Will the Charlie Hebdo killings be a turning point in how Europe deals with Jihadism? Color me skeptical, as Europe’s elites seem to have an infinite capacity to keep hitting the snooze button, and left-wing political parties need Muslim votes too badly to speaking honestly about jihad. But for now the furor over Charlie Hebdo killings refuses to die down:
So the Charlie Hebdo killers are dead, but the manhunt for a female accomplice implicated in the deaths of four people during the siege of a Kosher food store in Paris continues. Here are various reactions and pieces on the Charlie Hebdo attack:
A journalist explains that a crowdfunding campaign, spontaneously created on the Internet by strangers, has already collected 98,000 euros in less than 24 hours. Charlie’s survivors are inundated with subscription requests that they can’t handle at the moment. Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, Richard Malka, speaks. “There’s money arriving from everywhere. Assistance, space, personnel to deal with requests …” “We have received support from lots of media sources,” echoes Christophe Thévenet, another lawyer for the newspaper. “There are donations, already 250,000 euros from the Press and Pluralism Association, the million euros pledged by Fleur Pellerin [the French Minister of Culture and Communication]. … You are going to have finances like never before at Charlie!”
So no, we’re all not Charlie—few of us are that good, and none of us are that brave. If more of us were brave, and refused to yield to the bomber’s veto, and maybe reacted to these eternally recurring moments not by, say, deleting all your previously published Muhammad images, as the Associated Press is reportedly doing today, but rather by routinely posting newsworthy images in service both to readers and the commitment to a diverse and diffuse marketplace of speech, then just maybe Charlie Hebdo wouldn’t have stuck out so much like a sore thumb. It’s harder, and ultimately less rewarding to the fanatical mind, to hit a thousand small targets than one large one.
The French establishment is co-opting these brave men’s deaths for their own purposes, and for the most part the world’s media are helping them get away with it. I spent much of Thursday on TV and radio, and my irritation with the dismal #JeSuisCharlie campaign increased as the day wore on. The self-flattering evasiveness of all those cartoonists around the world offering lame variations of “the pen is mightier than the sword” was especially feeble.
Steyn also offers this sad, telling point:
I can’t claim to have known Georges Wolinski, the 80-year-old cartoonist among the dead on Wednesday, but I met him briefly, a few years ago. Via Laura Rosen Cohen, I learn of the strange, circular journey of his life and death. His father was a Polish Jew who fled to Tunisia to lead a life free of pogroms. Georges was born there in 1934. Two years later, his dad was murdered, and the family moved again, this time to France.
And on Wednesday, like his father, the son was killed.
Wolinski père fled Jew-hate in Europe to be murdered in the Muslim world.
Wolinski fils fled Jew-hate in the Muslim world to be murdered in Europe, by Muslims.
however. When it comes to appeasing militant Islam, my own trade is equally culpable.
So is the entire apparatus of the State. We pussy-foot around anything which may cause offence to Muslims, partly out of good manners but primarily because we are worried about the potential backlash.
The reason most of the media in the Western world steered clear of republishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed wasn’t because they were not newsworthy but because of fears that men in balaclavas with machine-guns might march into the front office and start firing at random.
Snip.
Islam is just one of the New Establishment’s favoured client groups. Exciting ‘hate crime’ laws have been invented to grant them special privileges and punish their critics.
So mad mullahs in Midlands madrassas can call for homosexuals to be stoned to death. But a Christian preacher who objects to gay marriage can expect to be arrested and given a criminal record.
We have also created a ‘victim’ culture, which allows minority groups to justify any kind of bad behaviour on the grounds that they are being oppressed.
You didn’t have to look far yesterday to find allegedly ‘respected’ voices prepared to blame the staff of Charlie Hebdo for bringing the wrath of the Islamists down on themselves. They shouldn’t have been so ‘provocative’.
(Hat tip: The Jawa Report.)
Three cheers for cartoonist Robert Crumb. #CharlieHebdo #tcot #DrawMohammadDay pic.twitter.com/aSzf5nwGLS
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) January 10, 2015
The anti-Muslim backlash in France that many people were expecting this week seems to have somehow resulted in the murder of Jews.
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) January 9, 2015
Bill Maher once again states the obvious to those unwilling to listen, harkening back to the days when liberals believed in free speech rather than labeling it “hate crimes.”
A few quotes:
The second half of the interview is Maher on the Bill Cosby accusations. But at least watch the first six minutes.
(Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
“Boko Haram fighters burnt down almost the entire town on Wednesday, after over-running a military base on Saturday, Musa Alhaji Bukar said.
“Bodies lay strewn on Baga’s streets, amid fears that some 2,000 people had been killed in the raids, he added.”
Let’s hope those numbers are exaggerated, as early reports frequently are.
Also remember that the full name of Boko Haram is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Prophet’s Teachings for Propagation and Jihad). Perhaps we could take up a collection for one of the learned members of our ruling class to fly over and explain to them how they’re not actually Islamic…
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the MSM has trotted out the usual talking points that such extremists views and actions are “not about Islam” and represent “only a tiny percentage” of all Muslims.
There’s just one tiny problem with this theory: It isn’t true.
Polls show that something like 20% of Muslim populations worldwide agree with terrorists, and far more agree with their aims as far as the imposition of Sharia law. Other findings from Pew (which is rarely accused of a right-wing bias):
In the UK, in another poll from 2006, 20% of surveyed Muslims supported the 2005 7/7 suicide attacks, and 40% supported the imposition of Sharia law.
So: Not a “small minority.” And, as Brigitte Gabriel notes in the video below, so what if “most” Muslims are peaceful? The “mostly peaceful” citizens of Germany, Japan, China and the Soviet Union didn’t prevent those who controlled their governments from murdering millions:
One of the first steps toward dealing with the problem of radical Islam is to stop repeating comforting lies about it.
Masked gunmen opened fire in the offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday in Paris, the police said, with initial reports saying that as many as 12 people had been killed and 10 wounded.
And here’s the reason the New York Times buries ten paragraphs deep:
The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, has been attacked in the past for satirizing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after publishing a cartoon of the prophet on its cover promising “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing!”
Obviously it’s time to bring back Everyone Draw Mohammed Day. So mark your calendars for May 20th.
After pointing out that mass jihadist violence was common two days ago, Nigeria’s Boko Haram decides to underscore my point:
Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped at least 185 women and children, and killed 32 people in a raid in northeastern Nigeria this week, local officials and residents said.
Gunmen in pickup trucks attacked the village of Gumsuri, just north of Chibok, on Sunday, shooting down men before herding women and children together.
“They gathered the women and children and took them away in trucks after burning most of the village with petrol bombs,”
This actually happened a few days before the Peshawar school attack, but the village was remote enough that word is only trickling out now.
And speaking of the Peshawar massacre, a Taliban spokesman said killing women and children is just fine and dandy with Islam:
“The Mujahideen were instructed to only kill the older children. The Peshawar attack is in complete accordance with the Prophet’s teachings because when the Prophet killed the Jewish Tribe of Banu Qurayza, he put the same guideline, that only the children who have hair below their belly button (pubic hair) are allowed to be killed. Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.”
Got that? “Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.” Any questions?
(Hat tip: Jim Treacher’s Twitter Feed.)
If you answered “two,” thinking of the Sidney siege, BZZZZPP! I’m sorry, you don’t win the microwave.
The answer would be “a minimum of 143,” given that the Taliban killed some 141 (a death toll that continues to rise) at a school in Pakistan yesterday. They burned a teacher alive and beheaded children.
You know: the usual.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed a dozen or more jihad-related killings the barely made local international papers, much less the ones not reported on.
If that happened in the U.S., the freakout would go on for weeks on end. But pretty much a week doesn’t go by that Jihadists don’t carry out a school killing somewhere in Nigeria or Kenya or wherever. Indeed, attacks on schools are part of the standard Jihadest blueprint for terror.
Blow-back must be a bitch for the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who played a key role in creating the Taliban and supporting various jihadist activities. (Remember where Osama Bin Laden was found?)