Charlie Hebdo jihad attack: Free speech is a microcosm of a much larger issue
by Christine Williams
Free speech is but a fragment of the issue stemming from the jihad massacre in France, albeit an important one. Although offensive cartoons were said to have provoked these fanatics, there are countless other slaughters happening globally at the hands of jihadists that are unrelated to free speech. The issue is Islamic jihad terror, and free speech when directed at Muhammad is just one of the Western rights that inflames jihadists. Charlie Hebdo was equally offensive to other faiths, including Christianity, making vulgar mockeries of Jesus, Mary, and the Trinity, without bloodshed by any Christians.
Islamic jihad terror is what every freedom-loving and Western nation needs to stand together to fight. Following the 14-minute trailer for “Innocence of Muslims” two years ago that mocked the Prophet Muhammad, violent riots erupted across the Muslim world, leaving widespread carnage. Rather than condemn the eruption, Turkey’s then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan encouraged it by stating that “Turkey recognizes anti-semitism as a crime, while not a single Western country recognizes Islamophobia as such.” Meanwhile, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a Washington-based writer, former Imam and former member of the International Institute for Islamic Thought—who was there when the word “Islamophobia” was created–wrote:
“This loathsome term [Islamophobia] is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly delivered an important commentary following the Charlie Hebdo killings, addressing the larger issue. He stated:
“No question another terror attack by Muslim fanatics while waging war against nearly everybody. Every country on earth is being impacted by the jihad. Yet we will not admit the truth about this ongoing war.”
O’Reilly criticized President Obama’s statement: “One thing I am very confident about is the values that we share with the French people: a Universal belief in the freedom of expression is something that can’t be silenced because of the senseless violence of a few.”
O’Reilly accurately pointed out that it isn’t “just the few,” but that the “jihadists have a stronghold in at least a dozen countries” and “have killed thousands of American military people and tens of thousands of civilians.”
In addition, jihadists also routinely slaughter Christians and other innocents, and destroy churches and other places of worship. In Saudi Arabia, churches are not even allowed to exist, because according to Bandar al-Aiban, the director of the Saudi National Human Rights commission, “the entire country is a ‘sacred mosque’ for Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.”
About 100,000 Christians are killed every year around the world because of their faith, according to top Vatican official Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi, a Catholic archbishop, who cited the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the worst places for the persecution.
Persecution watchdog Open Doors’ annual World Watch List found that North Korea was the only exception in the top ten list of offenders: nine out of the ten countries ranked the most oppressive for Christians to live in were Muslim. Following North Korea are Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen. Other religious minorities suffer the same way, and Muslim-on-Muslim killing is staggering: some ten million Muslims have been murdered by other Muslims of opposing sects since the founding of Israel in 1948.
On Western soil, our leaders and citizens are increasingly becoming subjugated psychologically through jihadist intimidation, intensified by the reality of the murders at Charlie Hebdo. Furthermore, although it has been reported that “only” some ten percent of the global Muslim population is violent, that number is highly significant when considering that a very small minority of Germans were Nazis, but the world witnessed the atrocities of that minority; and an additional problem emerges where a significant number of Muslim adherents cheer on and embolden violent jihadists.
Entertainer Bill Maher passionately addressed this point when he blasted Muslims who support the massacre in France. On ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, Maher said:
“I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this….But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, ‘We don’t approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.”
The Islamic State (ISIS) is another force that has served to embolden Muslim anti-Western sentiments and jihadists. The Islamic State has called for its members to kill civilians and soldiers in Western countries. In addition, the foreign fighters of ISIS are now a grave Western threat through ISIS’s aggressive social media campaign for new recruits, promises of paradise and monetary gifts.
Due to the ongoing policy laxity of fearful and vote-soliciting Western leaders, jihadists are growing in strength and numbers, and because of politicians’ failure to deal with this problem, now violence is being met with further violence in France: mosques were fired upon with blank grenades and bullets following the Charlie Hebdo massacre. While the West continues to be politically correct as to not be deemed Islamophobic, dhimmitude is leading to unrest. There is no possible way to appease jihadists, as their goal is conquest by whatever means necessary. This includes both stealth and violent jihadists, as they work together toward the same goal. Our stand in support with the Charlie Hebdo publication should not be only for free speech, but a declaration that free people everywhere are going to stand up and resist bowing down to and being subjugated by jihadists.
Christine Williams is Public Affairs and Media Consultant for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem Canada; a nine-time award-winning TV Host and Producer; and a Director on the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
Salah says
“About 100,000 Christians are killed every year around the world because of their faith, according to top Vatican official Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi, a Catholic archbishop, who cited the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the worst places for the persecution.”
And because of their blood…
“Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity.” according to sheikh Ahmad al-Qataani, the president of The Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya.
Original Arabic Transcript and partial English / French translations here:
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2010/05/dying-islam-lislam-mourant.html
Matthieu Baudin says
Salah, thankyou. Very interesting. I’d imagine that 6 million apostates would be outstripped by more than that number of births into Moslem families each year, but a surprise non the less.
Paul says
This is not about extremism. We have seen regardless of how hard as westerners we accomadate them, they will denounce these violent acts of war as the acts of extremists from a religion they all follow. Why is it us who must deal with these extremists. I am sure if there was a christian extremist movement that would first become citizens of a majority opposing religious country then attack and kill their citizens. First no muslim countries show equality amongst religions,races,sexes or any group outside their following. Wait and see how they will denouce these acts we now are seeing when they are inflitrated enough amongst us to take our countries from the inside out. The jihad has begun long ago this is how they fight it. One soul at a time.
Myxlplik says
This website, Charlie Hebdo, and others like it are the front line of this war, not Afghanistan, or Iraq. We can engage physically when we get the ideology & satirist lead the charge.
Great interview by Bill Maher.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/08/bill-maher-hundreds-of-millions-of-muslims-support-attack-on-charlie-hebdo.html
zaba says
Ah, islam…..
1400 bloody years too many.
We are fortunate to be living in the age of peak islam.
Michael Copeland says
Thank you, Christine Williams, for this piece. I make one observation, if I may.
“Mocking”
The youtube trailer, “Innocence of Muslims” was low-budget. It is this, I submit, that influences all of us, who are accustomed to the very finest of film productions, to have an unfavourable opinion of it. Its cheapness is, to our rather spoilt sensitivities, a little insulting. However, it was not “mocking”. School Nativity Plays are low-budget: they are not “mocking” or insulting. Like a Nativity Play, the film faithfully enacts stories from scripture, in this case revered Islamic scriptures on the life of Mohammed. Every incident portrayed is drawn from those sources and faithfully acted out. The film is not “mocking” anyone: it is biographical. Usama Dakdok explains it scene by scene: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsef0vBN..
Islamic speakers automatically object to the film because Islam forbids representation of their Messenger. That it exists at all is something they find shocking. When they assert that it is “insulting” or “mocking” Mohammed they are using their “taqiyya” – authorised deception. They do not want Mohammed’s actions to become well-known. His deeds, though, are recorded in Islam’s texts, and we can verify them all ourselves (www.TheReligionOfPeace.com). The Western world has no such prohibition on portrayals, and no authorised deception. There is no reason why the West should adopt or observe these Islamic practices any more than it should adopt, say, daughter-killing.
Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons are indeed lightly “mocking”. That is the point of them. Charlie Hebdo’s “Life of Mohammed” book, though, faithfully follows Islam’s sources: its cartoon illustrations are not reverential, but they falsify nothing.
Michael Copeland says
The violent riots of the muslim world are instructed in the mosques. The Islamic world lacks the freedoms of speech and assembly that we are accustomed to in the West. We need not attribute to them the kind of spontaneity that we are familiar with.
It is too easy to slide together the sequence of causation. The violent riots are caused by mullahs instructing muslims: they are not caused by teddy bears, or burnt books, or low-budget videos. Those are merely the pretexts exploited by the mullahs exercising their all-important “Control”, the main feature of “Submission”, namely Islam.
See “And Take Their Wives as War Booty” at LibertyGB:
http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/6562-and-take-their-wives-as-war-booty
dumbledoresarmy says
And that is why, the moment that the French knew that Charlie Hebdo had been attacked, every mosque in Paris and within fifty miles radius – and every imam or sheikh’s house associated therewith – should have been surprise-raided and searched, with the assistance of the French army and special forces.
C S Hurgronje, the brilliant Dutch scholar, knew that the mosques and the imams – the mohammedan gang bosses – were the key; the nerve centre.
thomas pellow says
“We Are Charlie:
Free Speech v. Self-Censorship”
by Douglas Murray.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5016/charlie-hebdo-attack
thomas pellow says
Re- ‘New York Times’ –
“Thoughts on the Stockholm Syndrome”
http://galliawatch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/thoughts-on-stockholm-syndrome.html
Cindy says
I hear all the time that most muslims would not kill and do not believe in that. It is only the radicals, but I’m beginning to wonder; I never hear them speak out against the killing of those that don’t believe like hey do. And I think if you don’t speak out against it then you are agreeing with them and you do believe what the radicals think. Like the silent radical. I believe that if people of my religion started killing people because they didn’t believe l would speak out, I don’t think it is right to kill folks if they don’t agree with you!!!!!!!
Dean says
As I write, the tactical squads and police have raided the two most recent sites in the Paris area where cowardly Islamists have taken unarmed hostages at gunpoint.
Is cowardice – the slaughter of innocents – the decapitation of men, women and children gagged and bound, the way of Islam? If not, then where are the millions of moderate Muslims to protest against a disease infesting many of their own in the name of their religion?
If the religion itself is not modified and modernized, significant portions erased, then this disease will grow and fester out-of-control, and, with the leftist churches, campuses, unions, media and other leftist dhimmis, anti-Semites and apologists for jihad, it will eventually effect all of us.
This should be the beginning of the end of EU support for similar terror groups because they are all much the same, all part of a conquest under one belief system.
The EU must make sure that they do not support the creation of a new terror state under the name of “Palestine” beside or in place of Israel. The EU must make certain that the UN does not give the International Court (ICC) the power to allow non-state terror groups like Hamas-Fatah the reins of that institution to whip Israel’s soldiers and leaders. Israel has been on the front lines much longer than France in the war on terror and they actually have lots of skin in the game because they live surrounded by the same kind of Islamists who are shooting up France. They reside in 22 countries surrounding Israel and all the terror groups are stationed in that region.
The world must help Israel to combat terrorism, not castigate it for fighting against those with hate in their hearts and terrorism and intolerance embedded in their religion.
Dean says
The final point I would like to make is that 90,000 soldiers, police, and others rushed to two scenes where 3 terrorists were holding hostages in France.
It is excellent that they take these incidents seriously and congratulations on a job well done.
However, when Israel takes months of careful avoidance measures and dialogue will all and sundry before responding to thousands of rockets fired into Israeli towns and villages by Hamas-Fatah, and uses the most careful approaches to make sure that the Hamas human shields (men, women, children used to boost casualties for sympathy) then why does France and the world call that “disproportionate”?
Israel has about 10,000 soldiers responding to an almost equal number of Hamas-Fatah fighters and Hezbollah terrorists supplied by Iran on the northern front and yet leftists use whatever military defense used by Israel seem unjustified – as if Israel ought to do nothing and wait to be overtaken and chopped up by Islamists.
If France is not willing to sit back and chill while their unarmed people are being gunned down by a handful of Islamists, then why should Israel not respond to the terror armies in their terror-infested neighborhood?
Dean says
With corrections…
The final point I would like to make is that 90,000 soldiers, police, and others rushed to two scenes where 3 terrorists were holding hostages in France.
It is excellent that they take these incidents seriously and congratulations on a job well done.
However, when Israel takes months of careful avoidance measures, preparations and dialogue with all and sundry before responding to thousands of rockets fired into Israeli towns and villages by Hamas-Fatah, and uses the most careful approaches to make sure that the Hamas human shields are avoided as best as possible (men, women, children used to boost casualties for sympathy) then why does France and the world call that “disproportionate”?
Israel has about 10,000 soldiers responding to an almost equal number of Hamas-Fatah fighters and Hezbollah terrorists supplied by Iran on the northern front and yet leftists use whatever military defense used by Israel seem unjustified – as if Israel ought to do nothing and wait to be overtaken and chopped up by Islamists.
If France is not willing to sit back and chill while their unarmed people are being gunned down by a handful of Islamists, then why should Israel not respond to the terror armies in their terror-infested neighborhood?
Ted Harlson says
It is always time for freedom of speech. Without this pillar, there is no free society. So let me say what I am still so far free to say. I have a T-shirt that has the picture of Muhammad with a turban for a bomb. Yes, that classic original. Above the turban I wrote, “Stop Iran Now! Below Muhammad’s ugly face, “Level Their Cities!” It’s long past time for North America to declare war on every god-dammed Muslim who kneels five times a day, who supports Sharia, and hates the great Satan: Us.
Its time to repeal any and all forms of multiculturalism, diversity and let Americans, Canadians and the western world speak their minds NOW! It is time to put an end to Islamic totalitarianism.