It’s a sad thing to see journalists die, but it’s even sadder to see cartoonist die!!
Journalist, especially those who choose to report in war torn regions, know the risk, and they take it, because they are the eyes and the ears of the world, and sometimes a shield against mass killing and exterminations, these Journalists are heroes, actually they are super heroes, because when people try to fly from conflict zones, these super heroes try to fly to these troubled zones.
Cartoonists on the other hand, are the goofy neighborhood kid that want to make everybody laugh, cartoonist did not choose to go into war zones, they did not choose the heroic but dangerous mission of reporting the truth. Instead, cartoonists try to approach the current issues with humor, to make you laugh and maybe reconsider your point of views.
I have read somewhere that the attack on Charlie Hebdo does not represent Islam. That’s ridiculous! It’s ridiculous because it makes no sense to associate a religion or race to an act, anyone who does the association is clearly a fool, that you should no waste your time discussing with …
But the real question is why do these extremist Islamic groups want to kill and are killing innocent people?
That’s a long answer, that probably every politician who is serious about foreign policy already knows.
These terrorist organizations have been killing people everywhere, their Muslim victims are hundred of times more than their western victims … “Hence the question, Is this Islam teaching?”, makes no sense ! Even when these terror groups are targeting western populations, there are often also Muslim amongst the victims, for example in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, from the 12 people killed by terrorist, 2 were Muslims.
On the other hand, the Islamic teaching, do talk alot about warfare, mainly due to the fact that Muslims had to take up swords to defend themselves at the beginning of Islam.
This being said, it is quite easy for manipulation experts to manipulate religious zealotry and turn it into extremism, especially due to the strong brotherhood feeling amongst Muslims (putting religion before tribe, race, country and sometimes family).
The Plan of action becomes simple, find a bunch of moderately religious young teens (young adults even better), push them to become religious zealots, the side effect is that this will increase their brotherhood through Islam sensation, then all you have to do is put them in contact with the suffering of their Muslim brothers throughout the world. For example, in the late 90’s photos and videos were widely circulating of Muslim women raped and killed, men and young boys killed , and mass graves for Muslim population in Kosovo and Bosnia, all perpetrated by the Serb forces, helped extremists present it as the war of infidels against Islam.
The examples of tragedies taken advantage of by extremists, are numerous, from the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla camps (elderly, women and kids massacred – no men were in the camp) in Beirut by the Fallangite Christian forces, to the Israeli massacres in Gaza and Palestinian territories, to the Muslims suffering and persecution in Asia (China,Burma etc..). Add to this the embargo on Iraq the late years of Saddam Hussein that killed thousands of kids due to malnutrition, the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan etc…
Add to this, a never ending struggle, tension and aggressivety in the Middle east since the creation of Israel, and a sense of oppression in the Muslim world where dictatorships muse conservatives from expressing their opinions or have a saying (see how democratically elected Egyptian president Morsi was toppled by an army general within weeks), and you’ll get a formula to push some extremists to become terrorists.
Sure not all extremists become terrorists, but some will do, and in their mind they are waging a holy war against those waging a war on Islam.
The second important factor is, finding the side manipulating the extremists? , and that can be very difficult to know, and most probably there are several players. Take for example the Afghan soviet war, the extremist were manipulated by the U.S.A to fight the Soviet, since then, many other international players started playing the terrorist card, financing specific groups to execute specific agendas.
It is a Chess game played globally between major players, and very few know what is really going on. Often the leaders behind the attacks are amongst the first to present their condolences!!
Let’s go back to the Charlie Hebdo massacre: I would like to raise a few questions:
1- How come did the terrorist group know that the weekly meeting was being held?
2- How come the terrorist forget his id in the car, that they hijacked!!! when they take precautions to hide their identity by wearing masks and gloves, the id in the car looks only like a way to either selecting a scapegoat or a way to quickly point fingers so that the audience (with the attention span of a fish) don’t lose interest, without id and fingerprints investigation would have taken at least a week!
Either way, wars, politics and terrorism always choose innocent people to be their victims.
Charlie Hebdo team were defending something they held deer, they were defending the freedom of expression, and more precisely the freedom of making fun of religion and politicians alike. And it’s both these combined that were the bullets that killed these martyrs of Freedom.
The Last image cartoon by Chab, making fun of extremists’ promise to attack France, published few hours before the terrorist attack.
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