Posted on 01/14/2015 3:00:27 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
On Sunday, millions of French citizens peacefully marched through the streets of Paris in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine attacked by Islamic extremists last week, in what French officials have described as the largest demonstration in the country's history.
But this was far from the only response to the days of terror that rocked France.
In the first 48 hours after the Charlie Hebdo attack, there were nearly 15 anti-Muslim attacks across France, according to British anti-Islamophobia group Tell MAMA UK.
The majority of the attacks targeted mosques and other Islamic prayer centers throughout France, including:
— Three blank grenades exploded inside of a mosque in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. One window also took a bullet.
— Near Narbonne, in the Port-la-Nouvelle district, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers. The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said.
— A blast erupted at L'Imperial, a restaurant affiliated with a mosque in the French village of Villefranche-sur-Saone.
— The head and entrails of a boar were left outside of an Islamic prayer center in Corsica, along with a note: "Next time it will be one of your heads."
Luckily, nobody was killed in any of these incidents, all of which pale in comparison to the bloodshed wrought by the gunmen who stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7. But as Vox's Max Fisher notes, "These incidents point to a long-worsening trend of hostility in France toward the country's Muslim minority, which makes up an estimated 8% to 10% of the population, and a sense among French Muslims that they are not welcome."
They likely won't be the last instances of anti-Muslim reprisals in the wake of France's week of terror. As Mic's Scott Bixby notes, the Charlie Hebdo attack will likely embolden the Europe's burgeoning far-right xenophobes, who swiftly gained political and social clout in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. Just hours after the attack, France's Front National seemed set to use the attack to further its anti-immigrant agenda: The party's treasurer, speaking ahead of a press conference by Marine Le Pen, said: "Islam has a tendency to create fanatics more than any other religion. The facts on the ground prove this."
It's an all-too-familiar story, especially for observers in the U.S. In America, hate crimes traditionally spike whenever there's a criminal or terrorist incident involving Muslims. Sometimes this reaction occurs over something so innocuous as debating the placement of a mosque in New York City (which isn't even a mosque).
The recent experiences of Canada and Australia offer a glimmer of hope in the face of fear. Following an October attack on Canada's Parliament Hill, volunteers responded to the defacement of a mosque in Cold Lake, Alberta, by cleaning the site, scrubbing the walls, replacing glass and displaying signs that said "Love Your Neighbor." And after Australia's December hostage crisis in downtown Sydney, Australians have banded together on Twitter with #IllRideWithYou, a hashtag showing their solidarity with Muslim fellow countrymen scared of being attacked on public transportation.
These instances of compassion hold a powerful lesson for France: No march, no matter how large, can truly be a beacon of solidarity unless French Muslims are included in, not alienated from, the project of civil society.
Jared Keller is the director of news at Mic. A former associate editor at The Atlantic and social media director for Bloomberg Digital, he has also written for Aeon, Al Jazeera America, Outside, Pacific Standard, and The Verge.
And no Muslims were killed or harmed in the making of this piece of propaganda.
Luckily, nobody was killed in any of these incidents...
Unluckily is more like it.
It’s a start.
I’m under the expression and belief, although I’m working on the foundation information to prove this, that Europe is going through another pre-stage of gearing towards eradication of undesirables. Instead of using Jews, a most peaceful crowd, they are allowing jihadists to ramp up attacks forcing those citizens in the infected nations to rise up and call for immediate action. It looks like the partnerships of European countries are going to seize the momentum and do just that with a war they created and allowed to fester in order to weaken the M.E. nations and reinsert colonial dominance over that region once again...basically, they are using the jihadists in order to destroy the larger entity.
The march in Paris is telling of future plans Europe has for the region and is competing against both the US in the West and Russia in the East. Europe needs to consolidate into a unity to halt either party from exercising control in their respective territory. With the dependence of oil/gas from Russia holding a hand around their throat, Europe has decided that re-visiting control of the M.E. is a viable alternative to buying oil/gas from either West or East.
just some thoughts...I’ll see how this will play out over the next 5 yrs while alot of innocent people die in the process...
Or they could try fracking.
Vive la resistance!
CORRECT but they had such a bad “Islamophobic” angst!!! Oh my! They need to be shipped out of Europe via a nasty sea mine minefield.
As long as the Muslim community remains silent, with no real condemnation, they need to be hounded...
Ahh. Didn’t they just burn 940 cars on New Years?
“Boys will be boys.”
Which leads me to wonder if it wasn't all staged by the terrorist cultists themselves.
“Which leads me to wonder if it wasn’t all staged by the terrorist cultists themselves.”
Exactly.
They should show a map with all the muslim attacks against Jews and other French citizens. I guarantee it would be in the thousands.
The ony good mooselimb is a dead one.
They burn 40 to 50 thousand cars every year. One hundred a night is not unusual. France has a problem they do not talk about and I assume it is also infesting Europe. The liberals want cheap labor, but they do not want to assimilate them into their culture. France is particularly vehement about French culture, so they have a massive amount of labor that came from islamic cultures and countries inside France to do junk jobs, get treated like outsiders and are not welcome in civilized France. Those workers do not go to their home countries EVER again. France has people that are in France are are third generation, in France with no hope to citizenship. No hope for a real job market, and have lived in no other country but France.
They now have large enclaves that are not French within their own country.
Hey, if any of this sounds familiar, let me know.
DK
Which leads me to wonder if it wasn’t all staged by the terrorist cultists themselves.
.............
That was my first thought. Remember the fake noose hung from the door of the black university professor, by the professor herself, as it turned out?
There’s probably a lot of that going on.
Every mosque in France should be burned to the ground and Muslims shot on sight wherever they are seen. That would be a backlash. The incidents in this story are pathetically minuscule.
Does any other group work harder to be included in "the project of civil society"? Wait... I'm getting all misty now.
I don’t understand the violence against cartoons. If your faith is strong enough, nothing in this world should matter. Jesus Christ is the answer, always has been, always will, in my opinion. Violence is evidence of doubt. The terrorists are willing to die for a misguided cause but woe to those who inspire them. It would have been better if a millstone were placed around their necks and they were cast into the sea.
-Frank
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