Je suis Charlie.
Cowardly is one of the words universally reached for to describe terrorist outrages. In many instances, its use doesn't properly convey how while the use of violence against the defenceless can never be justified, someone willing to sacrifice their life for their cause, regardless of how vile that cause may be, can not truly be described as cowardly. Stupid and self-defeating yes, cowardly no, in the same way there's often an extremely fine line between bravery and being foolhardy.
What is without a doubt cowardly is running someone over and then attempting to decapitate them as they lie unconscious. What is not is then running at armed police with the intention of being killed, the police to their credit in that instance not giving them their lusted after "martyrdom".
The absolute definition of cowardly, by comparison, were the actions carried out today in Paris against the journalists of Charlie Hebdo. With apparent knowledge of when the satirical paper's editorial meeting was being held, 2 men armed with assault rifles massacred 10 people whose only weapons were words, drawings, and ideas. They were targeted in offices from where there was no easy escape, desks and furniture offering the merest protection. Then, just to emphasise their brutality, their lack of pity, one of the masked individuals executed an apparently unarmed, already stricken police officer before the group made their getaway.
Everything about the attack suggests this was the work of men with a certain amount of military training, not the "lone wolves" or "self-starters" much warned about. From the weapons used, the way they were determined to make their escape rather than die in the process, to how the assault was planned somewhat and probably even rehearsed, it points towards funding or at the very least tenuous backing from a foreign jihadist group. While thoughts immediately turned to Islamic State, or men possibly having returned from Syria, the claim from a witness that one of the attackers said they were from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula makes just as much sense. All of AQAP's previous attempts to attack the West have involved bombs, and all have either failed or been foiled. By switching to a guerilla style assault, and against the softest of targets, the chances of another failure were drastically reduced.
The only question then remaining is why specifically go after Charlie Hebdo, "insulting" of the prophet aside, rather than a Mumbai-style attack or a reprise of something like the Taliban attack on the school in Peshawar. One explanation is Islamic State's brutality and takfirism has succeeded in revolting the Muslim world in a way al-Qaida itself never managed. Many Sunnis may see the Syrian conflict mainly through the prism of sectarianism, but few look to Islamic State as the best alternative to Assad, even while supporting groups whose ideology is much the same. Killing those who dared to satirise Muhammad is more defensible than an indiscriminate attack, and it also reannounces AQAP as the only real challenger to IS as the standbearer of the banner of global jihad.
One thing the attackers and their backers will have barely thought about is the consequences. They have no interest in freedom of thought, of speech, how the only possible response is an outpouring of rage, sadness and defiance at how in the 21st century people are still being targeted, killed for criticising and mocking organised religion. They care nothing for how their actions only underline the sheer poverty of their unquestionable doctrine, how unutterably weak their prophet and God must be if they can't take being caricatured. The most powerful entity in all creation, who gave us the power of free will, and yet neither he nor his messenger are to be depicted as anything other than benevolent, peace be upon them. If they considered it at all, they probably counted on it resulting in the exact soldiarity that has occurred, which will see the cartoons they killed over republished and spread wider than before.
Much will be wrote and already has been written about what the reaction should be, and then those all too familiar axes will be ground, about how all Muslims should condemn the attack without reservation, at how we have much the same extremists in our midst. It comes at the precise moment when the far-right is on the march, literally in Germany, and as the National Front polls higher than ever in France itself. The murderers of course have no concern for their co-religionists and the wave of hostility that always follows such outrages, at the same time as they justify their actions in the name of defending the honour of the Ummah. One reaction that probably won't be noted but deserves to be is how those nations that have done to so much to spread extremist interpretations of Islam will condemn the attack, then carry on just as before, executing "sorcerers", enforcing blasphemy laws and funding "moderate" armed groups of their choosing.
Regular readers will know I'm not one for jumping on bandwagons, for echoing hashtag sentiments. Tonight though I too am Charlie. The aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword is not always true, but what history suggests is the pen triumphs in the end. The challenge today is to ensure that carries on.
What is without a doubt cowardly is running someone over and then attempting to decapitate them as they lie unconscious. What is not is then running at armed police with the intention of being killed, the police to their credit in that instance not giving them their lusted after "martyrdom".
The absolute definition of cowardly, by comparison, were the actions carried out today in Paris against the journalists of Charlie Hebdo. With apparent knowledge of when the satirical paper's editorial meeting was being held, 2 men armed with assault rifles massacred 10 people whose only weapons were words, drawings, and ideas. They were targeted in offices from where there was no easy escape, desks and furniture offering the merest protection. Then, just to emphasise their brutality, their lack of pity, one of the masked individuals executed an apparently unarmed, already stricken police officer before the group made their getaway.
Everything about the attack suggests this was the work of men with a certain amount of military training, not the "lone wolves" or "self-starters" much warned about. From the weapons used, the way they were determined to make their escape rather than die in the process, to how the assault was planned somewhat and probably even rehearsed, it points towards funding or at the very least tenuous backing from a foreign jihadist group. While thoughts immediately turned to Islamic State, or men possibly having returned from Syria, the claim from a witness that one of the attackers said they were from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula makes just as much sense. All of AQAP's previous attempts to attack the West have involved bombs, and all have either failed or been foiled. By switching to a guerilla style assault, and against the softest of targets, the chances of another failure were drastically reduced.
The only question then remaining is why specifically go after Charlie Hebdo, "insulting" of the prophet aside, rather than a Mumbai-style attack or a reprise of something like the Taliban attack on the school in Peshawar. One explanation is Islamic State's brutality and takfirism has succeeded in revolting the Muslim world in a way al-Qaida itself never managed. Many Sunnis may see the Syrian conflict mainly through the prism of sectarianism, but few look to Islamic State as the best alternative to Assad, even while supporting groups whose ideology is much the same. Killing those who dared to satirise Muhammad is more defensible than an indiscriminate attack, and it also reannounces AQAP as the only real challenger to IS as the standbearer of the banner of global jihad.
One thing the attackers and their backers will have barely thought about is the consequences. They have no interest in freedom of thought, of speech, how the only possible response is an outpouring of rage, sadness and defiance at how in the 21st century people are still being targeted, killed for criticising and mocking organised religion. They care nothing for how their actions only underline the sheer poverty of their unquestionable doctrine, how unutterably weak their prophet and God must be if they can't take being caricatured. The most powerful entity in all creation, who gave us the power of free will, and yet neither he nor his messenger are to be depicted as anything other than benevolent, peace be upon them. If they considered it at all, they probably counted on it resulting in the exact soldiarity that has occurred, which will see the cartoons they killed over republished and spread wider than before.
Much will be wrote and already has been written about what the reaction should be, and then those all too familiar axes will be ground, about how all Muslims should condemn the attack without reservation, at how we have much the same extremists in our midst. It comes at the precise moment when the far-right is on the march, literally in Germany, and as the National Front polls higher than ever in France itself. The murderers of course have no concern for their co-religionists and the wave of hostility that always follows such outrages, at the same time as they justify their actions in the name of defending the honour of the Ummah. One reaction that probably won't be noted but deserves to be is how those nations that have done to so much to spread extremist interpretations of Islam will condemn the attack, then carry on just as before, executing "sorcerers", enforcing blasphemy laws and funding "moderate" armed groups of their choosing.
Regular readers will know I'm not one for jumping on bandwagons, for echoing hashtag sentiments. Tonight though I too am Charlie. The aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword is not always true, but what history suggests is the pen triumphs in the end. The challenge today is to ensure that carries on.
Labels: Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, censorship, Charlie Hebdo, France, freedom of speech, Islamism, terror, terrorism
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