RUTHFULLY YOURS

Here’s a new one: the marijuana excuse. For years authorities all over Europe have dismissed clear cases of jihad violence as “mental illness,” but that one is so overused now, it’s understandable that officials would be casting about for new and imaginative ways to hoodwink their people into think that there really isn’t any jihad in the West at all, just a few unfortunate incidents and misunderstood adherents of the world’s most peaceful and tolerant religion. But sometimes even willfully ignorant dhimmi authorities can go too far with this wishful thinking.

So it is that in France, according to the Jerusalem Post Thursday, the appellate Court of Cassation has begun deliberations on whether to overturn the ruling that a Muslim named Kabili Traoré, who murdered an elderly Jewish woman while screaming “Allahu akbar,” will not be tried because he was high on marijuana at the time of the killing. That’s right: French authorities are on record now that if you get high, killing Jews is A-OK.

The cannabis, you see, allegedly compromised Traoré’s “discernment.” The lower court judge “cited psychiatric evaluations saying Traoré’s consumption of marijuana before the incident led to a ‘delirious episode’ that made him not legally responsible for his actions.” The millions of Americans who have smoked marijuana might wonder how it is that they never got so stoned as to think that throwing a 65-year-old woman out of the window of her third-floor apartment was just the thing to do, but that is now a matter for the Court of Cassation to decide. Muriel Ouaknine Melki, who is a lawyer for the family of Traoré’s victim, Sarah Halimi, observed that the appeal will establish whether or not “the consumption of narcotics can be a cause for exonerating from penal responsibility in criminal matters.”

The case is unlikely, however, to herald a sea change in French jurisprudence. If Traoré’s legal team wins the case, and he continues to be considered not criminally responsible for his act, other accused criminals who can convincingly establish that they were stoned at the time of the act will not suddenly begin to be let off in large numbers. As everyone knows but no one wishes to say, the lower court issued its preposterous ruling not based on a rational evaluation of some correlation between marijuana use and violent anti-Semitism, but wholly and solely because Kobili Traoré is a Muslim who was acting upon his Islamic beliefs regarding Jews, and French authorities don’t wish either to antagonize their restive and prickly Muslim community, or face the ugly reality of Islamic anti-Semitism.

Traoré made it abundantly clear that he was acting on Islamic beliefs. On April 4, 2017, he entered Halimi’s apartment, which was next to his own, and while screaming “Allahu akbar” and calling Halimi “Satan” and “Dirty Jew,” he began to torture her, and ultimately threw her out of her apartment window to her death. The cry of “Allahu akbar,” so beloved of jihadis, and his calling this elderly woman “Satan” indicate the Traoré is aware of teachings such as the Qur’an’s statement that the Jews are the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82), cursed by Allah (9:30), and to be warred against (9:29).

But Islamic anti-Semitism is the last thing French authorities want to deal with. So they didn’t. Then in June 2017, eighteen prominent French citizens, including historian Georges Bensoussan and philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, joined Frédérique Ries, a member of the European Parliament from Belgium, to lodge a public protest of the fact that the Paris Prosecutor’s Office did not charge Traore with a hate crime, and did not mention anti-Semitism in his indictment.

“French authorities,” said Ries, “have treated her murder with icy silence. No national mobilization for Sarah, she died as the media remained quasi-indifferent.” Some speculated that French authorities glossed over the uncomfortable facts of this case in order not to give ammunition to the Presidential campaign of Marine Le Pen, who was and is calling for an end to France’s open-door immigration policies.

Reining in Marine Le Pen and the “far-right” was more important to French authorities than reining in the likes of Kobili Traoré. And with the marijuana ruling, it got even worse, no doubt far worse than many of those prominent French citizens who protested in June 2017 could have imagined.

Imagine (although this would never happen) if this had been a Jew or Christian who smoked pot, screamed about his religion, and killed a Muslim. Would he be found “not criminally responsible”? Of course not. But in France today, as all over Western Europe, the primary job of the courts and law enforcement authorities is to make sure that Muslims aren’t enraged. They must be appeased at all costs. Will this lead in the long run to a peaceful and harmonious multicultural society? What do you think? And will the Court of Cassation have the courage, in this era of pandemic cowardice, to do the right thing.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.