Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ murderous secularism

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “roots”, came with this email note:

France deserves more support than it’s getting from its allies.

That’s for sure. And there’s a link to a Foreign Policy article (click on screenshot):

An excerpt. Note how the NYT changed the title of its article. What a rag!

In the latest of a series of personal attacks against the French president, Erdogan claimed that “Macron needed mental treatment” for his response to the attack. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan asserted on Twitter that Macron’s words encouraged “Islamophobia,” while Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, upped the ante by commenting that Muslims have a right to “kill millions of French people” in reaction to the “disrespect” they suffered. Some of the U.S. media coverage seems to take at face value the opportunistic accusations of illiberal leaders such as Erdogan. One article spoke grandiloquently of a “crackdown on Islam,” and the initial headline on a New York Times piece about Paty’s killing was “French Police Shoot and Kill Man After a Fatal Knife Attack on the Street.”

As France mourns its victims, its fight against terrorism and radicalism deserves more understanding and solidarity.

The coverage has puzzled if not angered French observers. An op-ed in Le Monde denounced a “disconcerting American blindness when it comes to jihadism in France.” Macron’s measures have frequently been analyzed through the prism of domestic electoral politics as allegedly trying to co-opt the far-right. But this analysis represents a gross misunderstanding of the French political reality. A recent poll on the upcoming French presidential election in 2022 shows a situation eerily similar to the one that prevailed in 2017, when Macron roundly defeated Marine Le Pen in the second round. The vast majority of French citizens feel deep concern over the situation. According to a IFOP survey last month, 89 percent of respondents considered the terrorist threat to be “high,” 87 percent that “secularism is in danger,” and 79 percent that “Islamism has declared war on the nation and the Republic.” Are these all National Rally voters?

No, of course not.  The reason for the slanted coverage, at least on the Left, is Wokeness. We all know that. If murders are committed by Muslims in the service of their faith’s dictates, those murders are to be minimized. Instead, the Woke and the extreme Left emphasize the oppression of Muslims by the French. After all, Muslims are people of color.

It’s time for us to accept that although the majority of Muslims in the West are not murderers, wanting to live in peace, a disturbingly large proportion in Europe, Canada, and America find attacks on civilians “justifiable”. Yes, in other ages, other faiths have been murderous. But the Inquisition is far behind us and won’t recur, while Islam still has a problem with extremist terrorists. If you read the Qur’an, or the article “Why we hate you & why we fight you” from the ISIS magazine Dabiq. It’s religion, stupid! (See also Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s latest book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

But I digress. The Divine Duo seems to agree with the Woke: