It is difficult not to be intemperate in the face of nine murdered journalists, two murdered policemen and a janitor, lying in pools of blood in Paris, the City of Lights: the cold, calculated killing spree a response to journalism that was displeasing. The magazine Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in 2011. Though it regularly heaved dung across and beyond the political spectrum and satirized many religious figures and religions including the Pope, Jews, Christians et al, it was Charlie’s caricatures of Islam that brought on the bombs and murders. Not surprising, in our time when virtually all terrorism of the last few decades—whether in Russia, China, Germany, the killing fields of Syria and the Middle East, New York or Boston—has been carried out in the name of Islam.There is really no point in fatuities about Islam being just as tolerant as all other religions, which was uttered endlessly by commentators covering the Paris horror. The public face of Islam has been hijacked by Islamist fundamentalists with a zero-tolerance policy. Though I really wish we had more than the occasional imam declaring this act to be barbaric, I can understand why Western Muslims—the majority of whom I expect and hope despise this carnage—aren’t taking to the streets to decry what is being done in the name of their faith. When hundreds of girls are kidnapped, enslaved or murdered in Pakistan or Nigeria for attending school (when even in Canada a Muslim women may run a risk of being killed for not upholding the family honour in a forced marriage), when Canadian-born youths are training as jihadists or fighting in Syria, fear takes over. Why endanger your own family or relatives abroad?
“Senseless killings,” said NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair in condemning the latest violence. Not senseless at all. Terror works. You can see how Islamic terrorism has gripped a culture when even those who may be mentally ill, possibly like Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the lone Parliament Hill gunman, seem to carry out their deranged acts in the name of Islam. They don’t kill in the name of vegetarianism or Napoleon. Their targets aren’t electricians or acrobats but the people symbolic of Western values—those standing guard over its memorials or working in its parliament.
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