Ahmed Merabet, a French #Muslim Cop, first victim of #CharlieHebdo attack, #JeSuisCharlie #IamCharlie #ParisShooting pic.twitter.com/G8D3mixbjX
— Magnificent (@Ironyisfunny8) January 8, 2015
Ahmed Merabet, the police officer who first responded to the terror attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices only to get shot to death at point-blank range by the attackers, will inevitably become the poster boy for both sides of the Muslim debate. His truth was that of a Muslim who integrated into French society and professionally defended Western values resulting in his untimely murder at the hands of Islamic radicals. That truth is already being manipulated by multiculturalist news outlets bent on defending universalism despite its deathly consequences.
The Atlantic is using Merabet’s story to drum up what they believe to be obvious anti-Muslim sentiment in France, obvious only because news agencies scrambling to cover the Charlie Hebdo story didn’t jump on Merabet’s paragraph to defend Islam against radical Islamic terrorists. (Priorities, people.) Joining with The Atlantic crowd, Max Fisher opines at Vox:
Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: “As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form.”
This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.
Intellectuals like Fisher embody everything moderate Muslims hate about their so-called allies in the West. These academic morons go about evangelizing their multiculturalist mentality at the expense of moderates living in Muslim countries who recognize that Islam has to change if the West, indeed the world, is to survive. If anything, these few, brave voices not only illustrate the failure of Western multiculturalism, but the desire of the multiculturalists to save themselves at the expense of those they claim to tolerate.
“Tolerance,” the ability to endure what one dislikes with forbearance, is the odious term of the politically correct multiculturalist crowd. It works hand-in-hand with the postmodern “everything is OK” universalism that has led to France’s demise at the hand of radical Islam. The West’s intellectual elite of all racial and ethnic stripes love throwing “tolerance” out as the answer to terrorist attacks. It’s a Remains of the Day kind of privilege, enabling the intellectually rich to separate themselves from the masses by achieving a salvation tainted with Hitleresque inevitability.
The constant demands for Muslims to condemn terrorism are awful: http://t.co/FPqkmoJcDI
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) January 8, 2015
Vox Editor-in-Chief Ezra Klein goes on to illustrate this elitist mentality by explaining away the Hebdo attack as an act of “unprovoked mass slaughter” with a “thin rationale”:
These murders can’t be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn’t be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.
This is a tragedy. It is a crime. It is not a statement, or a controversy.
Try to think of one “unprovoked mass slaughter” in history. Outside of random school shootings perpetrated by the criminally insane, mass slaughters are generally provoked by the racial, ethnic and religious hatreds of madmen. Dismissing them as madmen doesn’t negate the fact that they were motivated by seriously considered beliefs (Klein’s “thin rationales”) that continue to be propagated long after their reigns have come to an end. Only a universalist looking to save his own hide would chalk up an act of radical Islamic terror to a psychosis. You can offer therapy to a safely locked-up psychopath. To a terrorist motivated by a hateful, perverse ideology, the most you can do is wave a white flag, or in the case of Ahmed Merabet, raise your hands in surrender before they shoot you dead.
Hence, when asked about the “Muhammed movie” tied to the Benghazi terror attack in 2012, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney brought Charlie Hebdo into the spotlight, commenting:
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. …we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it. And I think that that’s our view about the video that was produced in this country and has caused so much offense in the Muslim world.
Tolerate or be damned says the mouthpiece of the president who made it a priority to foster “a new beginning” with the Muslim world. The Egyptians loved the idea so much they helped to initiate the Arab Spring, briefly empowering the Muslim Brotherhood before yet more violent protests brought a moderate, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, into office. Sounding like the most logical man since Sadat (the guy they killed for signing a peace treaty with Israel) to take office in Egypt, al-Sisi declared, “We must reform our religion.” The first Egyptian leader to attend a Christian mass, al-Sisi (who views Israel as a “de-facto ally”) has been ignored by the multiculturalist elites in the West.
The reason is simple: al-Sisi and the moderation he represents is their greatest threat.
My latest for @PJMedia_com: Ostracized by the Cowardly West, Charlie Hebdo Faced the Islamists Alone http://t.co/z46PikGE3f
— Michael McNally (@notoserfdom) January 9, 2015
PJ’s Mike McNally rightly observed that Western intellectual elites from Obama to the New York Times played a key role in inciting the Charlie Hebdo massacre, “[b]y turning what was little more than a teacup storm on Islamist websites into a major international story…”:
Newspapers and pundits criticized the cartoonists and publishers, and at the same time portrayed the paranoid rage of Muslim extremists as a legitimate and understandable grievance of the entire Islamic world. This incited anger among more moderate Muslims who might have otherwise been merely irritated by the cartoons, and engendered sympathy and accusations of “Islamophobia” among non-Muslim liberals and leftists.
These same outlets refused to republish the cartoons that got Charlie Hebdo staff murdered by radical Islamists simply because “…it comes down to the fact that journalists of every political hue have long been wary of provoking Muslims because they fear they’ll be murdered…”.
Radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the West. The irony is that the greatest threat to Islamic reform is the West’s multiculturalist elite.
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