Thread: Shooting at Jewish School Leaves Rabbi, 3 Kids Dead in France

Originally Posted by Firestorm

Apparently the shooter Mohammed Merah's brother is a sick twisted SOB as well.

Mohammed Merah's brother: I’m proud he executed those 3 kids

He is, but the coward didn't back up his SOB brother and stay until the end.

Originally Posted by kato

He's a French citizen, born and raised in Toulouse

We have his kind in the UK..most don't speak english and hate the country.

Toulouse killings: in France or elsewhere, let's not play politics with murder

Who would want to kill Arab soldiers serving in a western army, a rabbi and three Jewish children? The white far right or the Islamist religious right? The inability of leftists and conservatives to reply "both" explains half the political hypocrisy of our time.

When they thought the killer was a neo-Nazi, French and British leftists were at one. The "root cause" of the slaughter was the "dog whistle" politics of the right. Desperate for the votes of National Front supporters in the presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that immigrant butchers were duping decent French men and women into eating food produced by barbarous methods. The labelling of halal and kosher meat was an urgent political priority, he said, and went on to demand tighter controls on immigration.

Determined not to be outflanked, Marine Le Pen (daughter of Jean-Marie) complained about a "dictatorship of minorities" obliterating French identity. Her National Front and Sarkozy's traditional conservatives, created a xenophobic atmosphere, the left alleged. A psychopathic fascist smelt the hate in the air and killed Muslims and Jews.

Asking politicians and journalists to keep quiet until they know what they are talking about is demanding too much – many would never speak again. But you can suggest with as much politeness as you can muster that a fear of looking ridiculous or some vague sense of self-preservation should stop them pontificating until a rolling news story is over.

The killer turned out not to be a tattooed white thug who had hung around the fringes of Le Pen rallies but an Islamist thug who had hung around the fringes of jihadist Islam. The unsubstantiated accusations of the left boomeranged back through the air to smack it in the face. Since the police revealed the murderer's identity, Sarkozy has overtaken François Hollande in the polls. He looks a revived man rather than a loser. Worse, Marine Le Pen, who wondered whether the killer was a member of her own party, now claims that the events vindicated her attacks on Muslims.

The right is making the unsubstantiated smears now. It accuses "soft" socialists of failing to support the tough anti-terrorism measures that could save lives.

Notice how popular murder is: how seductive and how useful. Neither left nor right wanted Jewish children and Arab soldiers dead, of course. But both were willing to pick up their corpses and use them as weapons in a propaganda war. Each side charged the other with fostering a climate in which terrorism can thrive. The right opposed Islamists and accused the left of collusion. The left opposed neo-fascists and accused the right of collusion. Neither understood that the similarities between the Islamists and neo-fascists are more important than the differences.

Neo-fascists want to kill Jews and Muslims; Islamists want to kill Jews. One of Europe's most successful exports to the Middle East was the Nazi conspiracy theory, and it flourishes like a toxic weed to this day. But Islamists also want to terrorise Muslims because the first aim of any dictatorial movement is control of "their" people. In the case of radical Islam, its adherents enforce taboos by policing the behaviour of women, and murdering homosexuals, apostates and members of rival sects.



You do not have to look at the assassinations in Pakistan or the tyranny in Iran to see Islamist persecution in action. Across Europe, liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims are living in fear because fanatics want to punish them for speaking out of turn. The Dutch artist Sooreh Hera had to go into hiding after satirising Iran's judicial murder of homosexuals. The brilliant and beautiful Deeyah – the "Muslim Madonna" – first fled her native Norway and then fled Britain to escape fundamentalist intimidation. Terrified gallery owners pulled the work of the Moroccan-Dutch artist Rachid Ben Ali because he had responded to the murder of Theo van Gogh and death threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali by producing pertinent pictures of "hate imams" spewing bombs and excrement.

Above all, both versions of extremism want to punish "traitors". It is a sign of how political commentary trundles like a freight train down the tracks that journalists could assure the public that Mohamed Merah was the polar opposite of Anders Breivik, when the differences between them were merely superficial. Breivik might have raved about immigrants turning Europe into "Eurabia" – a colonised outpost of the Muslim world – but when he murdered last year his victims were not immigrants but young members of the Norwegian Labour party, traitors to their race and culture.

Breivik's mentality matched that of Parviz Khan, a bloodthirsty fanatic from Birmingham. At his trial in 2008, the police provided tapes of Khan saying that he would behead a British Muslim soldier like "you cut a pig". Then he would "put it on a stick and say, this is to all Muslims, [you] want to join the kuffar army, this is what will happen to you". In his study of the case, Shiraz Maher of King's College London said that most terrorists spread fear indiscriminately. Khan and his fellow plotters were different. They aimed to terrify Muslims who choose to integrate, identify themselves as British and serve British institutions; to let them know that it was an act of "betrayal" to support their own country.

After the Khan case, no one had the right to be surprised that an Islamist could murder North African soldiers in Toulouse. That many were surprised, that they persisted with the notion that the white far right and the Islamist far right were strangers rather than twins, told you that the delusion serves a political purpose.

For conservatives, opposition to radical Islam and indulgence of the white far right allows them to ignore the persistence of racism, most notably in France. They want to comfort their voters by telling them that whatever charges their critics throw at them, they are not as misogynist, homophobic or anti-Semitic as their Islamist enemies are. For leftists, opposition to the white far right and indulgence of radical Islam allows them to hide the descent of their programme of identity politics into squalor and shame, most notably in Britain. As long as they have the British National party and English Defence League to fight, leftists can forget about their failures to help liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims in their struggles against theocratic power.

Many on both sides will not admit that the motives and targets of totalitarian movements are often identical. After what Europe went through in the 20th century, their ignorance is beyond disgraceful. It is astonishing.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

I beleive they did know & that he was know to the security services, who were supposed to be 'monitoring' him. I'm not sure quite what thet means, but it clearly isn't very effective. There are going to be some awkward questions to answer here.

Maybe they were hoping that he'd lead them to bag other local fish. Unfortunately, he wasn't as smart as they took him to be.

Originally Posted by Parihaka

Toulouse killings: in France or elsewhere, let's not play politics with murder

I have always maintained and argued profoundly in favour of the view that there is no difference between the Islamic right and, as my discussions on Indian boards, the Hindu far right; with the Hindu far right being easily replaced by any other far right groups in the world, including the slowly creeping up Christian far right in Europe. These right wing extremists feed off each other to grow stronger with their mutual hatred and intolerance. The Islamic right wing extremists have been a boon for their far right brethren the world over.

Originally Posted by Tronic

I have always maintained and argued profoundly in favour of the view that there is no difference between the Islamic right and, as my discussions on Indian boards, the Hindu far right; with the Hindu far right being easily replaced by any other far right groups in the world, including the slowly creeping up Christian far right in Europe.

Agree, i've noticed a similarity in their thinking. Course when you point this out lots of sparks start to fly

Pari's article could very easily have been written to an Indian context.

Originally Posted by Tronic

These right wing extremists feed off each other to grow stronger with their mutual hatred and intolerance. The Islamic right wing extremists have been a boon for their far right brethren the world over.

They hijack the conversation and monopolise it for their own ends by using emotional triggers. This is why i continue to beleive anytime somebody tries to scare or piss you off then you're being set up for a con.

Originally Posted by Tronic

The Islamic right wing extremists have been a boon for their far right brethren the world over.

No Islamic extremists or otherwise without the European left.The left also has a fertile ground.But its true a battlefield is a very fertile piece of land.Paradoxes of life.

He told cops: "I am very proud of my brother. I regret nothing for him and approve of what he did."

Hmmm - sounds like he needs slow keelhaulin' after the flogging around the fleet. He rates some chum and sharks in the water too.

Originally Posted by Mihais

No Islamic extremists or otherwise without the European left.

I don't know much about the European left; but what is it about the left which gets Islamic extremist's goat? Too much idealized human equality than what the Islamists are able to bear?

The left also has a fertile ground.But its true a battlefield is a very fertile piece of land.Paradoxes of life.

Does it? I seem to be of the view that the left is loosing out to the right wing extremists because most people seem to feel that the only counter to right wing "A" is to respond with a right wing of their own, right wing "B". The middle east has been a good example where the left wing socialists have been loosing ground for decades to the Right. Ironically, Assad seems to be one of the last remaining leftists left in the region. With the Muslim brotherhood taking Egypt, I can only cringe at who will possibly replace Assad.

I can't say I'm right,but my impression is that the left suffered a mutation after WW2,particularly after the 60's.They replaced(or mixed)class struggle with race and religion struggle.Native europeans are the new aristocrats and burgeoise,while the others are the new proletarians.Hence,the more proletarians the better.The fact that some proletarians are rabid Muslims doesn't matter,because they are still against Christianity.I'm speaking strictly in a western Euro context and I'm aware there's a massive simplification.

I don't know if we can apply the usual left and right concepts in the Arab world.They occured in the West when the nation-state appeared.The Arab nation obviously is no nation state and the arab states have the tribe as the main force,just beneath a veneer of western inspired institutions.