Eric Cantona: “It’s shocking, it’s very regrettable, but unfortunately it’s not the first time that the freedom of expression has been attacked. In October 1988, the Saint Michel Theater was set on on fire during an attack. Inside there were people watching Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ”. The attackers belonged to a Catholic, integralist group and it was in 1988, in France, in Paris. 40 people were injured, four seriously and it was a criminal attack, the aim was to burn alive 50 people.” EC: “What I want to say is that today, what just happened doesn’t have to be used against Islam. Fanaticism is everywhere, but it concerns just a minority of people. The rest are just simple Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims. I think that it’s important to take the long or historical view. If we just focus on current affairs, if we limit our view to today’s news, it’s like things never happened before. It’s important to recall that all this has already occured, it’s already happened with terrorist groups which were not Islamic.” EC: “The danger would be to say that all Muslims are like that, but I’m convinced that 90% of Muslims feel very uncomfortable today and are ashamed of what’s happened. It’s important not to say, that a Muslim, is “moderate”, if he’s just a citizen like you or me. What does “moderate” mean anyway? Does it mean that Islam is an extremist religion? This is a latent provocation, you see? And it’s very dangerous. We don’t have to paint everybody with the same brush. That’s the danger I think.” EC: “It seems to me that all this is linked to the economic crisis. It seems to me that if there hadn’t been a crisis in 1929 then Hitler would never have obtained power. And unfortunately, during crises, people fall into despair, they don’t know anymore what to hang on to and all this gives birth to extremism. What is dangerous, once again, is to take advantage of the despair of some people, to spread crazy ideas. Those who do it, create and develop hate for political purposes, for power purposes. And I think it’s sad and reprehensible.”
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 04:41:11 +0000
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