Revisiting Charlie Hebdo: A Commentary
A few unguarded notes on Charlie Hebdo and the Muslim world
Almost five and a half years ago a momentous event occurred in France at the Parisian offices of Charlie Hebdo that depending upon the ultimate fate of free speech in the West may live in perpetual infamy.
The event in question was the sanguinary assassinations of the employees of said satirical magazine by two snarling Islamic terrorists who took it upon themselves to execute the capital punishment for blasphemy upon the defamers of their Prophet.
They were eventually put down with extreme prejudice by French security forces, but this was a foregone conclusion as the overwhelming majority of these attacks are conceived from the get-go in the fevered minds of these fanatics as martyrdom operations.
The two malefactors were classified both as brothers and French citizens (the first designation they would affirm matter-of-factly the second they would scoff at). Like many of the second and third generation of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe they drifted further and further towards de-assimilation, rejecting the bland post-Christian liberal land of their youth for the militant faith of their ancestors.
Supporters of unrestrained immigration (especially of the Muslim sort) should notice the dangerous incentive created when unreflecting multiculturalism is tolerated or even encouraged while assimilation to the Western way of life is given only lip service or outright denigrated.
The attack itself shocking as it was paled in comparison with the appalling cravenness shown by Western media and the trans-Atlantic Western ruling class as each of these two groups attempted to one-up (one-down?) each other in their effort to avoid even the semblance of an affront to the West’s Muslim population and the wider Muslim world.
Major newspapers refused to publish the cartoons while political leaders and the intelligentsia made sure to add a well-nigh infinite number of “buts” after their watery defense (if one can call it that) of one of the most fundamental premises of the free society: free speech. Many went even further haughtily proclaiming that the cartoonists were essentially “asking for it”.
According to these moral idiots Charlie Hebdo was strutting around shamelessly with their Muhammad cartoons in full display of these deeply devout and otherwise naturally peaceful young men what else did you expect? Oh, the joys and wonders of liberalism.
For those whose moral apparatus was still somewhat functional Je suis Charlie (I Am Charlie) was the rallying call of the day and also conveniently served as the trendy hashtag to use when virtue signaling (especially by they of the blue checkmarks) on Twitter along with the obligatory changing of a Facebook profile picture’s background to the French tricolore flag.
This was the total sum of the response that Islamists received when they attempted and largely succeeded in seriously wounding (perhaps fatally?) free speech in the West. So, who are these Islamic characters among us to whom we owe so much for their enlightening tutelage in religious sensitivity?
The Wahhabi gangsters (they of the infamous Sharia patrols and self-deputized guardians of the no-go zones) seem to be the most vocal partisans of this Islamist assault on free speech in the West although the less cartoonish and more subtly effective individuals of insidious organizations like CAIR and MSA National are running a much more effective parallel offensive in the courtrooms and universities.
If Western society were not so busy alternating between moronically gazing at its own belly button and erotic self-flagellation all such individuals would be relegated to their true status: political non-entities.
Of course, as was made abundantly clear in the case of Charlie Hebdo it is the liberal sympathizer who stops the hammer from dropping and retards Western society’s natural immunological response to these outrages. Liberals are always ready to run defense by offering their whataboutisms, calls for faux social unity, and custom-made dog muzzles for anyone who dares to question the current line as regards a certain religious sect.
Liberalism as it did during the not-so-cold war against the Communists and their allies has become once again the sophisticated rationalization of Western suicidal behavior sapping the will of the average Westerner to confront the Islamist threat.
As a result, even the few who head into the fray against our domestic Islamist foes are constantly looking over their shoulders for the inevitable stab-in-the-back.
Why do we cringe in the face of these urban bedouins? When did barbarians both at home and half a world away gain de-facto veto powers over the actions (and even thoughts) of civilized men? Why do we allow one of the most wretched and retrograde areas of the world to dictate the exercise of one of the West’s most fundamental rights?
Quit simply one must realize and take solace and strength from the fact that the material array of forces is so overwhelmingly on the side of the West that were it not for the self-imposed liberal handicap the Islamist threat would be basically non-existent.
All the armies of the Near East combined could not stand a chance against even a mere fraction of the military might at the disposal of the Western powers.
The Muslim world is drowning in its own sectarian bile, continuously demented power plays and religious self-absorption. It’s pathetic attempts at regeneration via religious absolutism further adds to its current embarrassment of miseries (e.g. the properly named Islamic State or the Islamic Republic of Iran).
The Muslim populations of the West are fundamentally unsure of themselves and trespass the norms and rules of Western society at our pleasure. They are numerically weak and economically weaker with an alien cultural composition.
They push as far as we allow them to and will push no further. Even the slightest application of Western social pressure would render inert any cultural and political power they currently possess. The non-Western Muslims are in the position stated previously above.
Therefore, let us grasp deeply the fact that it is not an immutable law of nature that Muslim mobs should storm Western embassies or call for the deaths of Westerners who insult their Prophet and even that some should have the unmitigated gall to actually do so. That is on us.
We must change certain incorrect perceptions of us held by the Muslim world until such actions as I have hitherto just described become impossible even to conceive of.
It is absolutely maddening to see Westerners who once faced heroically the mechanized armies of Nazi Germany and nuclear armed Communists tremble at the very possibility of even inadvertently insulting inconsequential desert dwellers whose only claim to fame is having the good fortune of sitting atop massive oil reserves not to mention being the world’s number one exporters of terrorism and all around general human despair and misery.
There is no need to be afraid of mere shadows and we who live in America where the liberal disease has still not reached terminal levels (i.e. “hate” speech laws and instinctual and unthinking self-censorship) must take the lead. Perhaps our Western European friends might take heart and follow although one can never be too sure of that.
