Man Shouting 'Allah Ordered Me' Stabs Three Women in Paris, Terror Motive Not Yet Confirmed

A man armed with two kitchen knives attacked three women Monday morning near Porte de Clichy in Paris, critically wounding two of them, according to French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez.

The victims were 19, 24 and 36 years old, Nunez told reporters. One of them is reportedly pregnant, according to Daily Wire and The European Conservative. The attack happened between the brasserie Les Deux Coupoles and the Porte de Clichy tram stop, according to ibtimes.sg.

An off-duty police officer detained the suspect at the scene. Nunez called it "a courageous act," according to Reuters. Video verified by Reuters shows a man with long black hair, wearing a cream tracksuit, wielding a knife in each hand and lunging at a woman. Another clip shows him pinned to the ground by bystanders, the knives on the pavement nearby.

While restrained, the man said, "It is Allah who commanded me," according to Reuters. Le Figaro reported the phrasing as "It is Allah who ordered me," and The European Conservative cited a version quoting him as saying "Allah sent me to kill women."

Authorities Stop Short of Calling It Terrorism

Nunez said police have not confirmed the suspect's identity and described his statements as "incoherent" while he was being arrested, according to Reuters. "We need to be very careful with respect to the motives for this very violent attack," Nunez said, per ibtimes.sg.

The French national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office said it is "monitoring the procedure conducted by the Paris prosecutor's office," but as of Monday had not opened its own investigation, according to Reuters and ibtimes.sg. The European Conservative reported the suspect is 31 years old and that investigators have raised the possibility of "psychiatric problems," citing a source close to the investigation who initially treated the case as terrorism before pivoting to describe the man as simply "a madman."

A man shouts a religious justification for stabbing three strangers, and the government's initial read is mental illness, not ideology. French officials are the ones with access to the suspect, his medical history and any prior police contact. Jumping to a terrorism label without evidence would be problematic. But the public has watched this same sequence play out before, where an attacker's stated motive gets waved off as incoherence right up until it doesn't.

Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro captured that skepticism on X, writing sarcastically, "What was his motive? We may never know." Officials genuinely may not know yet whether this was ideological, psychiatric, or both. French law requires the anti-terror prosecutor's office to make that determination through actual investigation, not public statements made hours after an arrest.

A Second Attack in Two Days

The Paris stabbing came roughly 40 hours after a separate attack in Berlin, where German police shot and killed 21-year-old Abdul Ballout on Sunday after he drove a rented minivan into a crowd at Berlin's Pride festival Saturday, then attacked bystanders with a machete, according to the Associated Press and ibtimes.sg. One woman was killed and 29 people were wounded, per ibtimes.sg.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt directly linked that attack to radical Islamist ideology, according to Daily Wire. The BBC reported Ballout was a German citizen of Lebanese background, known to police as part of Berlin's "Islamist scene," who had previously served prison time in Germany for plotting a "serious act of violence that threatened the state" after being arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of trying to join ISIS in Syria, according to Die Welt and The Telegraph.

The Berlin case has a documented ideological history and a named suspect with a terrorism conviction. The Paris case, as of Monday, has none of that on the record. French police have not released the suspect's name. No charges have been filed. No terrorism investigation has been formally opened.

Two women remain in critical condition in Paris, according to GB News. Whether French prosecutors ultimately classify Monday's attack as terrorism, a mental health crisis, or both will determine how the case is charged and what, if anything, French authorities disclose next about the suspect's background.