Blais was lucky. She managed to escape, unlike the scores of other men, women and children who suffer unimaginable fates at the hand of jihadists. Now, Edith Blais attributes jihadist abuse against minorities and women to their upbringing and poverty.
“She understands they were just following orders, convinced they were doing the right thing thinking they’d be given a special place in heaven, she said. They don’t have anything, they’re very poor and they don’t understand they’re doing wrong”.
Really? they don’t understand what they are doing, even though they have repeatedly stated their goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in Africa? Blais does no favors to the victims of Christian genocide in Africa, and to those women and religious minorities who are being abused, tortured and murdered in the way of jihad (see Qur’an 8:60, 8:12).
“Canadian recounts her abduction by jihadis in Burkina Faso,” by Sam Mednick, Associated Press, September 22, 2021:
OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO — Nearly a year and a half after being abducted by Islamic extremists in Burkina Faso, Edith Blais risked her life to escape, fearing she’d never be free.
“(What you’re thinking is either) you stay there your whole life and you die there, or you try something,” Blais told The Associated Press by phone ahead of this week’s publication of her book recounting the ordeal, “The Weight of Sand: My 450 Days Held Hostage in the Sahara.”
The 37-year-old Canadian and her Italian companion Luca Tacchetto, were captured by jihadis in December 2018 in eastern Burkina Faso while touring the region and attempting to cross into neighbouring Benin. The pair were held in the desert in northern Mali for 15 months before fleeing one night on foot. To buy time, Blais stuffed her bed in the shape of a body to make it look like she’d gone to sleep, she said. They were also helped by intense wind, which erased their footprints in the sand making it hard for the jihadis to track them. After an eight-hour walk, the two reached a main road and flagged a truck that took them to a United Nations base.
“(Being free was) hard to believe, it’s like if you’re still in the nightmare and you can’t wake up and you know it’s finishing,” said Blais. “There’s so many emotions, and then I was afraid about everybody that was left behind we were afraid about the Italians, we were afraid that they would get punished because we escaped.”
For six years, jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State in the Sahel, the vast expanse south of the Sahara Desert, have used hostage taking for ransom as a way to fund operations and expand their presence. Twenty-five foreigners have been abducted in the Sahel since 2015 and 10 remain captive, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Blais and Tacchetto are the only two western hostages known to have escaped. Three have been killed, three were liberated by French and U.S. forces and seven were released, the organization said.
Among those still detained is French journalist Olivier Dubois, who was kidnapped in April from northern Mali. Among those released is 75-year-old French aid worker Sophie Petronin, two Italians and a prominent Malian politician who were released in a prisoner exchange in October for nearly 200 Islamic militants.
In Burkina Faso, where jihadi violence has spiked in recent years, killing thousands and displacing more than 1.4 million people, 10 expatriates have been abducted and conflict experts say the longer the fighting and humanitarian crisis continues, hostage taking will increase…
Her abductors didn’t beat or torture her, but the months in captivity were grueling, living in solitude in the scorching desert and trying not to think about her fate, said Blais. She found respite in yoga and writing poetry, the latter which she hid from the jihadis….
Blais said she doesn’t forgive the men who took her, but understands they were just following orders, convinced they were doing the right thing thinking they’d be given a special place in heaven, she said.
“They don’t have anything, they’re very poor and they don’t understand they’re doing wrong,” she said. “I don’t want to have hate and I don’t want to forgive…I just want to let it go.”…..
mgoldberg says
“They don’t have anything, they’re very poor and they don’t understand they’re doing wrong”.
No madam. You do’t understand that what they’re doing is ….. wrong.
It is you, madam who think that they have an excuse- they think that it is right and righteous what they do, and it is not due to their poverty. Their orders come from the Qu’ran, from Mohammed, and from those amongst them that demand fealty, absolutel loyalty, or else.
It is you, who do not understand that what they do is WRONG
gravenimage says
I think she realizes that it is wrong, mgoldberg–after all, she did escape. But she is willing to make excuses for them, as if there are mitigating circumstances, and this is nuts.
OTTER says
AGAIN, a woman getting fooled by ISLAM. Jihadwatch readers: please note, I will continue to flag our civilization faces from Islam due to the reaction of women, who should be the FIRST LINE OF PUSHBACK due to what Islam does to them.
But no, that’s not what is happening. Because of the high status the West gives to women and their power in the public discourse, we are being collectively led to the slaughterhouse. Over to Gravenimage for her usual attack on me–totally misplaced, for course.
gravenimage says
On the thread about the convert to Islam Arnoud van Doorn who plotted to murder the Dutch Prime Minister, OTTER had this to say:
The thing with Islam is that it can totally overpower a person’s sense of rationality. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a dangerous virus in which the person infected thinks that he is right in all circumstances. When you follow the Quran, you are following a prison manual, but you think it’s the Magna Carta. Churchill’s comment about Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog is NO EXAGGERATION
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/09/netherlands-muslim-politician-arrested-on-suspicion-of-participating-in-plot-to-murder-the-prime-minister#comment-2376825
So in the case of a male convert to Islam *plotting murder*, OTTER says that he has no agency or blame, but in the case of a foolish female victim of Jihad spouting apologia for the perpetrators, it is the entire female gender that is to blame. (Not also that he actually has nothing negative to say about this woman being abducted–this sadly does not surprise).
OTTER claims that men have to strip all women of the right to an education, the vote, and ability to work outside the home. He has also said that women–formerly just “white women”–have to be forced to breed.
OTTER claims that opposing the horrors he preaches is “misplaced”. Most Anti-Jihadists actually defend freedom and democracy; instead, he demands that we embrace the horrors of Shari’ah law.
OTTER says
Islam overpowers intellect both in the case of men and women. BUT in the case of women, since they are subject to the special horrors of Islam, one would expect them to be warier of it. But no. They fall hook, line, and sinker for it. Great that some women oppose Islam, but most don’t and that is baffling given that liberal white women complain a LOT ABOUT their men.
Please read ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ by Douglas Murray, (page 197 of the hardback edition) says that ” There was also the curious problem–not confined to Germany–of some women and even girls who had been assaulted trying to conceal the identity of their attackers.” He makes this point on the following page too, quoting a woman who had been raped and wrote an open letter (Heaven help us) apologizing to her attackers!
I know you are a woman Gravenimage, but the fight against Islam is being greatly weakened by women who are easily fooled by it.
gravenimage says
OTTER wrote:
Islam overpowers intellect both in the case of men and women. BUT in the case of women, since they are subject to the special horrors of Islam, one would expect them to be warier of it. But no. They fall hook, line, and sinker for it. Great that some women oppose Islam, but most don’t and that is baffling given that liberal white women complain a LOT ABOUT their men.
……………………….
This is truly strange–OTTER is here saying that women are the greatest threat to the west because they don’t always recognize the threat of Islam, which disproportionately persecutes them.
But he has also said that the solution for this is for men to enslave and forcibly breed them–first he just applied this to white women, then changed his mind and decided that all women needed to be treated like this. (Although from his comment above, perhaps he has gone back to applying this primarily to white women–who knows?).
But then he called my opposing his plan to enslave and rape women to be “misplaced”–even though he is basing this treatment of women on some of them not recognizing that Islam mandates just this sort of treatment of them.
All one can conclude from this is that OTTER only opposes enslaving women and using them as sex slaves when it is someone other than himself proposing it. *Ugh*.
Also, he is clearly more enraged by apologia for Jihad from women than he is by Jihad itself when perpetrated by anyone who is not female–since he has said nothing critical about van Doorn. No surprise here. Apologia for Islam is a genuine concern–but so is Jihad terror itself. Not as OTTER sees it, though.
More:
Please read ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ by Douglas Murray, (page 197 of the hardback edition) says that ” There was also the curious problem–not confined to Germany–of some women and even girls who had been assaulted trying to conceal the identity of their attackers.” He makes this point on the following page too, quoting a woman who had been raped and wrote an open letter (Heaven help us) apologizing to her attackers!
……………………….
Yes–this is “political correctness” taken to its suicidal limit.
But on this thread I cite a very similar case of a letist in Norway–a male in this case–who spouts apologia for his Muslim rapist, and who opposes his deportation.
These cases are both problems–but not as OTTER sees it.
More:
I know you are a woman Gravenimage, but the fight against Islam is being greatly weakened by women who are easily fooled by it.
……………………….
Our fight against JIhad and Shari’ah is weakened by *all* apologists for Islam, male and female.
And again, the implication–which OTTER has made here many times–that only women oppose the abuse of women is utterly false. Robert Spencer and other male Anti-Jihadists here oppose these horrors all the time.
born saturday says
i would not be surprised if she turn to a jihadi muslim or takiya herself being captive for so long….takiya is a very strong possibility for her, according to what she says… remember, there is female takiya too and they are often more succesful…
Ecosse1314 says
Was it not yvonne ridley who was captured by the taliban. Then the silly bint converted to Islam
gravenimage says
Yes–especially appalling that she converted to Islam *after* having being held captive by the Taliban (I am not referring those who superficially convert to Islam at gunpoint).
She said that she was impressed that none of the Taliban would look her in the eye–she interpreted this as respect, when in reality pious Muslim men won’t look at women because they consider their entire bodies, including faces, to be “Awrat”–unclean.
Moron.
Jess Sain says
Devoid of logic, she veers into babbling and let’s go of reality.
Charlie in NY says
This logic was lampooned by Woody Allen in this memorable scene from Annie Hall (1977).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7L5FKh3EMM
abu taleb says
“They don’t have anything, they’re very poor and they don’t understand they’re doing wrong,”
So, why didn’t she present herself as a sex slave to the very poor and misguided instead of escaping from the very poor and misguided? What a stupid hypocrite.
Infidel says
Too bad: she is one who didn’t deserve to be rescued. Reminds me of Lara Logan, who sidestepped the islamic issue to condemn all men in the first book she wrote since she was raped
gravenimage says
Burkina Faso: Woman abducted by jihadis makes excuses: they’re poor, think they’d get ‘special place in heaven’
…………………
I’m glad that Edith Blais was able to escape.
But this apologia for evil is suicidal insanity. Sadly, she is not the only victim of Jihad to make excuses for the Jihadists.
Not long ago there was a European man who was raped by a Muslim, and he fretted about the rapist being deported:
“Norway: Leftist feels guilty that Muslim who raped him was deported”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/04/norway-leftist-feels-guilty-that-muslim-who-raped-him-was-deported
Marcel Berube says
How many times was she raped ?
gravenimage says
Yes–Edith Blais has said that she was raped.
Giacomo Latta says
Dumb ass in, dumb ass out. Lesson? What lesson?
OLD GUY says
She is correct in one way, when you are raised in an environment that teaches the boys that they are totally dominate over girls and women as well as non-islamic people you end up with followers that believe this in heart and mind. Its called brain washing, and when you submit young developing minds to indoctrination of beliefs true or false they stick. Just look at what is happening in American colleges and universities with the propaganda being spread by foreign countries financial contributions to endowment funds over the past 50yrs.
Gordon Dolan says
Which has generated the imbecilic concept of WOKEISM
tom_ says
“upbringing” resonates. I’ll give her that. If you want to defeat jihadis you must start by destroying every madrassa. Otherwise everything else you try is doomed to failure.
Ademeh says
Muslims are the worst Islamophobics. They fear to offend Islam, the Quran and Allah. They will become part of the filth, the scourge that is Islam to stay safe, and so will kill, steal and destroy simply to please and not offend each other (islamists). Their fear is extreme that they will live their lives in terror and misery always.
Islam must be destroyed.
gravenimage says
Jihadists do this because they think it pleases “Allah”, and because they enjoy brutalizing victims, not because they are terrified of other Jihadists.
somehistory says
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-humanitarian-crisis-in-burkina-faso.html
This site mentions the terrorism of mozlums several times, citing this as the reason for the crisis..
“The main cause of the humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso has been the rise of Islamic extremist groups. Several Islamist groups operate in the country. “