Carine Azzopardi is right: the West is so afraid of charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia” that it is neither comprehending nor mounting any effective resistance to the global jihad. Yet she is also wrong, and is engaging in exactly the same denial and willful ignorance that she is criticizing. Her careful language in this piece makes it abundantly clear that she would explain, if asked, that the ideology of “Islamism” and “Islamist terrorism” was something quite different from the benign and cuddly religion of Islam itself. But if you asked her to provide specifics about the differences between the two, neither she nor anyone else who speaks about “Islamism” would be able to do so convincingly.
In reality, “Islamism” is a Western construct with no basis in Islamic tradition, theology or law. It is designed solely to separate Islam from its political, supremacist, aggressive, and violent aspects. Azzopardi is right: the West is cowed and cowardly, and has staked its future on fantasies. But she, too, and others like her, are going to have to be attentive and studious, and awaken to some harsh realities about Islam, before any effective defense can be mounted.
“Islamism Killed My Partner. Why Won’t the West Fight It?,” by Carine Azzopardi, The Free Press, June 18, 2024:
On the evening of November 13, 2015, I recorded a video of my partner, Guillaume, laughing and dancing round the living room with our two daughters, aged four and seven. Just a few minutes later, he left our apartment in eastern Paris to go to the Bataclan concert hall.
A rock critic who wrote under the name Guillaume B. Decherf, he loved nothing more than good music, and was excited about seeing Eagles of Death Metal that night. In his review for Les Inrockuptibles, he had praised the band’s latest album. Its “sole aim,” he wrote, was “to give pleasure,” before signing off with a flourish: “Plaisir partagé!” A pleasure shared….
Shortly before noon the next day, a journalist friend of mine called from the morgue, with the terrible news I’d been waiting for: Guillaume, 43, was one of the 130 people murdered by Islamists in a series of coordinated attacks that day.
After Guillaume’s death, I needed to know exactly why he was taken from us. So I dedicated my journalism career to trying to understand the ideology of the people who killed him. Between 2015 and 2017, I covered attack after attack: a Catholic church in Normandy, a supermarket in Trèbes, a Bastille Day celebration in Nice. I was still grieving when, in September 2021, I started reporting on the trial of the twenty men accused of orchestrating the Bataclan attacks. The biggest trial in French history, it lasted ten months and heard from over 2,500 plaintiffs. For some reason, I assumed the court would examine how the ideology of Islamism had contributed to the deaths of so many innocent people. But day after day, as expert after expert took the stand, this important factor almost never came up.
I couldn’t stay silent. A couple of months into the trial, I wrote a column. “Ideology has an essential place in a terrorist trial,” I argued, “because terrorism is the choice to use violence in pursuit of a political cause, in this case Islamism.” I explained that the terrorists believed Islamic law should govern all public life, including in France. I said they directly opposed our country’s constitutional secularism, its laïcité.
The column resulted in an invitation to testify at France’s parliament. In a room full of experts, I gave the facts: over the last 40 years Islamist terrorism has caused the deaths of over 210,000 people, and France is the European country most often targeted: we have experienced 82 attacks since 1979. And yet, I said, “our country is so afraid of being accused of xenophobia or Islamophobia, it refuses to accurately name the insidious ideology that motivates these attacks.” The following year, nineteen of the 20 men were found guilty of involvement in the Bataclan massacre, which was named for what it was: a terrorist enterprise.
What I said in the French parliament shouldn’t be controversial. But it was only in private that people dared thank me. Shortly after the trial, I was contacted by a man who taught at a school in a Paris suburb, whose colleague had been beheaded in October 2020 on his way home from work. The murder of Samuel Paty made headlines around the world and should have been a cautionary tale—but since then, French public schools have continued to incubate Islamist ideology. So many of Samuel’s students were vulnerable to indoctrination, growing up in communities of poor Muslim immigrants where Islamist views had gained a foothold. A parent had once told him: “The laws of my religion supersede those of your Republic.”…
Spiro says
If you don’t confess me before men
I will not confess you before the father
Your loosing your country and your soul thru cowardliness
Larry Alvarado says
Amen Spiro
40 rounds says
It is a mental disorder to worry about being called a racist.. I notice only white people have it in spades, no pun intended.
Tony Rice says
I think you may find in the UK at least, ONLY whites can be charged with being racist, result of when the law was drawn up? In fact, when have we ever learned of a non-white being charged with being racist.
James Lincoln says
If a muslim or muslim sympathizer calls you a racist, xenophobe, or islamophobe – due to truthful criticism of islam – it simply means this:
You are over the target.
somehistory says
islam is not a *race.* People are a *race.* Races come in colors…White, brown, black, etc. Religion is not a *race.* Ideology is not; neither is a belief system or “faith.”
And Freedom of Speech follows Freedom of Thought. If we can’t be free to *think* that a religion, ideology, or faith is not what it is claimed to be, and if we can’t express those thoughts, then there is no Freedom.
If we are not allowed to tell the Truth…or just what we believe is True….because someone else may not like it, or may not agree with us, then there is no Freedom.
And without Freedom, we are made slaves to the ideas, thoughts and speech of others who have gained some power over us.
mozlums have been allowed to gain such power because they use violence, threats, intimidation and extortion to put fear of man in the hearts and minds of others.
And those “others” are intimidating the rest of us into silence about what we know and what we believe.
islam is not a *race.* but even if it could be labeled a *race,* that doesn’t make it beyond criticism, beyond personal ideas, beyond Truth.
Every person who knows the Truth, should say it…and often.
If islam is afforded the protections of being called a *race,* then every other religion should have the same protections. No more criticism of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism,….
Pray Hard says
Islam IS a race. A race to the bottom.
somehistory says
It’s already at the bottom…it began at the bottom and has been digging even deeper ever since
Jayell1 says
It started at the bottom and never got any higher.
mike says
This is the self destruction of France by France . Let’s note that most western nations have fallen into the same trap.
Australia, Canada, Germany & Blue states/cities.
Do know then you read about a crime or hear about it on the news. When a Muslim is involved
the name is omitted every time
ever wonder why
Wellington says
France is bad enough in this regard, but far worse is America which also has refused to name the enemy (and the enemy is Islam, all of it) and the USA has expended huge amounts of blood and treasure over the past few decades in combatting what is clearly a major enemy of America and the West, i.e., all of Islam, without even naming the enemy.
In WWII, America identified the enemy clearly and fought intelligently to defeat that enemy. In the Vietnam War, America did identify the enemy (Communism) but did not fight intelligently to defeat the enemy (the fault of the politicians and not the US military). And now we are not only not fighting intelligently against the enemy but we are no longer even allowed to identify the enemy.
A descent. A precipitous and suicidal descent, courtesy of political correctness, woeful politicians and other awful but unnecessary stupidities.
Mike says
“If you know both yourself and the enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
“If you know yourself but not the enemy, then for every victory you will suffer a defeat.”
“If you know neither yourself nor the enemy, then you will lose every battle.”
(Sun Tzu, from “The Art of War.”)
James Lincoln says
Wellington says,
“…France is bad enough in this regard, but far worse is America which also has refused to name the enemy (and the enemy is Islam, all of it)…”
100% true.
In order to solve a problem, one has to do a “root cause analysis” of the problem.
Without that, efforts to solve the problem are largely wasted.
Pray Hard says
It’s true cowardice when you’re afraid of being accused of something that doesn’t exist.
Rufolino says
“Benign and cuddly Islam” doesn’t exist !
abu taleb says
Probably France and other western countries are more afraid to use the word “Islam” because they don’t want to admit their mistakes of accepting muslim migrants and they still want to keep their stupid race replacement program.
SC says
Macron should be the first to the guillotine. This is all his fault.
John Pepple says
Check this out. I don’t know French so I don’t really know what she’s saying:
https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1804070091002126579?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1804070091002126579%7Ctwgr%5Ead0840e0671f7e34e62268cf76b0bf949b415f89%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Faanglin%2Fjews-begin-talking-about-leaving-france-as-tolerance-for-their-behavior-wanes%2F
But the commenter suggests she doesn’t care if she’s called a racist.
Kevin Kraemer says
Are there NO Charles the Hammer Martels in France any longer? 1Cor. 16:13 comes to mind. What are You going to do about it? One man makes all the difference. Stand up and oppose this evil.
OLD GUY says
Thats rich stick your head in the sand, AND YOU WON’T NOTICE THE BROBLEM UNTIL IT BITES YOUR ASS.
terry says
The enemy of Mankind is the Globalist Western Elites, Marxism, and Islam; these three world wide Crime Syndicates collude to rule the world as masters, lords, and gods- self-appointed! Name the crime and they own it, or are linked to tacitly approving and allowing it! These powers and forces are responsible for all, or nearly almost all of the wars, famine, violence, murders, rapes, thefts, cons, scams, and grifts that at present afflict and infest our world! But very few with platforms to oppose and expose these world rulers, wish to connect all the dots, left to right and top to bottom. for the links are too interconnected!
Yogi says
He died for nothing!!, Macron should rotten in hell !, beautiful family destroyed, not the first one and certainly not the last one , heartbreaking..
Nabil Bissada says
When Taliban replaced USA in Afghanistan hundreds of Thousands of Muslims escaped trying to migrants to different countries.
These hundreds of thousands of Muslims get Islamophobia, afraid to be judged and controlled by the Koran and the sharia law.
The Muslim organizations create the word Islamophobia only for the western countries. they are using the democracy and the freedom of speech and religion for their own target.
Egypt country sent many flights to withdraw all cleric Muslims who were living for years in Afghanistan. It’s happened after Taliban replaced USA.
The Egyptian government and the Muslims cleric had Islamophobia.
Hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims around the world have Islamophobia.
Also, all the Muslims in the middle east have Islamophobia.
Why only the citizens and the governments in the western countries cannot have Islamophobia?
Why you are afraid as western countries to have Islamophobia?
If anyone proclaims he don’t have Islamophobia send him to Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, etc
Wise words
“Western countries and the Muslims.
“. Do not blame the snake when you find him in your bed. Blame who opened the cage for the snake.”
.