ROD LIDDLE STOKES UNWISELY THE ISLAMIC FIRES
The weakness of Rod Liddle's position is that it panders to a simmering divisive populist narrative rather then guiding us towards a deeper perspective. His opening sarcasm about Brahim Aouissaoui's motive for his heinous act is misplaced, unless one intends unquestioningly to promote a stereotype. His reduced concern should he die, opts for vengeance over rehabilitation. He is uncritical of Macron's disingenuous vaunting of French values and freedoms, overlooking the French Privacy Laws that exert a severe limitation on freedom of speech. He states that you would have to be an idiot to find what Samuel Paty did 'controversial', seemingly out of touch with just how controversial it was, proved to be and would be if done again. I suspect no school head would agree with a teacher doing the same now in the U.K. He points us to The Spectator correspondent's view that there is a war against the Islamists, as though he would be equally content, if the former troubles in Northern Ireland were described as a war against the Christians. Then he wades into a nasty negative critique about Muslim nations and their leaders, without concern that further inflammatory language will only inflict greater injury. He then claims that Muslim outrage at the offensive drawings of the prophet, rather than the recent heinous acts, show that there is a 'fundamentally different approach to human life in the West'. Is he not concerned about Artin's body, drowned somewhere it seems in the English Channel, a tragic lifeless symbol of our historical complicity with and joint culpability for the perpetual international chaos that has drowned our world in blood. Macron is not defending a freedom to speak, rather he is defending a freedom, for the powerful and the rich, those who have colonised, subjugated, plundered and oppressed, and who have developed laws that protect their privacy, reputation, and even their corrupt personal, business and trading dealings, yet, from their privileged vantage points, to offend, ridicule, mock, abase and humiliate others at will. The better way forward will involve a true candour that enables us to recognise our humanity and that seeks to place the common interest before our own.
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