Mark Durie
In the course of a few weeks, France, which has the highest proportion of Muslim citizens in Europe, has been subjected, once again, to bloody assassinations by attackers shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The first was the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had been discussing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons with his class. This was followed two weeks later by the killing of three Christian worshippers inside Notre Dame church in Nice. The Nice attacker cut the throats of Nadine Devilliers, sixty, and sexton Vincent Loques, fifty-five. Simone Barreto Silva was repeatedly stabbed and died of her wounds. These two atrocities were perpetrated by young male immigrants from Chechnya and Tunisia. In a third incident, an Orthodox priest was wounded by a shotgun blast when he was closing his church in Lyon. These three attacks were all symbolic: targeting non-Islamic faith and criticism of Islam.
These attacks came not long after President Macron had delivered a “Fight Against Separatism” speech on October 2 to the French parliament, announcing stricter measures to crack down on the growing influence of what he called “radical Islamism”, an ideology which has
a proclaimed, publicised desire, a systematic way of organising things to contravene the Republic’s laws and create a parallel order, establish other values, develop another way of organising society which is initially separatist, but whose ultimate goal is to take over it [the Republic] completely. Continue reading Macron’s Vain Hope for an Enlightened Islam
