My latest in PJ Media:
After two knife attacks in France this morning by Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar,” the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, took to Twitter to declare that “Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years.” Twitter took down another tweet from Mahathir that explained what he thought would actually compensate for those alleged wrongs: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
The rhetoric from some quarters of the Islamic world has been escalating against France for the last few days, ever since it became clear that French President Emmanuel Macron was going to move decisively against supporters and enablers of jihad violence inside the country. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan declared: “The Prophet lives in our hearts. When he is ridiculed, when he is insulted, it hurts… We human beings understand one thing: The pain of the heart is far, far, far more hurtful than physical pain. And that’s why the Muslims react to this.” Khan even likened this pain that Muslims feel over cartoons of Muhammad to the pain Jews felt during the Holocaust. Yes, he really did.
Some of this is personal, as NBC News reports:
A front-page illustration published by the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday showing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lounging in his underwear, pulling up the skirt of a woman wearing a hijab to reveal her bottom, has escalated an already hostile war of words between him and French President Emmanuel Macron: “Macron is against Muslims. He is sowing seeds of hatred,” Erdogan said Wednesday. “Turkey will take necessary legal, diplomatic actions against ‘loathsome’ Charlie Hebdo publication.”
All this has created a climate of hostility in France that leads to attacks of the kind we have seen Thursday morning.
But now Mahathir has ratcheted up the tension considerably. Even though Twitter took his tweet down, it was without any doubt seen and noted by jihadis all over the world, and manifests the desire of Mahathir (and others) to see a showdown between the West’s support for the freedom of expression and the Sharia death penalty for blasphemy against Allah, the Qur’an, or Muhammad.
There is much more. Read the rest here.