A comedian friend shared this passage from The Tablet’s live blog about Paris:
I spoke to a person who teaches history in a high school in one of the suburban Cités. He told me that this is a complete disaster. Teachers are afraid to mention the events. He told me that in his school students are asking to debate the massacre—and they are justifying it. Thirteen-year-olds, 14-year-olds saying, “You shouldn’t insult the Prophet. The killing is justified.” If this is free speech in France then France should change the law. The students don’t understand what the problem is. The teacher complained that they have been sounding alarms for 15 years.
First of all, because it’s a typical neuveaux-liberal, American (Jewish) news outlet let’s fill in the absolutely essential detail which is omitted. This was a teacher in a predominantly Muslim area school talking to Muslim children. Obviously.
These are not cute little nursery children: these are young adults. They have brought with them to school the ideas and influences they are given at home and at the Mosque. They are absolutely fine with the murder of cartoonists and writers who deserve it because of drawing a picture.
And here’s the big problem: if we are to accord equal respect to all the various cultures in our brave new multicultural society, how can the teacher inform the kids that they are wrong? How can they be told there is no insult that can be felt by an ideology or it’s followers which can be used to justify slaughter? None. Nothing. Ever. Without exception.
Because our enlightened, western civilisation is superior in this realm to Islam and there is no way to put the two on equal footing. Either you want to lock up or kill cartoonists or you want to protect them. If people want to live in and experience all the benefits of our civilisation, they have to relegate the 7th century parts of Islam to the dustbin. If that’s not possible because Islam is immutable then we have a collision.
Today we are not facing this truth head on. We are either hoping all Muslims everywhere will slide toward a kind of secularisation and just “forget” about the less convenient parts of their religion or we’re lying to ourselves and saying Islam is peaceful. Either way it’s not going to help.
The West has become secularised, but less than it thinks and, regardless, the fundamentals of Christianity and Judaism, including the examples set by the main figures, do not provide direct instruction to followers to wage aggressive wars of conquest.
And here’s a final visual: these are either kids being kids and fooling around making machine gun gestures behind a reporter outside a shop where Jews are being held at gun point, or they’re the rather scary future of Europe and European law making. You decide.
