A spark neglected burns the house...indeed

Alex Wiens, cold-blooded murderer of Marwa El-Sherbini, was sentenced to life imprisonment three days ago on November 11, 2009. The murder took place in a very unlikely place and in a painfully disturbing way.

Before I go any further, I should note that the title of this post is so chosen because of the nothing-short-of-accurate portrayal of such a tragedy in a story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy. And also because of its nothing-short-of-accurate encapsulation of the events leading up to the murder.

Wind back the clock one year. August 21, 2009, Dresden, Germany. In a pleasant evening and in the backdrop of a playground where children, accompanied by their parents, were playing merrily with their peers, El-Sherbini, an Egyptian female immigrant, and Alex Wiens, a self-supposed male ethnic German, both in their late 20s, both never having met each other before, met near a sandbox swing with two swings for kids. Alex sat in one while his niece was playing in the other. El-Sherbini, clearly distinguishable as a muslim due to dress code (headscarf), approached the man and politely asked him to give up his seat for her son. He didn't. He turned towards her and said he didn't want to see muslims in that playground. Predictably, the woman did not take the malicious racial slur of the xenophobic bigot and thought it would be in her best interests to say something back at him, as if in an attempt either to facilely defend herself or to get down to his level of bigotry and heat up the exchange. And so it did. One word led to another, with both of them progressively clenching their eyebrows and digressively losing their temper and manners. Pretty soon he was calling her an "Islamist," "Terrorist," and a "Slut," and also yelled that her son would soon become a terrorist himself. Due to the obviously loud nature of the altercation, surrounding people gathered around the duo and tried defusing the situation by asking Alex to shut the hell up. He didn't. He now started throwing tantrums at the bystanders, especially those speaking Russian. At the moment, it seemed as if Alex wouldn't stop slurring in rage (for no apparent reason at all) until he is dead or at least until the force of the Law is acted upon him. A police car, called in by one of the bystanders/witnesses, arrived and he was taken into custody, later charged with charges of slander as filed and testified by El-Sherbini.

That would have been the end of this ordeal, but he refused to pay the fine of €330 and requested a trial by jury, consistently denouncing her scarf and muslims (not Islam) and referring to her only as "that woman" in scare quotes. A date for November 2008 was set and then he was fined €660 after being found guilty again. In this trial, he even suggested that "people like her" were not real human beings and therefore legally incapable of being insulted. It was a second opportunity for Alex to end the case, but he, assisted by his public prosecutor who somehow initially failed to see the blindingly obvious outcome of the prosecution, even after such a shameless act in the trial, appealed for prosecution in a district court, and was assigned the date of July 1, 2009. Many things happened between November 2008 and the date of trial that at one point made the public prosecutor try and retract the case, but upon Alex's persistent pressure not to, he had to oblige.

Then came July 1. Room 10 of Dresden's historic district court; nine people present including two judges and El-Sherbini's husband and son. The trial commenced and Alex resounded the courtroom with his extreme-right wing sentiments and unabashed hatred for muslims. El-Sherbini testified, and Alex asked her several irrelevant and disallowed questions, such as why she was in Germany at all, which was struck off the record. As the trial was approaching the end, El-Sherbini and her family decided to leave and were about the leave the courtroom when Alex attacked her with an 18 cm long blade, stabbing her 16 times in her upper body and arm while shouting "you don't deserve to live." Her unarmed husband, who tried as best as he could to stop the violence, also received 16 stab wounds to his neck and shoulders. The Judge raised the security alarm and a police officer, who was the only cop in the scene in this no-security, no-security-checking court and who was attending another unrelated trial, came to the rescue but mistook her husband as the perpetrator and shot him in the leg. Alex's defense lawyer also tried helping El-Sherbini by forcing Alex away with the use of chairs. El-Sherbini died in the scene of crime, Alex was arrested immediately after the crime, and El-Sherbini's husband remained in coma for two days after having received life-threatening stabbing injuries. Alex had preplanned the murder, as was evidenced by his bringing into a court of Law a malicious weapon of murder.

After more than four months of legal procedures from the day of murder and after growing national and international media coverage and pandemonium from uproarious muslim communities throughout Europe, Alex Wein was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 11, 2009, for the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini and the attempted murder of her husband Elwi Ali Okaz. Residing judge concluded that the murder took place “in front of the child, against two people, in a treacherous way, and in a court of law,” and therefore, according to the Law, the “convict is to serve a minimum of 18 years before a board will review the possibility of parole for the first time.”

If only he had let go of the swing that fateful day in the playground, and if only she had ignored his slur.

This unspeakable, heinous act of crime raises many questions at many levels, from ethics to human nature to Law to even security. But to avoid the trite, I’ll just conclude that if there was anything in the universe that could be called immutably impossible, then it is cleansing ourselves of all human prejudices, bigotry, hatred, and the biases that arise from them all – no matter who or where we are and regardless of how highly we think of ourselves as the Nobel Savage. If pushed far enough, we all will unleash the Alex Wein in us that is manifesting himself in other, subtler ways right this minute. There’s no use saying “it’s time to wake up,” because we never will.




left: El-Sherbini's body being transported in a muslim community of relatives, non-relatives and those angered and grieved by the the hate crime; right: El-Sherbini being commemorated by Germans and other non-muslims who spoke against the hate crime and were for the fair treatment of muslims and non-Europeans in Europe

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