Chapter two FACING THE PROBLEMS The attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo was the latest in a series of violent reprisals against authors and artists in response to their depictions of Islam. Militant strikes on artists the arts and the Public at Large became real for many observers just over 25 years ago, when Iran put a price on the head of British author Salman Rushdie over his book The Satanic Verses. That incident “was the first time Westerners were really introduced to the tool that extremist voices can use to identify someone who is speaking out in a way that they don’t adhere to”, says Farah Pandith, adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the first US Special Representative to Muslim Communities, she went on to add, “But it is not unique and alone.” Jonathan Laurence, a professor at Boston College and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says: “No one is used to this sort of attack but France is experienced in having had Islamist violence play out on its streets before, during the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and the French-Algerian war of the 60s.” Terrorists trying to polarise the populace want “to drive as large a wedge as possible between the non-Muslim majority and a small but significant Muslim minority in France”, Laurence says. Attacks have included: 1989: Salman Rushdie In February 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of Rushdie, in response to the perceived blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses. The resistance to the book stemmed from the British author’s depiction of Mohammed. The edict sent Rushdie into a nomadic life of hiding, moving among safe houses across Britain and the world. The fatwa was never officially rescinded but Iran’s leaders lifted the order in 1998. Rushdie, who says he has received death threats since then, has made his home in the US. A few years ago, the author wrote about the harrowing experience in his memoir Joseph Anton. 2001: The Shoe Bomber Richard Colvin Reid (born 12 August 1973), also known as the Shoe Bomber, is a British man who attempted to detonate explosives packed into the shoes he was wearing, while on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Born to a father who was a career criminal, Reid converted to Islam as a young man in prison after years as a petty criminal himself. Later he became radicalized and went to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he trained and became a member of al-Qaeda. On 22 December 2001, he boarded American Airlines Flight 63 between Paris and Miami, wearing shoes packed with explosives, which he unsuccessfully tried to detonate. Passengers subdued him on the plane, which landed at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, the closest US airport. He was subsequently arrested and indicted. In 2002, Reid pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to eight criminal counts of terrorism, based on his attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in flight. He was sentenced to 3 life terms plus 110 years in prison without parole and is held in a super maximum security prison in the United States. 2002: The Bologna fresco The basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, Italy, drew terrorism threats in 2002 for a 15th-century fresco that was said to depict Mohammed in hell. The fresco, by Giovanni da Modena, is in a chapel of the cathedral and apparently shows the prophet under siege by the devil, in one of the circles of hell inspired by Dante’s Inferno. Members of a group linked to al-Qa’ida reportedly discussed blowing up the basilica on instructions from counterparts in Afghanistan and Iran. Italian police intercepted phone calls among the plotters and the fledgling plan fizzled. 2004: Theo Van Gogh The Dutch actor, author and film maker was murdered in Amsterdam in November 2004. His movie Submission, about women’s lives under Islam, had run on Dutch television less than three months before he was killed by a Muslim extremist. The 10-minute film contains images of a woman’s body imprinted with passages from the Koran. Van Gogh, who was 47, made the film with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a human-rights activist who has criticised Islam’s treatment of women. 2005-2010: The Danish cartoons In the autumn of 2005, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed cartoons depicting Mohammed, sparking a jihadist campaign against Denmark. Along with other Danish newspapers, it reprinted the cartoons in 2008 as a message in support of freedom of speech. The drawings, including one by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard that featured Mohammed with a turban in the shape of a bomb, provoked outrage and protests across the Muslim world. After their publication, a plot to murder Westergaard emerged, and a suicide bombing rocked the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. In late 2010, Danish and Swedish authorities said they foiled a terrorist attack modelled on the Mumbai raid that had targeted the Copenhagen offices of Jyllands-Posten. 2013: Murder of Lee Rigby On the afternoon of 22 May 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street when he was attacked. Two men ran him down with a car, then used knives and a cleaver to stab and hack him to death. The men dragged Rigbys body into the road and remained at the scene until police arrived. They told passers-by that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces. Unarmed police arrived at the scene nine minutes after an emergency call was received and set up a cordon. Armed police officers arrived five minutes later. The assailants, armed with a gun and cleaver, charged at the police, who fired shots that wounded them both. They were apprehended and taken to separate hospitals. Both are British of Nigerian descent, raised as Christians, who converted to Islam 2011: Charlie Hebdo bombing A fire started by a Molotov cocktail gutted the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo hours before a special issue of the weekly that featured a caricature of Mohammed appeared on newsstands. No one was injured in the blaze. 2014: The Murder of 12 Members of Staff at Charlie Hebdo Offices in Paris Two masked men, armed with assault rifles, forced their way into the magazine offices on Wednesday, shooting dead the editor Stephane Charbonnier, his police guard and nine other members of staff. As they fled in a waiting black car, they opened fire at police and shot dead an officer in the street before driving off. They later abandoned the getaway vehicle before hijacking another car and disappearing. Police released a bulletin saying arrest warrants had been issued for brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi - who should be considered armed and dangerous. Another man initially sought by police, Hamyd Mourad, 18, handed himself in to police in the eastern city of Charleville-Mézière late on Wednesday after seeing his name circulating on social media. He has not been charged and it is unclear whether he is regarded as a suspect. Police have not said whether they are looking for anyone else in connection with the shooting. Overnight, seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers were detained in the towns of Rheims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area. French media say Cherif, 32, is a convicted Islamist who was jailed in 2008 and had long been known to police for militant activities. So we have firmly established that Islam is not a peaceful religion as expounded by Muslims but quite the contrary, acts of violence against non-muslims have increased dramatically over the years since Israels occupation of Palestine in fact a violent belief by the majority of follower that if your not muslim then you are a valid target. Many of the problems we are experiencing have their roots tied firmly to the colonization of counties by France, Belgium, Spain, Holland, United Kingdom in the 1800’s and 1900’s in counties such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Rwanda, Congo, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia just to indicate the vast panoply of countries that effect the way we think today. The first problem faced by these European countries was when Independence was granted to certain countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan, India, in the case of the UK, The inhabitants of these countries could apply for British Passports and in fact are still put on an accelerated list. The new figures released by the European Commission’s official statistics office, Eurostat, say that the United Kingdom granted citizenship to 193,900 people in 2012 — that’s the highest number of any of the union’s 28 states and represents just under a quarter of the 818,000 people who were given citizenship within the EU. Germany wasnt far behind with 114,000 citizenships being granted, France gave out 96,000 and Spain 94,100. And overall across the EU, three quarters of these citizenships were given out by the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Sweden. The UK only granted new passports to 10,500 citizens within the EU. One in six UK passports were granted to Indians and Pakistanis. Nigerians and Filipinos were also major beneficiaries. In total, over two million people have been given British citizenship since the turn of the century and the issue of immigration has become a political hot potato in recent years, fuelled by the anti-immigration party UKIP. So what does the granting of Passports have to do with the Islamic problem I can hear you the reader saying……………..Well, the majority of counties mentioned earlier, are Islamic countries, Pakistan for example, broke away from India to set up the Islamic State of Pakistan in 1947, 43.5% of all Nigerian are practicing Muslims. 14.2% of all Indians are followers of the Islamic Faith. That alone changes the face of the UK for example when one takes into consideration, that conversion from Christian faith to Islam is more prevalent than Islam to Christianity. This can be due to peer pressure, fervent Mullahs and the problems apparent in the Church. More to follow
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 09:09:13 +0000
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