This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post on December 22, 2025.
The recent tragic and bestial Muslim terrorist attack against Australian Jews celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on December 14 in the Bondi Beach area of Sydney, as dramatic and heart-rending as it was, cannot and should not be viewed as an isolated event.
Rather, it follows a growing pattern of systematic Islamist-inspired violence and intimidation deliberately directed against innocent civilians celebrating their traditional religious festivals and civic holidays in Western societies.
This phenomenon is not new. One of the earlier examples was the December 2016 terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, which left 12 people murdered and dozens wounded. In 2018, a similar Islamist attack at a Christmas market killed five people in Strasbourg, France. More recently, on December 21, 2024, five people – including a nine-year-old child – were killed when a vehicle rammed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, injuring more than 200 others. The market was closed for the remainder of the season. A Saudi national who had lived in Germany since 2006 was arrested.
Such Islamist, anti-religious, anti-Christian, and antisemitic violence – and the ever-present threat accompanying it – is now spreading across Western societies like wildfire, casting a long shadow over the celebration of traditional religious and civic holidays.
In November 2025, the German town of Overath, near Cologne, cancelled its traditional Christmas market, citing prohibitive security costs driven by counterterrorism requirements. Similar cancellations have occurred in Dresden, Rostock, and elsewhere in Germany, where organizers say they can no longer afford the security measures imposed by authorities.
In France, Paris authorities cancelled the annual New Year’s Eve celebrations on the Champs-Élysées after police warned of an exceptionally high terror threat. A tradition spanning more than sixty years, which last year drew close to a million celebrants, has been replaced by a pre-recorded video to be viewed safely at home.
How Islamist violence terrorizes holiday celebrations in the West
Across Europe, large public festivities have been downgraded, restricted or cancelled outright. In Venice, public celebrations in historic squares have been curtailed and alcohol sales prohibited. In Belgrade, Serbia, the central Christmas concert was cancelled for security reasons. In Bratislava and elsewhere in Slovakia, the Chabad Jewish organization was compelled to limit its traditional eight-day Hanukkah celebrations to a single day due to security concerns.
Beyond Europe, similar patterns are emerging. Out of fear of Islamist violence, combined with rising security costs and concerns over public disorder, major Christmas and New Year celebrations – including firework displays – have been cancelled or severely restricted in cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney.
Even where celebrations continue, they do so under siege-like conditions. Salzburg’s iconic Christmas market, which attracts over 1.5 million visitors annually, is now guarded around the clock by private security and monitored by dozens of cameras. Elsewhere in Austria, Christmas markets have been cancelled entirely because organizers cannot meet mandated security requirements.
This atmosphere of fear has also penetrated educational and cultural institutions. In Andover, England, the head teacher of a primary school informed parents that there would be no reference to Christmas in the school’s festive performance “in order to be inclusive.” In Denmark, kindergartens and schools have been cancelling or diluting Christmas celebrations for years to avoid offending Muslim sensitivities.
Municipal authorities across Western Europe have followed suit. Nantes now celebrates a “Winter Journey” rather than Christmas. Bordeaux promotes “Festivities” without religious reference. Saint-Denis invites residents to “Beautiful Winter,” while its mayor reportedly wishes citizens a “Happy Winter.”
In Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, reports in December 2025 described Islamist groups overrunning the Christmas market, forcing Christian families to flee in fear. In Milan, Islamist agitators disrupted festivities, climbed on statues, imposed Palestinian flags on celebrants, and blasted loud music to intimidate families attending the market.
These developments are not coincidental. The heightened threat levels confronting Western cities emanate largely from growing Muslim migrant populations influenced by religious incitement and social pressure, often reinforced by clerical authority. This reality imposes ever-increasing security burdens and costs on host societies.
A clear illustration of such religious influence appears in a fatwa issued by Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz, former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reproduced in 2024 in the Kuwaiti magazine Al Mujtama, regarding participation in non-Muslim holidays. The ruling explicitly forbids Muslims from celebrating or assisting in Christian or Jewish festivals, describing such participation as sinful and a form of cooperation with the “enemies of Allah.”
The implications of this worldview – and its growing presence within Western societies – must not be underestimated or trivialized.
How long will Western democracies, seemingly fixated on appeasing Muslim pressures and fearful of violent backlash, continue to erode their own Judeo-Christian traditions to avoid offending migrant sensitivities? How long will political correctness, misplaced guilt, and cultural appeasement override common sense and historical continuity?
Once-proud democracies with rich religious and civic traditions – including Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Italy – appear increasingly unable or unwilling to defend their own cultural heritage. Even smaller nations across Europe are succumbing to the same pressures.
Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, and other traditional festivals are now genuinely at risk – threatened by Islamist incitement and violence directed at the very societies that have offered refuge and opportunity.
Rather than integrating into the cultures of their host nations, radical elements reject them and seek to impose their own norms. Regrettably, as long as Western societies continue to placate, mollify, and coddle such pressures, this trajectory will only intensify.
Indeed, a deeply troubling and sad state of affairs.
