Vous etes Charlie? Category: Friday column Published on Friday, 16 January 2015 05:00 Written by Adamu Adamu adamuadamu@dailytrust On behalf of al-Qaida, Nasser al-Ansi, one of its leaders, claimed responsibility for the attack on the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris; and he said the attack was carried out in retaliation for the satirical magazine’s publication of images depicting the Prophet Mohammed [SAW]. The attackers-identified as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi-he said were acting on the orders of Ayman al Zawahiri, the global commander of al-Qaida, while Amedy Coulibaly, who is accused of killing a policewoman and four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris, said he was coordinating tactics with the two brothers is said to have be associated with Islamic State, ISIS. In the message, entitled “A message regarding the blessed battle of Paris,” al-Ansi said: “We, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the messenger of Allah. The leadership of (AQAP) was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan. The heroes were chosen and they answered the call. Congratulations to you, the Nation of Islam, for this revenge that has soothed our pain. Congratulations to you for these brave men who blew off the dust of disgrace and lit the torch of glory in the darkness of defeat and agony.” It sound all too pious and appealing, but it will not hide the fact that the behaviour of these people do greater damage to Islam than all of colonialism has been able to achieve. The truth is that in Islam, you can never kill the innocent: and there is perhaps no more grievous sin than that; and there is not going to be any exception to this rule under any circumstances-what’s more, you cannot kill even the guilty without due process. While the whole world disavows Salafi-Wahhabism, it shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that responsibility for it must partly be borne by the West and the sense of hurt created by the two centuries of damage it wrought in the Muslim World. They all share with each other the crimes against humanity and against Islam. The perpetrators of these atrocities-beheadings, slaughter, executions, cannibalism, all this insupportable obscurantism and the unending distortion of the faith-are as far away from-and perhaps further from-Islam than those who insult its Prophet [SAW]. As Abdelqader Audah, a past energetic leader of proto- Salafism in Egypt, said, Islam’s problem was the handiwork of ignorant followers and incapable scholars. Not much has changed, at least not in the context in which he spoke. The problem is still that of ignorant followers-untrainable and untreatable ignorance- but this time the scholars are not incapable or Islamic. They are capable, competent and deadly-and in enemy camp, scheming against the faith. Whatever those who oppose them say, this cherished freedom of expression can never be freedom to insult and offend but it has been made to target Islam-and religion in general. It is not about freedom of expression or anything of the sort; it is all about weakening the faith of those who have refused to take religion for granted or accept that being educated consists in treating religion as a joke. The target is Islam and it began in its contemporary rendering with the publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. And following the 2005 cartoon insult to the person of the Holy Prophet [SAW] by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten, it was suggested that the paper carried carton caricatures of Christ [AS]- and may the curse of God be upon those who suggested this, if they meant it. The paper refused, citing the uproar that would greet such a move; and when it was suggested they it caricatures the Holocaust, it said under that it would never criticise the Holocaust or ever carry a caricature of it. There has never been anything like absolute freedom of expression anywhere in the world. “You can’t provoke, you can’t insult the faith of others, you can’t make fun of faith,” Pope Francis said. “I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights....Everyone has not only the freedom and the right but the obligation to say what he thinks for the common good … we have the right to have this freedom openly without offending.” You lose the freedom of expression in at least four instances-when your freedom damages the rights and reputation of others; when it endangers national security, as we saw what they have done to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks; when it threatens public order or when it goes against public morals. And even under their freedom of expression Gospel-the First Amendment to the US Constitution- there are many instances of unprotected speech and expression. It appears it is only the personality of the Prophet [SAW] who preached the religious ideology that will never submit to Zionism and Western arrogance that is fair game. But for us and all those who still have religious priorities about them, life without a sense of the sacred is impossible to imagine; and, if it even becomes possible, it will not be worth living. But the hypocrisy and the anti-Islamic credentials of the new confederates are all too glaring to hide. In a series of tweets that exposed lhypocrisie in the Paris march, ‘World leaders who suppress freedom of speech, rally for freedom of speech,’ caught some of the leaders with their pants down. On another level, it could as well have been the international rogue’s gallery. Indeed, for some of the leaders to be seen in a march for freedom of expression or indeed in any march for any kind of freedom, the grotesqueness can be cut with knife. Here it is unedited series of tweets: “Solidarity rallies are taking place in France today in support of free speech after the murder of 12 members of Charlie Hebdo editorial staff on January 7. Daniel Wickham tweeted an impressive list of world leaders attending the rally in Paris to support free speech, while suppressing free speech in their own countries. We have compiled Daniel’s tweets below for posterity. So here are some of the staunch defenders of the free press attending the solidarity rally in Paris today… - Daniel Wickham 2) Prime Minister of Davutoglu of Turkey - Daniel Wickham 3) Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, whose forced killed 7 journalists in Gaza last yr - Daniel Wickham 4) Foreign Minister Shoukry of Egypt, which as well as AJ staff has detained journalist - Daniel Wickham 5) Foreign Minister Lavrov of Russia, which last year jailed a journalist for “insulting a government servant” 6) Foreign Minister Lamamra of Algeria - Daniel Wickham 7) The Foreign Minister of the UAE, which in 2013 held a journo incommunicado for a month on suspicion of MB links - Daniel Wickham 8) Prime Minister Jomaa of Tunisia, which recently jailed blogger Yassine Ayan for 3 years for “defaming the army” - Daniel Wickham 9) The PMs of Georgia and Bulgaria, both of whom have a record of attacking & beating journos - Daniel Wickham 10) The Attorney General of the US, where police in Ferguson have recently detained and assaulted WashPost reporters - Daniel Wickham 11) Prime Minister Samaras of Greece, where riot police beat & injured two journalists at a protest in June last year - Daniel Wickham 12) Sec-Gen of NATO, who are yet to be held to account for deliberately bombing and killing 16 Serbian journos in ‘99 - Daniel Wickham 13) President Keita of Mali, where journalists are expelled for covering human rights abuses - Daniel Wickham 14) The Foreign Minister of Bahrain, 2nd biggest jailer of journos in the world per capita (they also torture them) - Daniel Wickham 15) Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, which jailed a man for 15 ys for writing the Jasmine poem - Daniel Wickham 16) Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who had several journalists jailed for insulting him in 2013. - Daniel Wickham 17) Prime Minister Cerar of Slovenia, which sentenced a blogger to six months in prison for “defamation” in 2013 - Daniel Wickham 18) Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland, where “blasphemy” is considered a criminal offense - Daniel Wickham 20) PM Cameron of the UK, where authorities destroyed documents obtained by The Guardian and threatened prosecution - Daniel Wickham 21) Saudi ambassador to France. - Daniel Wickham And they create the agenda and those gullible execute it for them. We condemn both those who insult divine sanctities and we condemn those who allow themselves to twist the religion in the name of protecting it. They hide behind freedom of expression, which is the right of every individual to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. And they reckon that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was an attack on the freedom of expression. It was not. It was an attack against irresponsible journalism by the worst ambassadors the religion could have. Source: Daily Trust
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 06:33:53 +0000
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