More Islamic murders
Photo by WILLIAM MORGAN
La Nouvelle Angleterre est Charlie.
Christophe Deloire, who runs the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, will no doubt address the latest Islamic terrorist murders of journalists when he speaks next Tuesday at the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org). (See link to Charlie Hebdo cartoons and to Reporters Without Borders petition below.)
Meanwhile, for those who say the problem is not Islam itself: A violent, bigoted and misogynistic strain of Islam goes right right back to Mohammed. Read about it in the Koran and other Muslim writings, which have plenty of savagery used as an excuse by today's Islamic murderers. Indeed, Islam spread across much of the world through violence.
There are also peaceful, kindly and highly charitable strains of Islam -- most notably the Ismailis, part of Shia Islam. The vast majority of the violence is perpetrated by Sunni Muslims.
There's an old, violent and bigoted strain of Christianity, too, but nowhere near the strength anymore of Islam's. The still besieged Jews, whence came the other two religions, long ago cast off most of their Old Testament love of violence against their enemies.
Concessions to Islamic threats just embolden the terrorists further. The West must show more backbone in defending its values, which are so fundamentally more alluring than other cultures' that the West is where people still most want to come. Many Muslims risk life and limb to escape the corrupt dictatorships that characterize most of the Muslim world and move to Europe, where, sadly, some of the more perverse and deranged of these immigrants seek to destroy the very refuge that has protected them.
More profiling is needed at the borders, and considerably more controls on immigration from Muslim nations, lest Western culture be overwhelmed. As Llewellyn King noted of a group of Pakistanis in Washington: "They did not want to know about the values of the country that had given their brethren sanctuary, education, healthcare and a decent life.'' And freedom.
Here is a link to a Reporters Without Borders petition.