Wait and see, the next big battle about a cross on public ground, a Bible in a public school, or a bite to eat at Chik-Fil-A will bring out some form of, "This is what the people at Charlie Hedbo died for."
And when they do, I'll post it with a big, I TOLD YOU SO" scrawled across it. But I digress.
I have been looking at news articles for an angle here. I've been listening to the give and take on whether or not our politicians are in the wrong in punching up the "extremists" and downplaying the "Islamist." And the debate on whether Islam is a "religion of peace." And why these guys do this crap. Here's some of what I found.
I've listened to Egyptian President Sisi and Lebanese Hezbollah chief Sheik Hasran Nasrallah speak about the damage the extremists do to Islam and how the religion needs to be "revolutionized", taken back from those who hijacked it.
A read this report, lost in the day's mischief:
A suicide bomber has struck a Shia mosque in Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing seven people and wounding several others, police have said.
Police told Al Jazeera that the attacker blew himself up when he was stopped at the gate of the mosque.
The blast occurred as minority Shias gathered in the mosque to distribute alms to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.
So it isn't okay to draw a cartoon of Mohammed, but it IS cool to kill your co-religionists on his birthday.
A lot of Americans believe that anything moderate Muslims like Sisi say is just PC, so they can support western outrage while looking over their shoulders and giving the ol' nod, nod, wink, wink. Others might say, they're just shoring up their own positions before the radicals strip them of their hold on power. We're cynical like that nowadays. In the cases like those two, I tend to believe it. Other areas (oops, I didn't say Qatar, did I?), not so much. But I think the rank and file believer probably doesn't want a whole lot to do with these cretins.
A woman named Victoria Fontan, a professor at the American University in Kurdistan, did an op/ed piece on Aljazeera, Which bashed the attack on freedom of speech, and I went along with... until...
As the French political scene and its dutiful self-censoring media all cry crocodile tears after the attack, dots need to be connected. This is what journalism should be about.
France and the US are at war: Their main achievement has been to obliterate this narrative from their own populations, which is why today’s attack is met with naive incredulity. One of the suspects, Cherif Kouachi, had already been sentenced to prison in 2008 for helping young recruits travel to Iraq. He was allegedly motivated to do so at the time by the torture pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib prison. Violence does not occur in a vacuum, and people like Kouachi do connect the dots.
Since the beginning of its Mali campaign France is now perceived to be at war with Islam. Its alliance with the US against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last September has prompted the group to encourage its followers to kill what it referred to as the "spiteful and filthy French". This did not fall on deaf ears. Today's attack came after many others that have been recently averted by French security services.
Young disenfranchised Muslims who choose to resort to violence, not just today's attackers but also the hundreds of recruits who travelled to Syria to join the ranks of ISIL, are not born in a vacuum either. Their perceived sense of structural social humiliation, police profiling, and state harassment, is the fuel to their anger.
Given the freedom to access paid employment, enjoy personal fulfilment, and be an equal part of French society, it is undeniable that they would have chosen freedom over violence. Anyone would. They just might not think that this a privilege that they can afford, and this is the failure of not only the French state, but its increasingly Islamophobic population that sees nothing wrong in insulting that religion over others that are considered sacrosanct in French society.
I boldened that line about the narrative, because I do not see that- with the exception of the White House, apparently willing to bend over backwards to spin it as not being war. The actions say otherwise. Kouachi's motivation was the torture pictures he saw? Well, maybe he should have looked at the pictures of the grieving families of 911 victims. Or the raped and beheaded women ISIS trapped on Sinjar Mountain. Or the mothers mourning the daughters kidnapped by Boko Haram. Hey, Cherif, YOUR buddies accomplished that. My sympathies on murderers getting tortured is minimal.
If you remember this post of mine, you know that her line of economic oppression is pure BS. Anyone would? How about these bored rich kids who have the world by the ass, and it isn't enough. Why isn't it enough? Because they are looking to fill the hole in their life. Some of us fill that hole with Christ; some do not. Fontan is looking for an easy answer that just doesn't exist.
So after looking around, I found my angle- and it's the cartoon I drew. Does it mean that I hate Muslims? No, there's not one Muslim on that picture.
You know, I find it a bit ironic. The Christian faith had it's split over whether men were inspired by God, or God's Word is. Islam split over whether the arbiter of the faith after Mohammed died was his daughter or an in-law. Like I often tell you all in my Sunday messages- it's all about where the focus is.
You do know you are quiet a wise man at times and I did like the cartoon
ReplyDeleteThank you once again!
DeleteChris:
ReplyDeleteI agree that you are a wise man...when you;re not being a wise GUY the rest of the time (like me)...LOL.
And I have not heard nor seen such a COGENT commentary on this whole ball-of-wax since I can't remember when.
I was also thinking about putting cartoons of Mohammed up EVERY DAY...just to put a thumb in THEIR eye for a change.
Very well said, brother.
And the experts all seem to agree...you can't kill these Islamic terrorists with kindness when they're killing you with bullets and bombs.
Perhaps a lot less "touchy-feely" and a lot more "tit-for-tat" is in order...NOW.
Good call, brother.
Stay safe up there.
What I have been fascinated with is that the one thing I've been hearing- "Why don't the other Muslims say/do something?"- IS happening, and I have some examples to add to the ones in this post coming up. Extremists are wearing out their welcome all over the world. Pity they're too stupid to see it and too bloodthirsty to care.
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