Islamic terror returns to France
The international solidarity witnessed with the Charlie Hebdo attacks is now nowhere to be seen.
In a repeat of 2015, France’s national security alert system has reverted back to its highest level. On the 7th January of that year, two gunmen stormed into the Parisian offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly magazine, murdering twelve and injuring a further eleven. On their escape, one of the terrorists shouted ‘we have avenged the prophet Mohammad’ leaving no doubt as to the motive of this horrendous attack. Charlie Hebdo had been the target of extremists before for publishing less than flattering images of the prophet – a crime under strict Islamic law.
Then, on the 13th November in the heart of the French capital, three coordinated teams of terrorists, working on behalf of ISIS and equipped with firearms and explosives, slaughtered 130 people across numerous locations including cafes and bars, as well as the famous Bataclan Theatre. The Stade De France stadium, where roughly 80,000 spectators were watching the French national team play, was also a target. Suicide bombs detonated near the stadium could be acutely heard from inside the ground; the crowd was shepherded onto the pitch, shielded from the terror occurring outside. It was the deadliest terror attack in French history, with then President Francois Hollande describing it as ‘an act of war.’
Now, in 2020, Islamic Terror has returned to France. On the 16th October, schoolteacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, an eighteen-year-old Islamic extremist of Chechen origin, a predominantly Muslim region of Russian Federation. He came to France as a refugee when he was only six years old and was shot dead within mere minutes after the attack. Anzorov targeted Paty after hearing that the schoolteacher had shown pictures of the Prophet Mohammad - including one drawn by massacred Charlie Hebdo employees – to his class where he was teaching them about freedom of expression.
The rallying cry of ‘Je Suis Paty’, borrowed from the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ of half a decade ago, immediately spread to every corner of a land where secularism, satire and freedom of expression form the lifeblood flowing through the soil. However, the international solidarity witnessed with the Charlie Hebdo attacks is now nowhere to be seen. Are national governments that preoccupied with COVID? Or – just as likely – have they all grown numb to Islamic terror? It appears that France has been left in the cold.
French President Emmanuel Macron defended his country’s core values, which encompassed the use of the cartoons, only for a knifeman – allegedly screaming ‘Allah Akbar’ – to then murder three innocent civilians with a knife in Nice on Thursday, with two victims being attacked inside the Notre Dame Basilica church. The French authorities have confirmed that it is (yet another) terrorist attack. Nice was also the city which bore witness to the Bastille Day (14th July) terrorist attack where a supporter of ISIS drove a truck along a packed street, killing eighty-six. When will this nightmare end, for both Nice and France as a whole?
The common thread coursing through all these horrific terrorist incidents is that the perpetrators are radicalised Islamic extremists with the expressed intent of eradicating French culture, and Western culture in general.
These attacks are not random, spontaneous incidents; they have taken considerable time to plan whilst the locations and targets are systemically selected. Charlie Hebdo and Samuel Paty represented freedom of expression; the recent Nice attack symbolised an assault on the Christian faith in a country that is eighty per cent Catholic; Bastille Day is a national holiday paying homage to the French Revolution which was instrumental in forging and cementing the liberties the French people possess to this day. The rights which Islamist extremists want to strip away through blood and fear.
