CAIRO: Egyptian online activists have called for a gathering outside the German Embassy in Cairo on July 1 to commemorate the third anniversary of Egyptian mother Marwa al-Sherbini, who was stabbed to death while pregnant outside a German court. The activists called for protesting the race-related hate crime and the German authorities' failure to bring justice to the family. Sherbini, dubbed the “veiled martyr” by Arab activists, was stabbed to death by the hands of a German man outside a court. She and her husband and her then three-year-old on were suing the man for assaulting Sherbini previously after a verbal argument. He physically attacked her and attempted to remove her headscarf. She decided to take him to court. The man then attacked Sherbini and her husband, who was stabbed three times but survived. She received 18 wounds. She was three months pregnant at the time of her murder. The murder stimulated a cultural battle between Europe and the Arab world, with a number of Arabs claiming the murder was part of a larger problem facing European society, namely, racism and hatred of Muslims and Arabs. For el-Sherbini's family, the tragic loss of their daughter led to a campaign against all things German. In Alexandria, local pharmacy's called for a boycott of German products, but the movement drizzled out with little success. In the end, the back and forth war of words died down and the German judicial system took charge of the case, which left the vast majority of Arabs at ease, but the cultural friction created by the murder was strong.
