In the wake of a deadly vehicle attack on Berlin’s Christopher Street Pride festival on July 25 that left one woman dead and 29 injured, a prominent conservative commentator is challenging what he sees as the progressive left’s willful blindness about the intersection of open-border immigration policies and Islamic extremism.
Writing for American Thinker, Thom Nickels argues that the attackâcarried out by 21-year-old Lebanese national Abdul Ballout, who had attempted to join ISIS in 2025âexposes a fundamental contradiction in progressive politics: the simultaneous embrace of LGBTQ rights and unlimited immigration from regions where homosexuality is often violently opposed.
According to Nickels, the Berlin festival continued in modified form despite the attack, with performers like Haidar Darwish, a gay Turkish belly dancer and former Syrian refugee, taking the stage at a Berlin museum as part of a group called Queens Against Bordersâdescribed as “created to build solidarity with refugees, migrants, and immigrants from the LGBTQ+ community.”
The ‘Without Borders’ Irony
Nickels contends that the “without borders” concept itself enabled the attack. “It is precisely this conceptânations should have no borders and everyone, even those from cesspool countries, should be welcomeâthat led to the Berlin terrorist attack,” he writes.
The commentary takes particular aim at what Nickels characterizes as evasive reactions from LGBTQ activists and progressive outlets, which he says downplayed the attacker’s ISIS ties and framed the incident as generic homophobia rather than specifically Islamic terrorism. Some activists, according to Nickels, responded by reaffirming that “This is why Pride is necessary!” rather than reconsidering positions like “Queers for Palestine.”
Nickels claims that some progressives on social media even expressed disappointment that the attacker wasn’t Christian, with convoluted logic leading a few to blame Christians for the tragedy while expressing sympathy for the attacker.
Contrasting Threats
The piece draws a stark contrast between historical opposition to Pride events from Christian fundamentalist groupsâwho brought “bullhorns and placards quoting Scripture”âand Islamic extremist violence. “These groups never threw bombs or drove cars into the festivals; they never produced a surprise machete to cut people up,” Nickels writes, arguing that Christians opposing homosexuality were nevertheless “framed as the biggest threat to the LGBT movement.”
According to Nickels, Islam “doesn’t play around” in the same way Christianity does with concepts like loving one’s enemies or turning the other cheek. He characterizes Islam as “really more of a political system than a religion.”
Germany’s Immigration History
The commentary provides historical context for immigration to Germany, noting that massive waves began in the 1970s and accelerated dramatically under former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015, when asylum seekers from Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, and Bangladesh arrived in large numbers. Within two months that year, according to Nickels, asylum seekers jumped from 76,000 to 170,000, encouraged by Merkel’s statement: “We can do it!”
Nickels characterizes this as “suicidal empathy,” noting that even predominantly Muslim countries refused the types of migrants Western European nations accepted. Today, Islam is the largest minority religion in Germany.
The suspect Ballout was reportedly under a court order to attend a deradicalization program for high-risk offenders and was scheduled to meet with staff for his third and final evaluation after the Pride festivalâyet was allowed to remain free despite his attempted ISIS affiliation.
The Hamtramck Example
To illustrate his broader argument about cultural incompatibility, Nickels points to Hamtramck, Michigan, where the entire city council is now Muslim. The town, which in 1970 was 90% Polish, became increasingly progressive over the decades as its demographic composition shifted.
According to Nickels, Hamtramck residents embraced hard-core pro-LGBTQ positions, supported Black Lives Matter, backed abortion rights and DEI initiatives, and made the town the first in the U.S. to legalize the Muslim call to prayer in the morning.
But progressives there were reportedly shocked when the Muslim mayor and all-Muslim city council banned the flying of Pride flags on city property, maintaining that such displays would disrespect the religious freedom of others. Some city government employees quit their jobs in response.
“How did these stupid progressives not know that Islam, unlike Christianity, isn’t into accommodating lifestyles it considers immoral?” Nickels asks.
He also notes that in 2023, Hamtramck’s all-Muslim city council enacted legislation making it legal to sacrifice animals on private residential propertiesâa first in the United States.
Fundamental Incompatibility
The core of Nickels’ argument is that “some cultures are simply not compatible with Western culture” because many immigrants from the Middle East “never fully assimilate into the culture that invited them in but stand in opposition to that culture while attempting to overpower and infuse that culture with its own values and standards.”
The Berlin attack, Nickels contends, clearly demonstrated this incompatibilityâyet progressives remain unwilling to acknowledge it because doing so would require admitting that an “intersectional family member” posed the threat, rather than the “fundamentalist Christian or rightwing white supremacist” many reportedly expected.
The piece concludes by questioning whether the “slow Islamization of Germany” can be reversed, comparing it to the cultural devastation wrought by the Nazisâa regime whose world was thankfully obliterated, in Nickels’ view.
Source: www.americanthinker.com â https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/07/the-no-borders-people-can-t-understand-why-an-islamist-ran-the-queers-down-with-his-car/