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Islamic Terrorism Strikes Paris
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
January 7, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
Striking Paris in the Bastille district in the worst
terror attack in recent French history, Islamic extremists massacred 12 staff
employees of the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo for satiric cartoons about the
Prophet Mohammed. Screaming “Allahu
Akbar” while opening fire with Kalashnikovs during a noon-time attack,
terrorists revealed their identities.
Already firebombed in 2011 for satiric cartoons, Charlie Hebdo upheld the
highest tradition of France’s 1958 “Fifth Republic” Constitution, giving
citizens the same freedom of speech guaranteed in the U.S. First Amendment Calling the massacre “a terrorist
attack without a doubt,” French President Francois Hollande condemned the attack
as a “barbaric,” mirroring the culture clash from Middle Eastern and North
African groups assimilating into Western society, intolerant of the press’s
right to free speech.
With recent anti-Islamic demonstrations in Germany, France has its own
history of violent rioting of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants in
Paris’s suburbs. Praised by the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the impact of terror attacks in the heart of
Paris and other European capitals are designed to attack freedom of speech. When Osama bin Laden’s programmed assassins leveled the World Trade Center and Pentagon
Sept. 11, 2001, it set the trend of militant Islamic groups rising around the
globe. Terror attacks in Madrid
Train Station March 11, 2004 and the London Metro July 7, 2005 reminded Europe
after Sept. 11 that no one’s immune to Islamic extremists. Today’s barbaric attack against
Parisian journalists gets to the heart of Islamic terrorism: Intimidating the West from
practicing free speech, the same threats causing Sony Pictures Dec. 19, 2014 to
cancel the Dec. 25, 2014 release of “The Interview.”
President Barck Obama correctly told Sony Pictures Dec. 19, that “they
made a mistake,” canceling the release of “The Interview” under threat from
North Korea. Obama understood
as a former University of Chicago law professor the importance of protecting the
First Amendment. Killing Charlie
Hebdo’s editor Stephane Carbonnier, black hooded gunmen with AK-47 assault
rifles opened fire at during an editorial staff meeting. Eight journalists, a guest and two
police officers were killed, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, including
economist Bernard Maris, regular on French talk radio and cartoonists Georges
Wolinski and Berbard Verlhac. “Hey! We avenged the Prophet Mohammad! We killed Charlie Hebdo,” screamed
one of the terrorists during the attack caught on surveillance tape. An anonymous eyewitness said the
attackers spoke fluent French, proceeding methodically.
Methodically
planned attacks are typically performed by well-organized terror groups like
al-Qaeda, the group responsible for Sept. 11.
“I think that they were extremely well-trained, and they knew exactly
down to the centimeters and eve to the second what they had to do,” said the
unnamed eyewitness. French
officials identified the suspects as 30-something brothers Said and Cherif
Kouachi and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, all thee followes of al-Qaeda’s Yemen
cell, once led by the late Anwar al-Awalaki, the U.S.-born al-Qaeda terrorist
that inspired Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan to massacre 13 U.S. soldiers
at Fort Hood, Texas Nov. 5, 2009.
Since the French joined the U.S. coalition of fight ISIS in Sept. 19, 2014,
France has been on a heightened terror watch.
Massacring Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine continued radical Islam’s
attack on the West’s freedom of speech.
Nearly 10 years ago radical Islam convulsed over cartoons satirizing the
Prophet Mohammad in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten Sept. 30, 2005. Threatening to murder the
journalists responsible, the editorial cartoonists had to go into hiding from
death threats by Islamic groups.
Today’s Bastille massacre opens up a new chapter of Islamic extremism on the
continent. “This is the darkest day
of the history of the French press,” said Christophe DeLoire of Reporters
Without Borders, concerned about repercussions in French society. “We stand squarely for free speech
and democracy. These people will
never be able to takes us off those values,” said British Prime Minister David
Cameron, rejecting the intent behind the attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin
called the attack a “cynical crime,” though he only recently agreed with North
Korean outrage over insults expressed in “The Interview.”
Today’s massacre at Charlie Hebdo in the Bastille ironically comes at the
very spot where the French defended themselves against the British but, more
importantly, ground zero in the French Revolution. Hollande and Carmeron echo Obama’s
statements that no democracy can yield to criminal gangs hiding behind Islam to
justify mass murder. “The Satanic
Verses” author Salman Rushdie knows firsthand what its like to be targeted for
death by Iran’s ruling mullahs. He
applauded France’s right “to defend the art of satire, which has always been a
force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity,” said Rushdie,
after spending years hiding from Iran’s death threats. Nowhere are the differences between
the Occident and the Orient more evident than in the rights of free speech. Today’s barbarism is yet another
reminder of the price paid for living in a free society.
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