Predictable, but no less monstrous for that. "Muslims in France Waiting for the Backlash," by Souad Mekhennet for the New York Times, April 10:
PARIS — The attacks in France committed by Mohammed Merah, a French-born Muslim whose parents migrated from Algeria, have millions of Muslims living in the West worried about the potential consequences. In particular, women worry that they will become the focus of campaign politics.Many friends who wear the hijab and live in Europe reported getting angry looks after the attacks, said Malika, 29, a German of Moroccan background who works in a bank and declined to have her last name published.
Angry looks! Horror of horrors! The other day I was at a Hertz counter and a Muslim clerk gave me a dirty look -- I don't think he recognized me, but perhaps just took me for a Jew -- and ostentatiously bypassed me for the person behind me in line. Will the New York Times write about me?
Mr. Merah, 23, had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and claimed affiliation with Al Qaeda. He killed seven people, three of them children.“It is terrible what he has done, and there is nothing in Islam that justifies the killing of innocents, especially children,” said Naima, 26, who also spoke on the condition that her full identity be withheld.
The problem is that Muslim hardliners consider no non-Muslim to be innocent. And the Qur'an tells us that "the unbelievers among the People of the Book" -- that is, the Jews and Christians who reject Muhammad and Islam -- are not human beings worthy of respect although they differ from Muslims in conscience, but "the worst of creatures" (Qur'an 98:6).
Naima and other Muslims in France would no doubt strongly reject such a view, but we cannot know that for sure, since they do not address it, and no mainstream media journalist ever asks them to do so.
“But will we Muslims, and especially Muslim women, have to pay the price now?”
No. The rabbi and the children Merah murdered at the Jewish school in the name of Islam and jihad already paid the price.
Naima cited the debate in France over where Mr. Merah was to be buried — in the end, Algeria refused his body, and he was buried in Toulouse — as evidence of double standards about who is embraced as French and who remains firmly Muslim.“When someone is like Zidane, a great sportsman, they say he’s French, and when one like Merah, who is a child of this society, runs nuts and kills people, they say he’s not one of us,” she said.
You mean you want to claim him?
Naima’s parents, like Mr. Merha’s [sic], came from Algeria. She grew up in the suburbs of Paris.Naima and many other Muslims in Europe wonder whether they are caught in a vicious cycle in which increasing xenophobia helps radicalize a generation of Muslims born in France, and they ask whether attacks like Mr. Merah’s will further increase Islamophobia.
Notice that it is "xenophobia" that helps "radicalize" young Muslims. Texts of the Qur'an and Sunnah exhorting believers to wage war against unbelievers? No, those have nothing to do with this "radicalization," nothing whatsoever. It is entirely the fault of the West, despite the fact that Muslim leaders in Europe have repeatedly warned Muslims there not to assimilate, but to form ethnic/religious enclaves. The Muslim leader Dyab Abou Jahjah in Belgium said a few years back that "assimilation is cultural rape."
Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, an American lawyer living in Los Angeles and the author of the book “My Guantánamo Diary,” asserted that “French politics have generated anti-Islamic sentiment,” but that clearly Mr. Merah “needed his head checked.”
Yet again, there is no hint whatsoever that any Muslims could have done anything to be responsible for any "anti-Islamic sentiment," if any actually exists.
“Nothing justifies his heinous attacks,” she said.Mr. Merah also stated that France had become increasingly anti-Muslim, citing the ban of the niqab, the veil over women’s faces....
“Between having entire families massacred in Kandahar by a sociopath U.S. soldier, drones wiping out entire families or bombs dropping on weddings,” Mrs. Khan said, “there are multiple sources to anger toward Western countries.”
Yes, and no reasons at all for what Mrs. Khan would term "Islamophobia." Just never mind all those jihad terror attacks committed in the name of Islam.
Mrs. [Yvonne] Ridley said: “Western governments must start to take responsibility for their actions abroad, and these actions are not usually with the consent or in the agreement of their own citizens who elected them.”
Yes, yes, Western governments must start to take responsibility. But do Muslims need to start taking responsibility for how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to incite to violence? Of course not!
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I think it's pretty hard to make a more stupid article than what Souad MEKHENNET has delivered there...
This statement is particularly st0000pid:"Naima cited the debate in France over where Mr. Merah was to be buried — in the end, Algeria refused his body, and he was buried in Toulouse — as evidence of double standards about who is embraced as French and who remains firmly Muslim."
His own family wanted to bury him in Algeria, showing how "French" they truly feel, so what double standard is this 'naima' character talking about?
Too bad NYT doesn't allow for comments on their pages!