A man on Friday punched two Syrian teenage girls in the face in northeastern Berlin, police reported Saturday. According to the report, the attacker was screaming racist insults while hitting the girls, 16- and 17-years of age “with his fist several times … before fleeing into a shopping arcade.” Both girls were taken to hospital.
A few hours later on Friday, a woman reportedly attacked a 12-year-old girl in the southeastern suburb of Neukölln. She tried to rip off her victim’s headscarf, pulled her hair and threatened her with pepper spray. She then tried to stab the girl with a syringe filled with what looked like blood, police reported.
According to Deutsche Welle, the two hate crimes reflect new tensions over Muslim migration into Germany.
On New Year’s Day, a 50-year-old German man was charged with attempted murder after he had driven his car into a large group of foreigners in Bottrop and Essen in western Germany. Eight were injured in the attack, including a 4-year-old Afghan boy and a 10-year-old Syrian girl.
According to Pew, between 2010 and 2016, the number of Muslims living in Germany rose from 3.3 million (4.1% of the population) to nearly 5 million (6.1%), while the rest of the population shrank modestly from 77.1 million to 76.5 million.
Pew speculated that even if there is no more immigration, Muslims will continue to increase as a share of Germany’s population in future decades because German Muslims, on average, are much younger and have more babies than Germans as a whole.