Last August, Marwa el-Sherbini, an Egyptian pharmacist living in Germany since 2003, was with her toddler son at a playground in the Dresden suburb of Johannstadt. A dispute transpired between her and a man now referred to by public records as “Axel W.” about whether it was her son’s or his niece’s turn to go on the swings. In the course of the argument, W. called el-Sherbini, who wore a headscarf, an “Islamist”, a “terrorist” and “slut”. Angered by the incident, el-Sherbini filed a formal complaint against W.

A local court fined Axel W. €780 (USD$1,100) for calling el-Sherbini a “terrorist”. During the trial, W. continued to insult el-Sherbini, telling her, “You don’t have the right to live here,” and afterwards, he appealed the fine. Last week, he and el-Sherbini appeared in court for his appeal.

As el-Sherbini prepared to testify, W. attacked her inside the courtroom, stabbing her 18 times. El-Sherbini’s husband, Eliv Ali Okaz, intervened during the attack, only to be stabbed by W. and shot by courtroom security, which unexplainably mistook him as the attacker. Okaz is in critical condition. El-Sherbini died on the courtroom floor. Their three-year-old son witnessed the entire episode.

The initial verbal attack on el-Sherbini had been based on her headscarf, and W.’s xenophobic statements at the first trial and his murderous assault at the appeal underscored his racism. If this was not enough, the courtroom security attacked Okaz instead of W., assuming him to be the attacker on seemingly no other basis than his skin color.

But what has really instigated accusations of racism is what happened after the whole ordeal was over. Despite the highly dramatic nature of the incident, it has received little attention in Western media, which has covered the technical details of courtroom security much more than the issue of anti-Islamic sentiment. Muslims – in Germany, Egypt, and throughout the Muslim world – are shocked by the silence.

Commentators across the world are playing the “what if” game, stating that the media values a Muslim life much less than a non-Muslim one, whose murder would have received far more attention. As one blogger exclaimed, “…just imagine if the situation was reversed and the victim was a westerner who was stabbed anywhere in the world or -God Heaven- in any Middle Eastern country by Muslim extremists, or even what the media used to call ‘minorities’ in Egypt! You definitely would have heard the world’s buzzing and the internet goes down too!”

The what-if commentators have reason to be concerned, given the ongoing racism in Germany, evidenced in recent years by the wave of protests against the building of a mosque near the world famous Cologne Cathedral and confirmed by the UN Special Rapporteur for racism, Githu Muigai, who, having completed his 10-day fact-finding trip to Germany just a week before the el-Sherbini incident, emphasized the need for Germany “to turn its attention to the problems of daily racism and discrimination.”

Moreover, the attack on el-Sherbini occurred just weeks after President Sarkozy of France described the burqa as a symbol of subservience and suggested that the Parliament may want to consider banning Muslim women in France from wearing it in public. Sarkozy’s focus on the burqa melded into the attack on the headscarved el-Sherbini, helping to dub her the “hijab martyr” and the whole incident as indicative of European – or Western – hatred for Islam and its practices. Indeed, the focus of European racism on the Muslim headscarf has likely deepened its politicization, much like the insistence of Egypt’s British colonizers that the veil represented backwardness and oppression led to the emergence of the veil as a symbol of resistance to colonialism.

Having acknowledged the legitimacy of the what-if commentary, it’s important to turn the what-if spotlight internally as well. As commentator Khalid Diab notes, “If a western or local woman were attacked or murdered in a Muslim country for not wearing the headscarf, would her case attract much attention in Egypt or other Muslim countries?” Diab questions why more Muslims don’t stand up against forced hijabization in Muslim countries, or even more atrocious, but related, crimes such as the Saudi mutaween, or morality police, arresting women because they were visited by unrelated men, or allowing women to die in a burning building because they weren’t covered? In a twisted way, these women were “hijab martyrs” in their own right.

In addition to Muslim silence on gender injustice in Muslim countries, many if not all Muslim countries also support anti-blasphemy efforts. Egypt, for example, is a major supporter of the U.N. Defamation Resolution, which seeks to criminalize insults to a religion, and has enforced its strict domestic blasphemy laws against religious minorities, converts away from Islam, and Muslim “deviants” and dissenters. It expects that its own Muslim citizens should be free from religion or race-based harassment elsewhere in the world while it continues to oppress religious minorities in its midst.

Interestingly, in all of the anger against racism in Germany, it’s forgotten that el-Sherbini had won on her hate crime claim and awarded damages because she had been called a “terrorist.” Germany’s hate speech legislation is similar to that of many other European countries. Section 130 of its Criminal Code, for example, criminalizes public incitement of hatred or the defamation of parts of the population in a way that violates their human dignity. It is illegal, for instance, to call members of certain ethnic groups “maggots” or “freeloaders”. And it was illegal for Axel W. to call el-Sherbini a “terrorist.”

While Germany’s hate speech law is problematic for the same reason blasphemy laws are – both restricting legitimate speech in the absence of a real threat of violence and privileging group sentiment over individual free speech rights – Muslims in many cases stand to benefit from European hate speech law, while in their home countries, blasphemy laws often severely restrict their freedom of conscience. In one scenario they are offered special protection; in the other, they are more vulnerable to persecution.

No doubt, the racism and religious discrimination involved in the el-Sherbini case are outrageous and indefensible. But as bigger and bigger protests begin brewing over el-Sherbini’s murder, the nuances should be acknowledged and greater justice should be demanded not just in Europe but in Muslim countries as well.

Asma T. Uddin is Editor-in-Chief of altmuslimah.com