Reblogged with permission.
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By Ralph Leonard.
On Friday morning, one would have not been mistaken to think that the fight against ISIS had made some positive progress, with the liberation of Shingal by The Peshmerga from ISIS' dominion in northern Iraq and the killing by drone strike of Muhammad Emwazi (Jihadi John). Albeit the killing of Emwazi was more symbolic than catergorical and the liberation of Shingal is not exactly going to speed up the inevitable defeat of ISIS.However, on Friday night in Paris, we were reminded again that this Jihadist cancer is still alive and well gnawing away at civilisation just like they had done a few days ago with the suicide bombings in Beirut and the beheadings of Shia Hazaras in Afghanistan. In Paris, terrorists launched a series of attacks that have claimed the lives of at least 160 people and 300 people injured. This make it the deadliest terrorist attacks in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004. ISIS has released a statement where they claimed responsibility for this and we definetly know it was a Jihadist attack because we have credible reports the gument shouted "Allahu Akbar" as they slayed the innocent.
In the aftermath of these horrific attacks, I have noticed alot of kneejerk finger pointing and simplistic analysis which is often done through a political lense that lacks complexity and nuance. You have the regressive left essentially blaming Western foreign policy and changing the subject to irrelevant topics. While on the other side you have those who want to shoehorn immigration and the refugee issue into this debate because that is their pet issue they want to talk about.
To be honest, I really am not surprised or shocked by the fact that we got the usual deflection, obsfucations and masochism from the regressive left.
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks first response to the Paris attacks was to change the subject to Dylan Roof and the Iraq war. Later in the show one of his colleagues claimed that France closing it's borders will potentially "further radicalize muslims". This clearly bigotry of lower expectations. So muslims will all of a sudden start killing people if they don't get the desired immigration policy they want. How contemptable. The closing of the borders is likely a short term measure as part of the state of emergency France is under right now. However, suppose France did make this a long term policy, it still would not provide an excuse or an "explaination" for radicalization. Despicable.
WOW! I am so glad we have Ayatollah Piers Morgan to be arbiter of who is a "real" muslim and who is not a "real" muslim thereby engaging in takfiri reasoning and Kuffarsplaining. Piers has probably never read the Qu'ran in his life, yet he considers himself an expert in Islam.
Another trait in the regressive state of mind is to dig for western "hypocrisy" in light of a terrorist attack in the west and engage in fatuous whataboutery. Notice he had to shoehorn Palestine in there as per usual. Don't get me wrong the problems in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen are serious issues that definetly should be talked about, but why is Ben excavating for "hypocrisy" now? I'm afraid I find this contemptable.
Then we have the "grievance" argument. Remember when regressives talk about "grievances" in relation to Islamist terrorism what they mean is "this attack happened because of "Western foreign policy" which is what the Latuff cartoon (right) implies. This a simplistic and wrong analysis of the situation. The attackers did not target symbols of French militarism or the French state. Rather, they attacked places where young, multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan Parisians hanged out such as cafes, resturaunts and bars like La Belle Equipe, Le Petit Cambodge and the Jewish owned music venue Bataclan.The other venue attacked was the Stade de France, the home of the French national football team, (Les Bleus) another symbol of multi-racial and multi-cultural France.
For too long now the regressive left has said that these Jihadists are the bullhorn of long forgotten "muslim grievances". I suppose they are, if you want to define a "muslim grievance" as the grievance of seeing an undraped female head or face, the hatred of cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity embodied in cities like Paris, the presence of a Shia muslim, a Jew and non-muslims on what you claim as "muslim soil". The horror of not having an totalitarian, imperialist super state called the Caliphate which they have now resurrected in Iraq and Syria. Anything can be twisted into a grievance by Jihadists.Yes they have grievances, but it is nothing like the grievance we have with them. It should be we who they are afraid of, it should be our opinion that they should be worried about. Because we too have unalterable values and we do care about defending The Enlightenment and the values of a civlized world.
While the regressive left tried to play the card of masochism and blame terror attacks on Western foreign policy, some on the right have and will try to ramp up an anti-immigrant agenda, the more extreme elements will go for a more anti-muslim agenda.
As of now we're not sure of the backgrounds of all the attackers. We do know that a Syrian Passport was found next to one of the gunmen belonged to someone who registered as a refugee.They are also checking on the fingerprints of another man at the request of French investigators. However, authorities are not ruling out the possibility that the passport may have been a fake or may have been stolen or bought from a well established black market.Another question that must be asked is why would a Jihadist who thinks modern notions of citizenship and nationality is haram, all of a sudden take his passport to a suicide mission and make sure it got found? For me this seems too calculated.
