"[People in France havethe]freedom to blaspheme." "In
France, there's also a freedom to blaspheme that is linked to the
freedom of conscience. So, from where I stand, I'm there to protect all
those freedoms." "I
don't have to comment on a journalist's choice. I just have to say
that, in France, one can criticize people who are governing and one can
blaspheme."French President Emmanuel Macron
"[The threat of terrorist attacks] remains extremely high in the
country." "The risk of terror of Sunni origin is
the main threat our country is facing" [32 planned
terrorist attacks had been foiled since 2017]." French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin
Nowhere is it stated, but it can be inferred that some of those apprehended atrocities planned for the Republic, and more anticipated, emanate from within France's borders. From its burden of millions of Muslims among whom violence is always simmering, from their unapproachable ghettoes, the banlieues into which police fear to tread and where firefighters risk their lives on entering to fight fires. The banlieues out of which from time to time come demonstrations of discontent when vehicles are torched in a show of defiance against authority.
Tension is high in France with the start of a trial of 14 people linked to the Islamist terrorist attack that took place in January of 2015 when Said and Cherif Kouachi broke into the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the intention of mass slaughter. They succeeded to the extent of their ambition, in killing a dozen people, among them the magazine's cartoonists, when they sprayed the building with automatic gunfire.
That week, a total of 17 people died over a three-day mission undertaken in the name of the Islamic State. Following the horrific attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices -- with France reeling in disbelief at the assaults, the carnage, the deaths, the slaughterhouse that once was a magazine headquarters -- an acquaintance of the Kuachi brothers killed a female police officer and on the following day Amedy Coulibaly attacked a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris, where he killed four Jewish men.
It is a crime punishable by death to commit the unforgivable offence of publishing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad. And those who did that very thing paid for their casual sin with their lives. For Islam brooks of no insults to its prophet, much less its Koran and Allah, the god of peace. The fourteen accomplices several of whom are being tried in absentia, are charged as accomplices, enablers of the killings.
A memorial of the Charlie Hebdo attack Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
No trial is required for the killers; all three were engaged in separate standoffs with Paris police and failed to survive their reckoning as was no likely their intention as martyrs prepared to ascend to Paradise and awaiting virgins. To commemorate the tragedy of the assault and mass death of Charlie Hebdo's writers and cartoonists, and the onset of the trail of the enablers, the magazine has decided to republish the offending cartoons.
It is a glove thrown as an invitation to a duel to the death. A red flag to re-antagonize and prod a beast whose slavering jaws and pounding hooves are prepared to do battle to humble the pride that assaults the prophet of Islam. Just as ten years earlier cartoons published on a dare by a Danish newspaper where in one cartoon Mohammad wears a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse, precipitated violent pandemonium all over the world when pious Muslims went on a rampage, destroying, pillaging, killing. Themselves, mostly. Such is the power of sacred outrage.
"[The suspects were not being tried as] little helpers." "It is
about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of
the events, who provided means of financing, operational material,
weapons, a residence. [Such
things were] essential to the terrorist action." National anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard
Originally published under the title, "Obama: Christianity No Different Than the Islamic State."
President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5
As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage
deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—most recently the immolation of a
captive—U.S. President Obama's response has been one of nonjudgmental
relativism.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama
counseled Americans to get off their "high horse" and remember that
Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:
Unless we get on our high
horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting
humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades
and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of
Christ.
There is so much to be said here. First, the obvious: the wide gulf
between violence and hate "justified in the name of Christ" and violence
and hate "justified in the name of Muhammad" is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.
This is not just a theoretic point; it is the very reason that Muslims are still committing savage atrocities.
Every evil act IS commits—whether beheading, crucifying, raping,
enslaving, or immolating humans—has precedents in the deeds of Muhammad,
that most "perfect" and "moral" man, per Koran 33:21 and 68:4 (see "The Islamic State and Islam" for parallels).
The wide gulf between violence
"justified in the name of Christ" and violence "justified in the name of
Muhammad" is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.
Does Obama know something about Christ—who eschewed violence and told
people to love and forgive their enemies—that we don't? Perhaps he's
clinging to that solitary verse that academics like Philip Jenkins habitually highlight,
that Christ—who "spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a
parable spoke not" once said, "I come not to bring peace but a sword."
(Matt. 10:34, 13:34).
Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting
that Christians will be persecuted, including by family members (as,
for example, when a Muslim family slaughters their child for
"apostatizing" to Christianity as happens frequently).
Conversely, in its fatwa
justifying the burning of the Jordanian captive, the Islamic State
cites Muhammad putting out the eyes of some with "heated irons" (he also
cut their hands and feet off). The fatwa also cites Khalid bin al-Walid—the heroic "Sword of Allah"—who burned apostates to death, including one man whose head he set on fire to cook his dinner on.
Nor is the Islamic State alone in burning people. Recently a "mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily."
As for the Islamic "authorities," Al Azhar—the Islamic world's oldest
and most prestigious university which cohosted Obama's 2009 "New
Beginning" speech—still assigns books that justify every barbarity IS commits, including burning people alive. Moreover, Al Azhar—a religious
institution concerned with what is and is not Islamic—has called for
the cutting off of the hands and feet of IS members, thereby
legitimizing such acts according to Islamic law.
Pope Urban II ordered the first crusade in response to the same kinds of atrocities being committed by the Islamic State today.
On the other hand, does Obama know of some secret document in the
halls of the Vatican that calls for amputating, beheading or immolating
enemies of Christ to support his religious relativism?
As for the much maligned Crusades, Obama naturally follows the
mainstream academic narrative that anachronistically portrays the
crusaders as greedy, white, Christian imperialists who decided to
conquer peace-loving Muslims in the Middle East.
Again, familiarity with the true sources and causes behind the
Crusades shows that they were a response to the very same atrocities
being committed by the Islamic State today.
Consider the words of Pope Urban II, spoken almost a millennium ago,
and note how well the portions in italics perfectly mirror IS behavior:
From the confines of
Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth
and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race
from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded
the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword,
pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own
country [as slaves], and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it
has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them
for the rites of its own religion …. What shall I say of the abominable
rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent…. On
whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering
this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other
nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage,
bodily activity, and strength…
If the crusaders left their own lands and families to come to the aid
of persecuted Christians and to liberate Jerusalem, here is Obama
portraying them as no better than the Islamic State—which isn't
surprising considering that, far from helping persecuted Christians, Obama's policies have significantly worsened their plight.
As for the Inquisition, this too took place in the context of
Christendom's struggle with Islam. (Isn't it curious that the European
nation most associated with the Inquisition, Spain, was also the one
ruled longest by, and heavily populated with, Muslims?) After the
Christian reconquest of Spain, Muslims, seen as untrustworthy, were
ordered either to convert to Christianity or go back to Africa whence
they came. Countless Muslims feigned conversion by practicing taqiyya
and living as moles, always trying to subvert Spain back to Islam.
Hence the extreme measures of the Inquisition—which, either way, find no
support in the teachings of Christ.
Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, called
for the murder of his enemies, incited his followers to conquer and
plunder non-believers, and kept sex slaves.
Conversely, after one of his jihads, Muhammad had a man tortured to
death with fire in order to reveal his tribe's hidden treasure and
"married" the same man's wife hours later. Unsurprisingly, the woman,
Safiya, later confessed that "Of all men, I hated the prophet the most—for he killed my husband, my brother, and my father," before "marrying" her.
In short, Obama's claim that there will always be people willing to
"hijack religion for their own murderous ends" is patently false when
applied to the Islamic State and like organizations and individuals.
Muhammad himself called for the murder of his enemies; he permitted
Muslims to feign friendship to his enemies in order to assassinate them;
he incited his followers to conquer and plunder non-believers,
promising them a sexual paradise if they were martyred; he kept sex
slaves and practiced pedophilia with his "child-bride," Aisha.
He, the prophet of Islam, did everything the Islamic State is doing.
If Muslims are supposed to follow the sunna, or example, of
Muhammad, and if Muhammad engaged in and justified every barbarity being
committed by the Islamic State and other Muslims—how, exactly, are they
"hijacking" Islam?
Such is the simple logic Obama fails to grasp. Or else he does grasp it—but hopes most Americans don't.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
