Their gun attacks on kosher supermarkets, non-stop desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, along with regular oral or physical assaults on conspicuously Jewish passers-by, have made me think that French Muslims have channelled their passions into a single, anti-Semitic conduit.
That saddened me, for such narrow-mindedness betokens discrimination, which – in whatever meaning we use the word – has not only universally risen to the rank of an eighth deadly sin but has in fact trumped the other seven.
Hence I am glad to see that our Muslim friends are keen to absolve themselves of that irredeemable vice. Seems like they’ve set out to prove they hate Christians too, and one tips one’s hat at such broadening of their horizons.
On Sunday French police arrested an Algerian national who was planning an attack on churches, presumably Catholic. The young man was in France to study computer science, but was en route to Syria, where there is open season on Christians (and Jews, let’s not forget them).
Since these days few Muslims go to Syria solely to admire the Roman ruins, one would think that the only reason French police have so far ignored the youngster’s travel plans is that they were unaware of them.
This, however, isn’t the case. Les flics knew all about the young man and had ample reasons to regard him as a security risk. But there was nothing they could do preventively for fear of being accused… well, you know what they could have been accused of.
That dread word ‘discrimination’ again, plus inciting religious and racial hatred, violating proper legal procedure, along with prejudice against the socio-economically disadvantaged, or whatever linguistic monstrosity the French use to describe that other cardinal sin of modernity.
The chap was thus free to plan a few French rehearsals for his Syrian adventure. To begin with, last Sunday he shot dead (well, is charged with having shot) a lovely young mother of a little girl, in a suburb of Paris.
He then set her car on fire and fled the suburb, serendipitously called Villejuif (Jewish Town). Yet judging by her name, Aurélie Châtelain, the victim wasn’t Jewish, which gives a clue to the multi-directional hatred consuming the Algerian.
Either in the commission of that crime or shortly thereafter, he proved his urgent need for further training – and I’m not talking about computer science – by accidentally shooting himself. Understandably he called for an ambulance and, just as understandably, the medics arrived in the company of policemen.
The trail of blood led les agents to the Algerian’s car, where they found “several war weapons” (presumably assault rifles and explosives) and detailed notes, proving “beyond doubt” that he was planning to take out a couple of churches.
Forgive the hackneyed phrase, but when it rains it pours, doesn’t it? Such incidents are coming thick and fast in France, yet, rather than handcuffing every known Muslim firebrand, the police find themselves shackled by the politiquement correct tethers.
As they are, to be fair, in Britain, Germany, Italy, Holland and so forth. Today’s Europeans are allowed to protect themselves against Muslim hate crimes only after these have been committed, which rather defeats the purpose of protection.
And there I was, thinking that hatred of Israel – sorry, I mean the noble cause of establishing a Palestinian state – was the only grievance uniting Muslims of the world. Seems like they have other causes too, such as killing Christians, other Muslims, Indians, Indonesians and whomever else they don’t like very much.
The synthesiser in me refuses to see each such incident as being strictly isolated. One can’t help detecting a tendency here, especially since the last 1,400 years have provided innumerable precedents.
So here’s that lapidary English question: what are we going to do about it? After all, the law of self-preservation has never been repealed.
It’s clear that the diktats of political correctness, along with our peacetime laws, will prevent us from doing anything that could make a difference.
Hence at the risk of boring myself, not to mention my readers, I have to repeat what I’ve said many times before: we are not in peacetime.
There is every evidence that Islam is waging war not only on Israel but also on the West at large. Us, in other words, which pronoun should, for old times’ sake, include everyone worshipping the God of the two Testaments.
So far this has been a war of small-scale skirmishes, but then you don’t need me to give you a list of full-scale wars that started that way. For example, exactly a century ago everyone was only talking about a conflict between Austria and Serbia, and we know what happened next.
We are already at war, and peacetime laws must be modified – as they were by all combatants during all major wars of the past. Deciding exactly how to do that should be left to experts, and one likes to hope relevant expertise still exists in what used to be called Christendom.
All we must do is tell the experts: “Boys, there’s a war on, and we’ve decided to win it. Now do your best.” That too takes courage, of the civic variety. Alas, this quality has become rarer than the bravery it takes to lead a bayonet charge.