From Ian:
Netanyahu: Israel is standing by Europe, Europe must stand by Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende on Thursday, saying that the same forces that are attacking Europe are attacking Israel.
Speaking a day after gunmen killed 12 people in a terror attack in Paris, Netanyahu said, "Israel is standing by Europe. Europe must stand by Israel." The comment also came on the backdrop of a number of European parliaments voting on resolutions in support of recognizing a Palestinian state in recent months.
Netanyahu said that while Israel and the West cherish freedom and tolerance, radical Islam worships tyranny and terror. "They seek to impose a new dark age on humanity."
The prime minister condemned the "butchery" of the Paris attack and expressed sympathy with the government and people of France.
David Horovitz: The first step toward defeating Islamist terrorism
Speaking to Israeli television from Paris on Wednesday night, hours after gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” had shot dead 12 people at the offices of the “Charlie Hebdo” satirical magazine, the French-Jewish parliamentarian Meyer Habib called the massacre France’s 9/11.
When Islamist killers targeted Jews in Toulouse in 2012 and Brussels last year, Habib recalled, “we warned that this would come to all of France. And to our sorrow it came…. We are in a fight,” he elaborated, “against jihadism, against this darkness.”
After four British-raised Muslims killed 52 civilians and injured 700 in coordinated bombings in London on July 7, 2005, numerous commentators and analysts likened that assault, too, to the Al-Qaeda attacks on America in 2001. But if that was Britain’s 9/11, it didn’t bring sufficient clarity of thought to the struggle against Islamist terrorism. It didn’t open enough eyes. Too many Britons, including too many leaders and policymakers, preferred a mixture of stoicism and denial to the imperative of rigorously confronting Islamic extremism. Too many preferred to blame prime minister Tony Blair for ostensibly inviting that day’s murders, including through his purportedly over-cozy relationship with the reviled George W. Bush and his backing of Israel. That was all far more convenient than acknowledging that Britain had a colossal problem with homegrown Islamic extremism, whipped up by British-based Islamic spiritual (mis)leaders. Almost a decade later, Britain has still failed to adequately tackle the rise of Islamist extremism at home, with a consequent stream of plots and attacks, and a flow of misguided young Muslims joining the ranks of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The question is whether France, Britain and the rest of Europe, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s assault — a more calculated and specific attack than the indiscriminate murders in London — will now muster a more energetic, coordinated and effective response.
Douglas Murray: Charlie Hebdo stood alone. What does that say about our ‘free’ press?
And the left-wing Charlie Hebdo will be abandoned now even more than the right-wing Jyllands Posten was back then. People will come up with various excuses, but in truth they won’t publish because they are afraid. The remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo could hardly be more alone.
There is only one way in which this couldn’t remain the case: if tomorrow, or some day this week every newspaper and magazine in Europe, the front-page of the BBC and Channel 4 News websites and every other major news site simultaneously published a set of Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of Mohammed among others. I put this suggestion to the BBC today during an interview and was told by the presenter that ‘in fairness’ to the BBC they had earlier retweeted Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoon of ISIS’s leader al-Baghdadi. Which, of course, isn’t quite the same thing. Some readers may recall that during the Danish cartoon affair Channel 4 ran a live programme on freedom of speech which included a live vote as to whether or not Channel 4 should show the cartoons. The public voted that they should. And then Channel 4 unilaterally decided to ignore the public’s wishes and would not show the cartoons.
It was around the same time that Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it best. She suggested in the wake of the Danish cartoons affair that ‘we have to spread the risk.’ But the free press didn’t spread it around then. And I very much doubt that they will now. I know all the arguments. I know the fears – that someone from the typing pool or on the front desk will be the target. I’ve heard every possible argument over the years.
And that is why I can safely say that the free press will fail this latest test too. For all its historic traditions, its self back-slapping for its alleged ‘bravery’ and so on, there are only a couple of tiny outcrops of freedom. The rest of the vast, powerful, fearless, outspoken tradition that is the Western press is too intimidated to publish a single cartoon that might conveivably provoke a Muslim.
This is what it looks like to lose a freedom. Not many people will care today. But they will tomorrow, or another day in the future.
Douglas Murray - Charlie Hebdo Attack [BBC London]
Douglas Murray: We Are Charlie: Free Speech v. Self-Censorship
Wednesday's massacre at the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo was not just a barbaric act of jihadist violence. It was also a test for the West and for the freedom of speech in the West. It is a test that we all have been failing.
Those of us who have proposed that all Western -- and in particular European -- news outlets should multilaterally publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have been greeted in return with a terrified and terrifyingly self-conscious silence. The papers and broadcasters do not want to do it. Last time they refused to republish the cartoons, from Denmark's Jyllands Posten, they said it was because the cartoons were from a "right wing" newspaper. This time they refuse to republish cartoons from a "left-wing" newspaper. It does not matter what the politics are -- it is not about the politics, it is about the cartoons. The sooner the press at least has the guts to admit this, the better.
But there has been much worse than the cringing surrender that this refusal denotes. Consider just a couple of even worse examples from the mainstream media's coverage of these barbaric events.
In the United Kingdom on Wednesday, the Daily Telegraph newspaper was straight out of the starting blocks. Within a couple of hours of the attack, as the bodies of the slain journalists had not even been identified, The Telegraph chose to run a report headlined, "France faces rising tide of Islamophobia"!
The press was already blaming the victims. Commentators on CNN opined that Charlie Hebdo had been "provoking Muslims" for some time. Perhaps they assum that it is easier to force good people to keep quiet, or keep their own media offices from being attacked, than to tackle to the problem of Islamic extremism head-on. It is easier blame Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lars Hedegaard, Suzanne Winters, Salman Rushdie or Charlie Hebdo -- and even put some of them on trial -- than to attack the attackers, who might even attack back!
Douglas Murray - Charlie Hebdo Attack
Charlie Hebdo to come out next week, despite bloodbath
Charlie Hebdo will publish next Wednesday to defiantly show that “stupidity will not win,” said columnist Patrick Pelloux, adding that the remaining staff will soon meet.
“It’s very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win,” he said.
He added that the publication would have to be put together outside Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters which were not accessible following the massacre.
Charlie Hebdo: Martyrs for the Truth
The killing of the Charlie Hebdo staff was not the first time Islamists have made a point of murdering journalists or commentators, or the first time that they have risen up against satirists in the West. The record is rich with them: the slaughter in broad daylight of Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam in November, 2004; the many attempts on the life of Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist responsible for the drawings of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban; the plot to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Viks, for similar drawings; the kidnap and murder of American journalist Steven Vincent in response to his New York Times article exposing corruption in the Basra police force in 2005; the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff in 2014; and the 2011 bombing of the Charlie Hebdo offices in response to the magazine’s own publication of cartoons about Mohammed. Among others.
(And that doesn’t even address the strong-arming and censorship of Muslim countries – even “democratic” Turkey, which, under the iron hand of Islamist president (and former prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been condemned internationally for its imprisonment of journalists. Indeed, on a list of 170 countries graded on press freedom, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia stand at 154, 158, 159, and 164, respectively.)
But what is most terrifying about the Charlie Hebdo massacre is the fact that we can no longer hide behind excuses about “lone wolf” terrorists who are “unbalanced” or “disturbed.” Such descriptions are the way in which both media and public officials have attempted to minimize the impulses behind attacks such as the one in Fort Hood in 2009, or the attempts to behead two police officers in the streets of New York. What the Hebdo events in Paris make clear is that this is not the work of individual crazies, and that Islam is, in fact, a part of the equation.
It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.
Eugene Kontorovich: Brave and transgressive artists
It is common for artists and entertainers who produce work that is offensive to Christian sensibilities, prurient, or violative of an imagined set of bourgeois values to be described as “brave” and “transgressive.” The safest way to know a social more does not exist is when an artist is praised for “testing the limits” of that norm. By and large, Western satirists only bravely challenge those taboos that are in desuetude. The musical “The Book of Mormon” and every racy Madonna music video fairly encapsulate this.
Today’s massacre of the staff of Charlie Hebdo reminds us that there are indeed artists who are truly brave, who truly “take artistic risks,” to use another platitude. Now there are 10 less, and I fear there are not so many left. In their honor, don’t call anything less “edgy.”
Jewish cartoonist among victims of massacre at French newspaper
Jewish caricaturist Georges Wolinski was among the 12 victims of an attack Wednesday on the Paris headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.
Wolinski, 80, a Tunisia native who moved to France as a teenager, also was a cartoonist at the magazine and was known for his cynical and at times vulgar style. After entering journalism in the 1960s, he went on to work at leading French publications such as L’Humanite, Le Nouvel Observateur and Paris Match.
One of Wolinski’s cartoons, published in a 2002 compilation of his works, shows a Muslim girl walking with her mother down a war-ravaged street in the Middle East. The daughter asks what it means to be a free woman. The mother replies by presenting her daughter with a copy of a book titled “Hello Sadness.”
“It’s clear that this was a planned attack against Wolinski and the other cartoon artists,” said Richard Kenigsman, a well-known Jewish caricaturist and painter from Brussels. He cited an attack and multiple threats against Charlie Hebdo since 2006 for publishing caricatures deemed offensive to Islam.
This is our September 11, says French-Jewish MP of Paris massacre
French Jewish parliamentarian Meyer Habib said Wednesday’s massacre of 12 cartoonists, policemen and others by gunmen at a Paris newspaper was France’s equivalent of the September 11 terror attacks and that jihadi terrorists want “to destroy the entire infrastructure of France.”
“This is a very sad day. This is our September 11,” Habib said.
Assailants had struck murderously first at a Jewish school in Toulouse (in 2012), he recalled, and then at the Jewish Museum in Brussels (in 2014). “We warned that this would come to all of France, and to our sorrow it came,” Habib told Israel’s Channel 2 news Wednesday night.
“We are in a fight against jihadism, against this darkness,” said Habib, who represents French citizens living in Israel and seven other Mediterranean countries in the National Assembly in Paris. “We have to open our eyes.”
Charlie Hebdo Cop Victim Was Muslim, Officials Say
Video footage taken during the massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris shows one of the radical Islamist shooters shooting a policeman at close range, after he begs for his life. That policeman, officials said Thursday, was 42-year-old Ahmed Merabet – himself a Muslim.
Merabet was shot when he and his partner, whose name has not yet been released, were on foot patrol in the 11th arrondissement, the neighborhood where Charlie Hebdo‘s office is located. The assassination occurred after a shootout between the police and the terrorists.
Jihadist flags, bombs found in Paris shooters’ car
French special operations forces deployed Thursday in a northern town where two brothers suspected of having gunned down 12 people in an Islamist attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are believed to be located, a police source said.
The jihadist flags and gas bombs were found in the abandoned black Citroen used by the attackers to speed away from the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly after they carried out the assault.
“This shows their Islamist radicalization and that they had possibly planned other acts with the petrol bombs,” the source said.
RAID, the anti-terrorist unit of the French police force, and the GIGN, a paramilitary special operations unit, deployed in Villers-Cotterets in the northern Aisne region “where a car was abandoned after being used by the two suspects, who were identified by a witness,” the source told AFP.
Cherif Kouachi, the 32-year-old hunted along with his older brother Said for the attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, is a jihadist who has been well-known to anti-terror police for years.
Policewoman killed in attack outside Paris
A policewoman was killed and a city employee was seriously hurt Thursday after a man opened fire with an automatic rifle outside Paris, police said. No link was initially established with Wednesday’s deadly attack on a satirical magazine.
The gunman was still on the run, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who arrived at the scene at Malakoff, just south of the French capital.
The incident came on a day of mourning in France after Islamist gunmen stormed the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing eight journalists, two police and two others.
Paris Jews on highest alert after magazine attack
The increase in security occurred hours after Wednesday’s massacre of 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly and it comprises an addition of uniformed and non-uniformed police officers outside Jewish institutions and in areas with large Jewish populations, according to Chlomik Zenouda of the National Bureau for Vigilance against anti-Semitism, or BNVCA.
In addition to the increase in police protection, volunteers from the Jewish community have been called upon to provide security inside the perimeters of synagogues and Jewish schools, Zenouda told JTA Thursday.
“We are past red alert at this stage, it’s all hands on deck because, sadly, the question is not whether the French Jewish community will be targeted, but when,” he said. “There are indications that this may happen in the near future.”
The Jews are just an excuse
Jewish history teaches us that every time there is trouble for humanity, it always begins with Israel. The tragic attack in Paris on Wednesday proves that history is repeating, in a big way. The Jews are just an excuse. The killers' intoxicating drug of choice -- in the past it was the Nazis, now extremist Muslims -- is to enslave all of humanity and crush human dignity and liberty.
A lot of French people, and others, believed that Islamic State and al-Qaida terrorists would only target places like the Jewish school Toulouse or the Jewish museum in Brussels. But as it turns out, that is not the case. In reality it is radical Islam against Western culture, Christianity and, of course, the Jews.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to declare that "all the free countries and all the civilized societies have to band together to fight this scourge." But nothing will come of it, because there will always be nations and governments that believe that if they only sacrifice the Jews they can achieve peace for themselves. But they would be deluding themselves. It is safe to assume, even now, a day after the terrible tragedy in Paris, that many in France would still insist that if only there were no Jews in France, the tension with radical Islamists would not have become as murderous. In any case, they will say, it is all because of the Jewish occupation.
Paris Attack Wasn’t “Senseless Violence”
For Islamists, silencing those who offend their religious sensibilities makes perfect sense. More to the point, doing so has worked very nicely to silence critics and opponents who rightly fear to call down the wrath of jihadists on their heads. As I noted earlier today, there is no cost to mounting a Broadway musical mocking Mormons, a peaceful and productive American minority group that took the insults lobbed at them with good humor and patience. But there is potentially a very great price to be paid if you wish to skewer the religious motivations of terrorists with the blood of countless Muslims as well as non-Muslims on their hands.
By cowering and apologizing every time radical believers in Islam express outrage at some actual or perceived slight to their faith, the U.S. has strengthened the conviction of the extremists that no one may offend them with impunity.
The social media campaigns spreading across the Internet today, as people express solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo satirists, is commendable. But what is needed even more is a universal condemnation of Islamists and calls for Muslims, both in the West and throughout the Middle East, to acknowledge that a sizable percentage of their co-religionists—and not just the tiny minority that the president spoke of—are laboring under the delusion that they can tell Europeans or Americans what they may or may not read or watch.
Islamist terrorists have proliferated precisely because they have been perceived as both the “strong horse” that can only be opposed at the risk of one’s life and because Westerners have so often purposely misunderstood the nature of the challenge they face. They are likely to remain a deadly problem until our leaders stop acting as if the successful tactics of the opponents of freedom are pointless or not rooted in a theological worldview that is shared by many of their co-religionists. Pretending that they are not a significant force in the Muslim world is what is senseless, Mr. President, not the actions of the terrorists.
Flashback: White House Bashed Charlie Hebdo's Mohammed Cartoons
Some of the questions at that conference related to the YouTube Mohammed video which at the time the Obama Administration claimed was the cause of the Bengazi attack. Five minutes before the end of the briefing, one reporter brought up France and the Charlie Hebdo cartoons:
Reporter: The French government has decided to temporarily close their embassies and schools in several Muslim countries after a satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, that published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Is the White House concerned that those cartoons might further fan the flames in the region?
Carney: Well, we are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Muhammad, and obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this. We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory. But we’ve spoken repeatedly about the importance of upholding the freedom of expression that is enshrined in our Constitution.
We Must Stand with the Satirists
One thing that unites totalitarians, and would-be totalitarians, it seems, is a lack of a sense of humor. Hitler hated The Great Dictator. Kim Jong-un hates The Interview. And Islamist fanatics hate Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper known for making light of ISIS and others of their ilk. By contrast great democratic leaders such as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan have been renowned for their humor.
As Reuters notes, “From publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammad that sparked Middle East riots in 2005 to renaming an edition ‘Sharia Hebdo’ and listing Islam’s prophet as its supposed editor-in-chief, the weekly has repeatedly caricatured Muslims and their beliefs.”
Granted, many of Charlie Hebdo’s offerings were in poor taste–and not only it mockery at the expense of Islam. It has also been scathing in its denunciations of the Catholic Church. Likewise The Interview was in many ways a risible flick that intersperses stupid penis and buttocks jokes amid its mockery of North Korea.
But it is vitally important to resist the impulse–so common among “responsible” institutions, whether foreign ministries or large newspapers–at a time like this to somehow imply that the victims brought their fate upon themselves and that the best line of defense against such attacks is to practice greater self-restraint in the future. The Financial Times, for example, is a great newspaper but it is inappropriate, on today of all days, for it to be calling Charlie Hebdo “stupid” for offending (some) Muslims. That is giving the terrorists precisely what they want, indeed the very reason they carry out such attacks is to deter others from similar mockery in the future.
The Mormons, Benghazi, and Charlie Hebdo
The biggest hit on Broadway for the last few years has been The Book of Mormon, a satirical musical comedy that mocks the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But rather than venting outrage, organizing protests, or seeking to shut down the play in New York or on its national tour, Mormons have commendably turned the other cheek. Unfortunately, many Muslims around the world are not as easygoing or wise. As the terror attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo reminds us today, Islamists are determined to enforce a ban on offenses to their sensibilities. Those who draw mocking cartoons about Islam’s prophet or leaders of terror groups understand that they are taking their lives into their hands. There is a reason that the same team that produced the South Park television series chose the Mormons as the butt of their Broadway joke rather than Muslims. But while that choice was understandable, the question we need to be asking ourselves today is whether the West is prepared to go on tolerating the offense to our values of free speech that lies behind the tragedy in Paris.
All faiths and creeds are entitled to a degree of respect. Yet the conundrum at the heart of this issue is the belief on the part of Westerners that anyone may question or insult their faiths but that many Muslims seem to take it as a given that they should be exempt from such treatment. While Muslim nations may unfortunately be prepared to suppress criticism or mockery of Islam in their own societies, the issue in the last decade has increasingly been one of whether they are entitled or will be allowed to extend that ban to the West.
This issue first came to the world’s attention in 2005 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided to try to do something about the efforts of Muslims to force Westerns to observe their religious taboos. But their decision to publish 12 satirical cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad proved their point in an unfortunate manner. The violence throughout the Muslim world about something printed in a Danish newspaper and the fact that those involved in the publication were forced into hiding showed us that far from being willing to stand up to Islamic censorship, most of the West preferred to kowtow to it.
Canadian PM: Paris Attack Will Not Intimidate Us
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper condemned on Wednesday the shooting attack in Paris, France, saying it would not intimidate Canada and its allies.
“I am angered and saddened to hear of the terrorist attack today in the offices of the Parisian news magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo,’ which has killed at least 12 individuals, including two police officers,” Harper said in a statement.
“On behalf of all Canadians, I offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of those who lost their lives during this heinous crime and wish a speedy recovery to those injured. The perpetrators of this attack must be apprehended and brought to justice.
“This barbaric act, along with recent attacks in Sydney, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and Ottawa, is a grim reminder that no country is immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world,” continued Harper.
Salman Rushdie Condemns Terrorist Attack...Calls For Journalist To 'Stand With Charlie."
Salman Rushdie, the author whose book “The Satanic Verses” prompted the Iranian Ayatollah to issue a fatwa on him in 1989, released a statement showing his solidarity for Charlie Hebno and condemning the vicious terrorist attacks in Paris that left 12 dead.
The statement reads:
“Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.” –Salman Rushdie
Bill Maher: If You Don't Defend Freedom to Insult Prophet, You're an Extremist Muslim
Outspoken liberal comedian Bill Maher took to social media on Wednesday, illustrating his longstanding belief that Islam is not a religion of peace, following the brutal terrorist attacks by radical Muslims at the offices of the Paris-based Charlie Hebdo magazine.
In his tweet, Maher wrote that condemning an attack is not enough and alluded to a previous statement he made last year, in which he pointed to the violent reaction extreme followers of the religion elicit when Islam is made fun of; a reaction that differs starkly from any other organized religion of modern time.
Celebrities Defend Free Speech in Response to Charlie Hebdo Shootings
Hollywood celebrities and industry players responded Wednesday to the brutal terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters in France, which claimed the lives of 12 people.
Using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, millions of people around the world tweeted their thoughts and prayers for the victims of Wednesday’s attacks.
European Parliament's Head of Press Tweets Muslims 'Being Framed' for Paris Attack
The Head of the European Parliament’s Press Service has tweeted that the shooting of staff at the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine might not have been committed by Muslims.
Marjory Van Den Broeke took to her twitter account to say that “if she wanted to frame smone (someone) I would [shout ‘Allahu Akbar’]” referring to the video released of the gunmen.
Her tweet has caused outrage and she has tried to backtrack, saying her tweet was misinterpreted:
Featured Muslim Youth Activist for Democratic Party Gloats Over Muslim Terror Skills
Zaid Jilani has many credentials as an activist of the left. He was a blogger at the Center for American Progress’ Think Progress site, the unofficially official spin project for Obama Inc, until he was fired for excessive anti-semitism, even by the standards of a site run by a man who had helped fundraise for Hamas before going to work for Nancy Pelosi.
Jilani went on to blog for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, also known as Bold Progressives, which is behind the Draft Elizabeth Warren campaign. He currently writes for Salon.
Democrats.org, the site of the Democratic Party, had also featured him as their youth activist.
He also appears to admire how much more efficient his Muslim terrorist co-religionists are compared to domestic attackers.
Newspapers in Turkey Justify Paris Massacre
Around 11:30 local time Wednesday morning, at least two masked gunmen attacked the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, including two policemen, and critically injuring 5 more.
A few hours after gunmen raged through the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” the Islamist Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit ran the headline “Attack on the Magazine That Provoked Muslims.” Numerous readers’ comments appeared on the newspaper’s Facebook page, hailing the massacre as “revenge” for the magazine’s decision to publish cartoons criticizing the Prophet Muhammad.
“I hope that they continue to kill the infidels,” wrote Mehmet Karakaya, while another reader, Durun Ali, wrote, “Thank you to those who did it.” The newspaper later changed the title to “The Great Provocation in Paris.”
Anjem Choudary in USA Today: 'Islam Does Not Mean Peace'
Fundamentalist Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary—who created a Twitter firestorm by responding to the massacre of staffers at Charlie Hebdo magazine with a rebuke of free speech—expands those comments in an op-ed carried by USA Today.
Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.
Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
MEMRI: Online Jihad Supporters Celebrate Attack On Headquarters Of French Satirical Weekly 'Charlie Hebdo'
Jihadists online celebrated today's deadly shooting at the Paris headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which has satirized Islam and the Prophet Muhammad in some of its issues. Participants on jihadi forums and social media praised the attackers, saying that the shooting was a legitimate act of revenge against the weekly for insulting Islam and against France for its crimes against Muslims.
Reactions On The Forum 'Jihadi Media Platform'
Members of the pro-ISIS forum Jihadi Media Platform (alplatformmedia.com) lashed out at France. A member called Al-Dia' Al-Gharib wrote: "France was [once] part of the land of Islam and will return to be the land of Islam, in spite the worshippers of the Cross." Another, who goes by the name Muhib Al-Salihin, wrote: "France is one of the harshest enemies of Islam and of the Islamic State in particular." Forum member Abu Al-Qassem Al-Shawqi commented: "[This] is news that quenches the thirst for revenge. By Allah, beloved ones, let us not think lightly of prayers. By Allah, they [the attackers] are soldiers of Allah." And a member calling himself Abu Bakr Al-Zari'ni remarked: "Congratulations to France and to its people for reaping what their hands sowed. Did these evil cartoonists think that we were a nation that would remain silent in face of those who insult our Prophet…? Did [French President] Hollande and the governments that preceded him think that their interventions and despotism in the lands of the Muslims would not be met with retribution? No, by Allah, from now on the youths of Islam will no longer remain silent, especially since we have a state [ISIS] to mobilize armies if anybody insults the nation of Islam."
Charlie Hebdo Attack Brings Out the Conspiracy Theorists
It didn’t take long before the appalling attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was being attributed by some hateful individuals to a source other than the obvious Islamist terrorists.
Take Greta Berlin, the spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement responsible for the Gaza flotillas, who had this to say on her Facebook feed:
This sort of hateful conspiracy theory deserves to stay where it belongs on the fringes. So why then does the International Business Times (India edition) think that it is worth writing about?
"There is no clarity on which organisation is behind the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday and therefore, conspiracy theories are gaining traction in internet forums.
Fingers are being pointed toward intelligence agencies and Mossad of Israel is a prime contender."
Muslim extremists kill journalists. Palestinian activists blame Israel
The civilized world is reeling in horror from the deaths of 12 today in Paris. The attack on the French satirical weekly newspaper journal Charlie Hebdo , which dared to run cartoons deemed offensive to Islam has shocked the world, with hundreds of thousands gathering in solidarity with the murdered cartoonists. Gunmen, armed with a Kalashnikov and a rocket launcher stormed into the paper's offices killing four of the magazine's founding cartoonists , and wounding 11 others, four of whom remain in critical condition.
It did not take long for anti-Israel activists to blame the attacks on, you guessed it- Israel. Mary Hughes-Thomson and Greta Berlin, the extremist founders of the Free Gaza organization, both used social media to push their latest version of "its always the Jews"
Liberman links Paris attack to local Muslim group
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman issued a scathing broadside against a radical Islamic preacher in Israel in the wake of the deadly terror attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris.
“If there is an important lesson that we learn from the terror attack,” Liberman said in a statement Thursday, “it is that extremist groups, which are distinguishable from terror organizations only by semantics and legal minutiae, must be dealt with preemptively. Those who tolerate such movements and organizations in the end pay for this [tolerance] with the blood of many innocents and with a threat to the very democracy that allowed them to function. Therefore, we must not dally any longer or allow the continued activities of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement headed by Sheikh Raed Salah.”
Mark Steyn To Western Media: ‘Man Up’ Before You ‘Retreat Even Further Into Self-Censorship’
STEYN: Yes, they were very brave. This was the only publication that was willing to publish the Muhammad — the Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2006 because they decided to stand by those Danish cartoonists. I’m proud to have written for the only Canadian magazine to publish those Muhammad cartoons. And it’s because The New York Times didn’t and because Le Monde in Paris didn’t, and The London Times didn’t and all the other great newspapers of the world didn’t. Only Charlie Hebdo and my magazine in Canada and a few others did. But they were forced to bear a burden that should have been more widely dispersed.
I see these candlelight vigils and everyone claiming suddenly to be for freedom of speech. I think one consequence of this is that a lot of people will retreat even further into self-censorship. The New York Daily News won’t even show–dishonors the dead in Paris by not even showing properly the cartoons. They pixelated Muhammad out of it so it looks like Muhammad has entered the witness protection program, but they left the hooked-nose Jew in and that exactly gets to the double standard here: You can say anything you like about Christianity, you can say anything you like Judaism. But these guys, everyone understands the message, that if you say anything about Islam, these guys will kill you. We will be retreating into a lot more self-censorship if the pansy-ified Western media doesn’t man up and decide to disperse the risk so they can’t kill one small, little French satirical magazine. They’ve gotta kill all of us.
Charlie Hebdo massacre. The price of Western cowardice?
Remember the cartoon jihad launched after Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published some drawings of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005? While most mainstream newspapers in Britain, Europe and America ran a mile rather than republish the cartoons in solidarity -- you won't be reading about that in the mainstream newspapers tomorrow -- the politicans were even worse.
When Charlie Hebdo itself showed unusual courage in reprinting the cartoons in February 2006, then French President Jacques Chirac described the move as a "provocation".
Angela Merkel, hedging her bets, made a lame and half-hearted defence of freedom of speech which she implied had to be balanced against the need to show respect to Muslims:
"We need to learn to show mutual respect for each others' views and feelings as well as to develop our shared values."
Our very own Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary at the time, denounced newspapers that had shown some genuine solidarity in the cause of free speech by saying:
"I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful, and it has been wrong."
Financial Times Says Charlie Hebdo Wrong For Provoking Muslims
In the wake of the terrorist attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo which at this writing has left twelve dead and wounded 11 others (five critically) The Financial Times, a daily business paper in Great Britain, placed some of the blame on the victims.
The editorial began by explaining the attack and explained that like other terrorist or anti-Semitic attacks in France, among the first to condemn the massacre was the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which termed it “a barbaric act against democracy and freedom of the press."
Then it began to throw salt into the wounds of the French people and especially the victims of Wednesday's attack and their families:"This is not in the slightest to condone the murderers, who must be caught and punished, or to suggest that freedom of expression should not extend to satirical portrayals of religion. It is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims."
AP, CNN Under Fire for Kowtowing to Terrorists
The Associated Press and other media outlets are coming under fire for censoring photos of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that Islamist radicals used to justify a terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine’s office on Wednesday.
CNN and CBC in Canada also said they would not publish photos that show the cartoon, and the New York Daily News blurred the image in one of its photos. The AP cropped out the drawings from an existing picture of Charlie Hebdo’s editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who was killed along with at least 11 others in Wednesday’s attack.
CNN issued a memo advising its staff to avoid publishing images that show the cartoons.
“It’s also OK to show most of the protest cartoons making the rounds online, though care should be taken to avoid examples that include within them detailed depictions of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons,” said the memo, according to Politico.
The AP defended its decision as part of a long-standing policy.
“It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images,” a spokesperson for the AP told BuzzFeed.
Charlie Hebdo and a CNN Anchor’s Bizarre Anti-Israel Twitter Outburst
Jim Clancy is a familiar face to viewers of CNN. But just what was he thinking when he embarked on a bizarre anti-Israel Twitter outburst?
It started when Clancy tweeted this in relation to the appalling Paris terror attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo:
When Clancy was called on this by Oren Kessler, his response was to inappropriately imply that Kessler was doing so for “Hasbara.”
Things went rapidly downhill as Clancy took any legitimate criticism to be part of an organized pro-Israel attack on him particularly when the respected blogger Elder of Ziyon presented factual evidence to dispute Clancy’s original tweet.
New York Times: With A Dozen Parisians Dead, MUSLIMS Hit Hardest
A dozen people may have been murdered by Islamic terrorists in Paris Wednesday morning, but The New York Times can’t help but note the real tragedy behind the shooting: the growth of Islamophobia.
The attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for its publication of images of Muhammad is “sure to accelerate the growth of anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front,” frets Times reporters Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold in an article entitled “Paris Attack Reflects a ‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe.”
To be clear, the “dangerous moment” in the headline refers not to the murder of a dozen Parisians (including a Muslim cop), but the friction between “supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites.”
The Times quotes a series of French Muslims and European intellectuals concerned about how (gasp!) right-wing groups in Europe could capitalize on the attacks. “Islamophobia is going to increase more and more…” says one Parisian Muslim. “And it’s the extreme right that’s going to benefit from this.”
Head Of Catholic League Blames French Magazine Targeted In Mass Terror Shooting
The head of one of the largest Catholic organizations in the U.S. said Wednesday that if the publisher of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo “not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive.”
“It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death,” Catholic League president Bill Donohue said of Charlie Hebdo publisher and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier.
Known as Charb, Charbonnier was one of 12 killed by masked Islamic gunmen Wednesday morning.
Is a Guardian cartoon on the Charlie Hebdo attack blaming the victims?
Following the first few unremarkable frames, the cartoon takes a decisive turn, with the cartoonist speaking in the first person about why he personally doesn’t depict Muhammad.
First Dog on the Moon doesn’t depict the Muslim prophet because “it’s probably racist” and he chooses not to put his family and co-workers at risk of being firebombed. How have “racist cartoons”, he asks, become a “beacon for free speech”?
Remarkably, there is nothing in his graphic commentary on the attack which dares criticize the extremists who gunned down artists for exercising their fundamental right to free speech. Indeed, the cartoon takes a swipe at the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for engaging in “racism” and ‘putting their families and co-workers at risk’ by resisting demands they censor themselves on issues relating to Islam.
Is First Dog on the Moon actually, as it seems to us, blaming the victims for “inciting” their attackers?
Perhaps Guardian editors who fancy the notion that their media group represents truly liberal values should ponder how a political cartoonist associated with their brand could throw the victims at Charlie Hebdo under the bus and, more broadly, fail to passionately defend fellow journalists’ absolute right to offend.
Edgar Davidson: Paris attacks: Do not jump to conclusions...it could be "right-wing extremists" (satire)
Memo: A measured response to the Paris attack
OK, so the magazine Charlie Hebdo has been the focal point for Muslim hatred because it satirised Mohammed. And it had been attacked before by Muslim terrorists in 2011, as well as receiving numerous fatwas. But you do not need to mention any of that. And OK there was a new threat of violence issued by the Islamist State against the magazine yesterday after it ran more cartoons. And OK the gunman today - dressed in jihadist black 'uniforms' were yelling "Allahu Akbar" and "We have avenged the prophet Mohammed" as they murdered journalists and cartoonists at the magazine's office. OK, so Paris has a recent history of multiple Islamic terrorist attacks...
But - as I am pleased the UK media is now saying with one voice - we must not jump to any conclusions about who is responsible for this and we must remove any mention of the words Islam, Muslim etc from our reporting, except in relation to Muslim victims. Because, even if this was committed by people claiming to be Muslims, they could not have been Muslims because Islam is a religion of peace. In particular remember that, as always, the REAL victims of these attacks are indeed Muslims - so you must reinforce this narrative of Muslim victimhood (use the expression "unjustified backlash against the Muslim community" liberally in all reports, and include quotes like "All Muslims condemn this attack, which is clearly an attack against Islam" from a local Imam (just make up a name if you cannot find one).
Paris attack update: BBC News removes all mention of 'Islam' from its main page
Following on from the report I posted 2 hours ago, I have been looking at the BBC news pages. Above is a screenshot I took at 3.28pm. Note that, as per my previous report, the words Islam, Muslim do not appear in any of the 7 key points listed. But what is especially incredible is that an hour before (I am kicking myself for not doing a screen capture) one bullet point said (to my surprise) "Suspected Islamist attack". As you can see that has been removed in line with my memo.
Danish Newspaper Republishes Charlie Hebdo Cartoons
The Danish newspaper Berlingske has republished cartoons on Islamic themes from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, as part of its coverage of the attack which killed 12 people in Paris on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
The Thursday print edition of Berlingske, available online on Wednesday night, showed several past front pages from the French magazine. Among them was one depicting the Prophet Mohammad and another about Sharia law.
Such images provoked angry reactions from some Muslims when originally published by Charlie Hebdo, and footage of the Wednesday killings at the magazine's offices showed gunmen shouting "we have avenged the Prophet Mohammed".
Berlingske's Editor in Chief Lisbeth Knudsen said her newspaper's action in republishing the cartoons was not a protest.
"We will print them as documentation of what kind of a magazine it was that has been hit by this terrible event," Knudsen was quoted as having said.
Cartoonists React to Murder of Colleagues at Charlie Hebdo
Political cartoonists from around the world reacted with grief and words of support on Twitter after several of their French colleagues at the political satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo were shot and killed in an apparent terrorist attack in Paris on Wednesday. Here are the words and drawings of a few of them:
FreeBeacon: A Tribute to Charlie Hebdo
“I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” –Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier (1967 – 2015), publisher, Charlie Hebdo.
On Wednesday morning, the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo was once again targeted by violent jihadists for the crime of depicting in print the image of the Prophet Mohammed.
According to initial reports, three gunmen killed 10 magazine staffers and two police officers who responded to the shooting.
The magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011 after it initially published cartoons depicting Mohammed, one of a string of attacks retaliating against predominately European publications that dared to “blaspheme.”
Those attacks, like today’s shooting, were brutal and savage attempts to silence speech that their fanatical perpetrators find offensive to their seventh-century worldview and conception of their religion.
The Washington Free Beacon extends its deepest condolences to the staff of Charlie Hebdo, their families, and all of the people of France rocked by this morning’s shooting. We pray the shooters are found and brought to justice.
We also stand in solidarity with all journalists, cartoonists, and social commentators threatened with violence or attacked by censorious fanatics. We feel a fitting tribute to Charb and his publication would be to republish the cartoons for which he gave his life.