EZRA LEVANT: FEAR ISLAM AND FIGHT BACK!!!!****
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/01/10/fear-radical-islam—-and-fight-back
France is at war.
Or don’t you think it’s war? What would you call it – a series of unfortunate events?
It’s a war. Every day the same enemy violently attacks France for the same reason, under the same name. The enemy is radical Islam.
They have a name for their war. It’s an Arabic word: jihad. It means holy war, against infidels. Infidels are all non-Muslims, or even Muslims who aren’t radical enough, like the Muslim policeman murdered while guarding the magazine Charlie Hebdo. They were attacked because they would not submit to the Muslim edict that no one may draw an image of Mohammed, let alone insult him. They would not submit, so they were murdered. That’s what the word Islam itself means in Arabic: submission.
On Wednesday, 12 people were killed at a magazine. On Thursday a policewoman was killed in the street. On Friday four were killed at a Jewish grocery store.
Is that not a war? The jihadists know it is. They say it is. They’re doing it.
You have to work very hard to pretend radical Islam is not at war with the West, and our secular, liberal democracies.
It’s almost irrelevant whether or not you acknowledge there is a war. But it’s not totally irrelevant, because if you do not acknowledge you are in a war, you probably don’t stand a chance to win that war.
Last year alone, 6,000 Jews left France, many for Israel. Why would they leave France – a strong, free, liberal country of 66 million people in the heart of Europe, a nuclear power, a NATO power, a country with a seat on the UN Security Council – to go to Israel, a country of just 8 million, surrounded by hostile dictatorships and terrorist groups? Who would imagine that could be safer?
Israel is besieged, it’s surrounded. But it has one advantage over the West: it is not in denial. No one in Israel, not even the far left, pretends that there is no jihad; no one in Israel talks about terrorists being just “lone wolves” or “crazy”; no one in Israel, not even the left-wing media, starts their coverage of any terrorist attack by denying that a Muslim was really Muslim, or denying that terrorism was really terrorism. They don’t blame the victim – those cartoonists were so mean to Mohammed, what can you expect as a response to George W. Bush, et cetera, ad nauseam.
And, after countless failed peace initiatives, all scuppered by the terrorists, Israel is no longer in denial about how this ends.
There cannot be a negotiated end to the violence. The jihad cannot be appeased.
The purpose of terrorism is to terrify and France’s jihadists have done that well. They seek to create Islamophobia – fear of Islam.
It is OK to be scared of the jihad. Anyone who says they aren’t is probably lying. Which is surely the explanation for so many brave, bold western journalists, who just last month were condemning Sony Pictures for censoring their new comedy, The Interview , in response to threats seeming to come from North Korea. Those same journalists collapsed en masse after the Charlie Hebdo mass murder. But instead of admitting their fear of Islam, they came up with pretzel-like contortions to explain how it was good journalism not to show the cartoon that was at the centre of the attack.
Everyone is scared of radical Islam. But being scared does not mean we must collapse. You can meet fear with resolve – and the decision to fight back. That’s what Israel has; that’s what the West used to have, back in civilization’s darkest hour, when the Nazis stormed across Europe.
Islamophobia: the fear of Islam. But those who are the most afraid use the term differently. They use it to shame people who are afraid, to call them racist. “You’re an Islamophobe” is an insult, blaming the victim of terrorism for feeling scared, accusing them of racism. It’s not just a form of denial, it’s an attempt to keep others in denial too. We’ll see if that fear-shaming still works in France.
It’s not just a form of denial, it’s an attempt to keep others in denial too. We’ll see if that fear-shaming still works in France.
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