je suis charlie

"I am Charlie" is the evocative statement that rang around the world after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. The subsequent events are widely known if not understood. 

What kind of religious edict demands that girls and women should be subject to the kind of barbarism that we have seen in the media for a long time now? What kind of community flocks to the local stadium to see a young woman buried up to her neck and stoned for for adultery?  She was in fact raped by a policeman?  After stoning the young woman a doctor inspects her to determine she is dead, They dig her out of the ground. The young woman moves so they put her back in the hole and stone her until she finally expires. 

What kind of society does not want its women educated? How can music be so evil that it must be banned.The IS  mantra  is unsophisticated at best and at worst is an odious distortion and hi jacking of the commandments of  a beautiful religion. I know like all of the great religions the Muslim religion is based on love and peace and so it is impossible for me to think of the worst excesses of the IS  version of Sharia law as being anything to do with the teachings of the prophet.  

We have seen how throughout history nations have distorted the great teachings or rejected them entirely for their own ends. We have seen in recent times how nations who think of themselves as great world leaders forget the rules as and when it suits them.  Ongoing revelations regarding US torture and illegal detention, with UK support, continue to dismay all who expect better.  Is there a link between the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay and the attacks in France? Of course there is. Meanwhile today Rupert  Murdoch stated that all Muslims should take responsibility for the French attacks and Steven Emerson, US terrorism commentator, stated  Birmingham UK is a "Muslim-only city where non-Muslims don't go",  on Fox News. Rupert Murdoch is an arse and his control of so much media continues to be a serious worry. It is surely detrimental to a free and honest press. We know many Americans care little about things outside of the state they live in but a little research from a professional journalist would have avoided his ludicrous portrayal of Britain's second city where Muslims and everyone else live quite happily together. The children of Birmingham don't take weapons to school to massacre their fellows on a regular basis either Steven.

In France it would appear every one has come together for a day or so but the racism and racial inequality that stains the egalitarian aspirations of the nation tells another story. The young disenchanted Muslims must be addressed. That is how you begin to deconstruct the possibility for radicalisation. Close down the US torture program and start treating so called terrorists in captivity with the same accord that the US demand for it's soldiers and as is stipulated by the Geneva Convention and others.

This uprising will not easily be defeated but most of us don't want to live in a medieval society where cruel and deranged values are common place nor will we. I don't want to live in a country that hangs homosexuals and stones young women to death. In Sudan a war between the Christian and Muslim populations has ravaged the country and here as in many other locations, the kidnapping of girls and young women and their eventual enslavement is increasing. It seems the doctrine of IS calls for the elimination of all political opposition and total censorship of anything said or written that opposes their mad ideology. It seems to want to eradicate difference. Pol Pot decided to remove all professional/ educated people from Cambodia in order to begin again with a level playing field. He was a deranged kind of socialist who actually set out to remove cleverness so that all could be equal.

The zealous Viking Eric the Red would cheerfully cut off a man's head in the name of Christ if the man would not convert to the faith. The Spanish inquisition and European Crusades against Saladin and others are all examples of people forgetting what is good and decent in order to basically do what they like and it has been so often wrapped up in the cloak of faith in order to justify tyranny and repression. So it has always been with us but still we must oppose those who would use any religion as an excuse to diminish the quality of our lives so that they can control what we think and do with impunity.

Muslims everywhere are appalled by the abominable acts of the sons of IS. Muslims in the UK and all over the world must be seen to be victims of IS along with the rest of us and their right to share life with us unmolested must be supported.

I write what I like and nothing will stop me. Je suis Charlie.

peace