Even after the slaughter in Nice, too many Western liberals are cravenly quiet about the jihad against the French Republic. By Brendan O’Neill.
And still they’re silent. Even following the decapitation of an elderly woman while she was praying at church. Even following the stabbing to death of two others whose only crime was to be Christians attending the Notre-Dame church in Nice. Even after these latest acts of barbaric intolerance, of Islamo-fascism, as the mayor of Nice aptly described it this morning, the West’s self-styled guardians of liberal thought and usually noisy anti-fascists are silent.
No hashtags, no angry commentary, no clear, unconditional expression of solidarity with the French Republic. Just another round of craven hush, of looking the other way. …
Many people should be taking a long hard look in the mirror today following this slaughter of Christians in Nice. … The political figures and opinion-formers in the West who responded to the beheading of Samuel Paty either by shamefully zipping their lip or by engaging in the contemptible apologism of ‘but’ – ‘Of course Paty shouldn’t have been murdered, but it is wrong to display caricatures of Muhammad’. … They have drifted dangerously close many times to suggesting that France brings these attacks on itself by permitting ‘Islamophobic’ speech.
Unique among all forms of violent extremism, Islamist terrorism is always viewed as a response to a provocation. If Charlie Hebdo hadn’t published those cartoons, the massacre wouldn’t have happened. If Samuel Paty hadn’t shown kids a picture of Muhammad’s arse, he wouldn’t have become a target for attack. This is as morally degenerate as it would be to say that the Muslims massacred in Christchurch by the racist terrorist Brenton Tarrant brought it upon themselves by attending mosque — don’t they know that’s offensive to white-nationalist extremists? …
One of the most worrying trends of our time is the interplay between the woke elites of the West and the ISIS-inspired extremists carrying out barbarous assaults in France and elsewhere: both believe that criticising Islam is wicked and punishable. One side calls it ‘Islamophobia’ and wants to No Platform it, the other calls it blasphemy and wants to execute its practitioners. …
Will we stand with the French Republic against its internal foe of radical Islam, or will we not? The silence and apologism of too many in the West suggests they’ve made their choice: they have chosen to abandon France when it needs us most.
We know whose side the woke are on. Silence is violence.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
