest, is similar to the way in which it “allows” Israel to commit “genocide” against the Palestinians today.
This identification with the Palestinians has developed among Bosniaks intense anti-Israeli feelings, clearly expressed on the streets of the Muslim cities of BiH in demonstrations, exhibitions, banners, and PLO flags hanging all over. So, this identification existed well before the Israel-Hamas War and throughout the military conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians in recent years.
It has intensified vehemently since the beginning of the current war. Hatred of Israel, by the way, does not prevent Bosniaks from making use of the Holocaust for their own purposes by comparing it to the massacres of Bosniaks in the civil war and the killing of Palestinians in the war initiated by Hamas. Did the intensifying anti-Israel incitement in Bosnia also affect Ibrahimovic?
Close to 100,000 people from all ethnic groups in BiH live in Austria today. About 225,000 of them live in Germany. These are the two largest groups of immigrants from BiH in European countries.
Although the civil war in BiH ended three decades ago, many of those who came to Austria and Germany during the war as refugees have not returned to their homeland and are naturalized citizens of both host countries. However, they maintain a fairly close relationship with BiH and are inspired by political developments there. In all the big cities of Austria, including Salzburg, there are Bosniak community centers. In Salzburg, Bosnians also have their own mosque.
Notably, experts on radical Islam claim that, unlike former waves of terror activities, the radicalization of young Muslims in Europe is not operated through sermons in mosques nowadays. Since young Muslims are aware that the authorities’ supervision of what is happening in the mosques has tightened in recent years, they prefer receiving radical religious content and teachings via the Internet. This makes it difficult for the security services to locate “lone wolves” before they carry out attacks.
After many years of being a safe haven, Austria has now been added to the map of Islamist terror targets. Since the deadly terrorist attack carried out in the center of Vienna in November 2020 by a young Austrian Muslim of Albanian-Macedonian origin, in which four people were murdered, the internal security authorities were successful in foiling a number of terrorist attacks by ISIS adherents, including an attack in June last year against the Vienna Pride Parade planned by young Austrians of Bosniak and Chechen origins, as well as an attack against a recent Taylor Swift concert, whose two main planners were a young Austrian of Macedonian origin and a young Austrian of Turkish-Croatian origin.
All these cases indicate a growing violent religious radicalization and readiness to commit terrorist attacks by young descendants of refugee and immigrant families from the Balkan countries. Sasa Ulic, a senior adviser to Zeljka Cvijanovic, who is a Serbian member of the federal Presidency of BiH, warned that the attempted attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich clearly indicated that “the seed of evil sown in BiH in the 1990s has long been spreading its toxic fruits throughout Europe. The problem won’t disappear if we ignore it. It will only increase.”