Andrew Bolt: Media’s eyes wide shut to war on the West
Despite the deaths of three Christians at the hands of a Muslim in Nice, the left-wing media once again feigned ignorance to the war between Islam and Western culture, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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The Nice basilica’s floor was still wet with the blood of the Christians when the media Left surrendered.
Once again, they pretended not to see Islam is at war with France and its Western culture.
If anything, they declared, France attacked Islam.
Take SBS. On Friday our multicultural broadcaster claimed it couldn’t make sense of this slaughter in Nice, the same French city where a Tunisian jihadist murdered 86 people with his truck in 2016.
The clues were so vague!
Clue one: In the Nice basilica that morning lay the body of a 60-year-old worshipper, her head nearly cut off. Nearby lay the sexton, his own throat cut, while a third woman bled to death.
Clue two: The killer was another Tunisian refugee who, SBS acknowledged, “kept repeating ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Greater) even while under medication”.
Clue three: Two days earlier, two French cities projected cartoon images of Islam’s prophet Mohammed onto buildings in defiance of a Muslim terrorist who’d last month beheaded a teacher for showing them to his class.
Yet SBS, eyes wide shut, said: “It was not immediately clear what the motive was for the Nice attack.”
By Saturday, the killer’s motive was too clear to deny, but the ABC, also taxpayer-funded, still chose to make France seem the guilty party.
Yes, the killer was Muslim, conceded our national broadcaster.
But criticise France for its “strict form of secularism that upholds blasphemy and satire as freedom of speech”.
Criticise France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine for publishing cartoons of Mohammed as it pushed “the limits of French hate speech laws”.
Criticise France’s president for fuelling “tensions” by saying Islam was “in crisis” and defending Charlie Hebdo’s free speech.
Criticise France’s “torrid colonial past”, and its laws setting “limits on the wearing of headscarves”.
But on no account blame Islam. So nowhere did the ABC explain that Islam’s sacred texts violently reject the free speech and “secular” space of the modern Christian West.
What cowardice. You see, unlike the Christians’ New Testament, Islam’s sacred texts endorse the murder of blasphemers.
The Koran even recommends the Nice method in passages such as this: “So when you meet those who disbelieve (in battle), strike (their) necks.”
Important caveat: most Muslims reject these passages, or say they can’t be taken literally or out of context.
Yet it’s no coincidence that in 2016, two Islamic radicals beheaded a French priest.
Nor is it a coincidence that Islamists – also shouting “Allahu Akbar” – slaughtered 12 people at Charlie Hebdo for publishing those Mohammed cartoons.
Again, it’s no coincidence that a Muslim stabbed two Parisians in September to protest at the trial of suspects in that Hebdo attack.
It’s part of a pattern, and two weeks ago, a Chechen Muslim cried “Allahu Akbar” as he beheaded teacher Samuel Paty for showing his class some of Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons.
Be clear about Paty: he was no bigot. He was simply teaching moral and civic education – and free speech is a great French civic virtue.
What’s more, he’d asked any Muslim students who’d feel offended to leave before the lesson. Yet the Muslim father of a girl who’d missed the class denounced Paty as a “thug”, as did a Paris imam.
Here were Muslims dictating what non-Muslims could see. And Paty died for defying.
Free speech is now a key battleground in France’s struggle to integrate Europe’s largest Muslim minority – nearly 6 million people.
The tragedy for France, and the West, is that many Muslim leaders now openly say Western freedom must end where Muslim rage begins.
Morocco, Iran, Jordon and Egypt damned the Hebdo cartoons, and Saudi Arabia condemned linking Islam with terrorism, even as former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir tweeted: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Paty’s murder “barbaric”, yet made clear he also thought France was at fault, accusing it of an anti-Muslim “hate campaign”, and Pakistan demanded the United Nations and Facebook censor such “blasphemy” as the Hebdo cartoons.
It is rare to see a Western country under such pressure to give up its free speech, but many journalists still can’t pick a side between a key Western freedom and a religion that brutally rejects it.
To add to the betrayal, Canada’s uber-woke Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, urges France to surrender: “Freedom of expression is not without limits.”
Hold our tongues or lose our heads. A cowed civilisation marches back to the caves.
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