Courting The Dreaded Appellation of Islamophobia

"Unfortunately, you cannot disconnect this type of event -- terrorism -- from Islam in general. [I share the position of French President Emmanuel Macron] He told them [Muslim community leaders], it's also your responsibility to act on the theological front, to explain to your people that this [terrorism] is not part of the religion, that it is contrary to the teachings of the religion."
"This is a dual responsibility."
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard

"[Authorities] have absolutely no indication that he [jihadist Amor Ftouhi] had any association with anyone in the Flint area or, thus far, in Michigan."
"[Ftouhi was] neither on the radar of Canadian authorities or FBI or United States authorities."
FBI field director David Gelios 

"With remarks like this, saying Islam cannot be disconnected from terrorism, Mr. Couillard is pouring oil on the fire."
"He is premier, and not only is he saying Islam and terrorism are inseparable, he says the responsibility for terrorism falls also on the Muslim community."
"It endangers communities that are already stigmatized."
Eve Torres, co-ordinator Muslim integration group

"This person [Montreal citizen Amor Ftouhi] had an understanding of his faith that allowed him to kill people."
"That is obviously the reality, and we cannot bring back the words of 'Allahu akbar' inside his mouth. He actually yelled that."
"But to link this fact and the responsibility of Muslim communities to play a special role more than any normal citizen is actually stigmatizing."
Haroun Bouazzi, co-president, Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec

"It is up to  you, religious leaders, to fight toe to toe on theological and religious terror, to expose the usurping of your values, the appropriation of your religion's history, the negation of 15 centuries of interpretation work done by your scholars."
"The battle of thought and faith must be fought on the ground, especially among the younger generations."
French President Emmanuel Macron, address to the French Council of the Muslim Faith

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (R) meets with Al-Azhar's Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Feb. 26, 2017. (photo by Reuters/Egyptian Presidency)

If Egypt's president -- after stating that Islam badly needed reform, that in the present day its major precepts constitute a threat to world peace and stability and that he hoped that the Islamic theologians at Al-Azhar University would see fit to undertaking that journey in theological scholarship and amendment of a religious text dating from the Medieval era to make it responsive to the realities of modernity -- was  unsuccessful in his overtures, how can the observations and pleas of a French president and a French premier make any inroads?

 

At least the two men, Macron and Couillard, exhibited the moral fortitude to call the situation what it is; a religion's call to terrorizing members of other religions and those who follow their own. Even if they skirted the reality that jihad does reflect Islam. Those who follow Islam fall into a number of categories; those that simply deny that violent jihad reflects Islamic values, and those who support jihad as a major tenet reflecting Islam's vital pillars of prosetylization. 

 

When Muslims are exposed at each of their Friday night mosque sermons to proscriptions against non-Muslims, to the Hadiths and Koranic scripts that emphasize the exceptionality and superiority of Islam over the beliefs and faiths of the non-believers, and curse their very existence as a blight meant to be expunged by the faithful, little wonder that a significant number among them support violent jihad carried out by a smaller and dedicated number of fundamentalists.

 

Muslims prefer to wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood, clasping the claims that it is they whose human rights are being threatened, even while their co-religionists destabilize the world order from the Middle East to North Africa, East Asia to Oceania, Europe to North America. The triumphalism of shouting 'Allahu akbar!' while committing violence as emblematic of Islam's power becomes the common denominator among those whose clasp of terror reflects Islam.

 

For Muslims to feel not shame and regret, but indignant entitlement to denying that these malicious and harmful attacks against non-Muslims can be identified with Islam, and insisting that Islamophobia motivates those who link terror and Islam, engage in an effort to reverse the shame by labelling non-Muslims racists and bigots, representing the very height of mendacious sophistry. 

Premier Couillard errs toward appeasement when he claims that terrorism is not part of Islam for that statement is absurdly inaccurate. Jihad is an imperative that the faithful are expected to respond to, to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of advancing Islam's interests. And its interests lie in expanding its influence and command to achieve final control in a worldwide caliphate. To that end, Islamic State itself in its brutally malign atrocity-laden program is faithful to Islam.

Muslims respond every time an act of carnage takes place with attackers calling out "Allahu akbar!", that Islam is misunderstood, that it is a religion of peace. At the very same time, passages in the Koran belie that assertion, and do so clearly, with instructions to the faithful to dominate and destroy the Infidels and the Jews. Islam and terrorism are indeed inseparable, for the former sees the latter as integral to its success, a type of 'persuasion' entrapping people through fear.

Where Muslims view jihad as a legitimate tool authorized by Islam to propagate its message and enlarge its following to absorb the world in a final and all-encompassing ummah, as an ingathering of humankind to the bosom of Allah, the methods used by jihadists reflecting the ancient Medieval world of bloody conquest through the sword are viewed by the non-Muslim world as what they truly represent: terror.

French president Macron also sugar-coats the reality of Europe's dangerously churning episodes with deadly violence courtesy of Islamist jihadis, supporting the Muslim community's contention that Islamic values have been usurped by those choosing to interpret the 'values' inherent in Islam as being linked to bloody violence, in his own effort to appease his Islamic audience.

Undated Photo, CTV News,  Amor Ftouhi, Tunisian Montrealer

This latest debate in Quebec reflects the incident of a Tunisian-born immigrant to Canada who travelled to the United States where he made an effort to purchase a firearm, but succeeded only in buying a knife. With that knife he attacked a Michigan police officer, wounding him seriously. He was simply performing the bidding of the current premier jihadists who urge the use of any type of weapon with which to attack the kuffar. In choosing a knife, he chose the weapon of choice by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli Jews.