At least four, possibly five French Jewish hostages, probably women who were shopping for the Sabbath, were killed by Jihadists before the French police stormed the kosher supermarket. The male and female pair of jihadists were demanding the freedom of the Charlie Hebdo jihadists.
The Islamist massacre at Charlie Hebdo has understandably captured global attention because it was a barbaric attack on France and freedom of expression. In a moment of defiant moral clarity, “je suis Charlie” emerged as a popular phrase of solidarity with the victims. Hopefully such clarity persists and extends to those facing similar challenges every day in the Middle East.
The manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers led to a day of chaos in Paris, as the perpetrators – Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said Kouachi, 34 – went to ground in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, not far from Charles de Gaulle airport. At the same time, the man who murdered an unarmed French policewoman yesterday, now believed to be a member of the same terrorist cell as the Kouachi brothers, has taken hostages of his own, and reportedly offered to trade them for the brothers’ freedom – an offer the French authorities are unlikely to accept.
The Islamic State (ISIS) has issued a statement, via their official radio outlet, praising brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi for the gruesome attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. ISIS calls the pair “heroes” for killing twelve people, including two police officers, as revenge against the magazine for mocking Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
French authorities classified the death of police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 25, a terrorist attack. The shooting is France’s second terrorist attack within a span of 24 hours. Two gunmen slaughtered twelve people at Charlie Hebdo headquarters on Wednesday as they screamed, “Allahu Akbar!” Even though both are considered terrorist attacks, authorities did not initially link the attacks, though reports are now surfacing that the three suspects may be related.
We have all heard the dramatic tale of how terrorists come from poor, oppressed families and are virtually forced into terrorism to escape discrimination and poverty. Young, desperate and idealistic, they turn to terror as their only way out of the hellhole into which society has buried them.
By deflecting attention from the cartoons, Klein is actually trying to protect Western ideas about the state, the individual, and freedom. Yet he cannot bring himself to identify the threat to those ideas, because doing so would mean admitting that the multicultural project, to which the left is politically wedded, has failed.
In an interview with French television station BFMTV, Jeannette Bougrab, partner of slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier spoke about his death. “He died standing,” Bougrab said. “He defended secularism, he defended Voltaire’s spirit, he in fact was really the fruit
A lecturer at an Irish university has said he would consider legal action if a member of the country’s media published or retweeted a cartoon of Mohammed. Dr Ali Selim, who teaches at Trinity University and is a member of
A man believed to have been the suspect in yesterday’s shooting of unarmed policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe yesterday has taken women and children hostage at a kosher grocery store in the eastern Parisian district of Porte de Vincennes.
Broadcaster and columnist Julia Hartley-Brewer gave an impassioned defence of freedom of expression on BBC Question Time last night. Criticising the decision by British newspapers not to print the Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting Mohammed, she accused them of “bottling it”
On last night’s BBC Question Time, presenter David Dimbleby read out the BBC’s editorial guidelines on depicting Mohammed, which confirm the Muslim prophet should never be shown. Following a debate on the Paris shootings and whether media outlets should show
The two brothers accused of the Paris Massacre were already flagged as terrorists and placed on a U.S no-fly list – and the pair both have links to hate cleric and former Imam of Finsbury Park mosque in North London
One of two French police officers who were killed during the brutal attack on Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was also a Muslim. Ahmed Merabet, 42, begged for his life to be spared before mercilessly being slain by two of three radical Islamists who would carry out his untimely demise as well as murder 11 other unarmed civilians.
On Thursday’s broadcast of “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel, conservative commentator Mark Steyn admonished satirist reluctant to stand with the slain at Charlie Hebdo and was particularly critical of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, who offered a statement on
Catholic League President Bill Donohue doubled down on earlier comments he made criticizing the Charlie Hedbo and its publisher for “the role he played in his tragic death,” arguing that “self-censorship is the friend of liberty” and blasting the “narcissism
In the aftermath of the murderous attack on the staff of Charlie Hebdo, the iconically irreverent French satirical journal, there is a widespread—and welcome—appreciation that the Islamic supremacist perpetrators sought not only to silence cartoonists who had lampooned Mohammed. They wanted to ensure that no one else violates the prohibitions on “blasphemy” imposed by the shariah doctrine that animates them.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) declared that “maybe…every Muslim immigrant that wishes to come to France shouldn’t have an open door to come” on Thursday’s “Sean Hannity Show.” “You’ve got to secure country, and that means maybe that every Muslim immigrant
Senior Editor of the Atlantic, David Frum argued that concern over Islamophobia and anti-Muslim backlash “misses what is in front of our eyes” by ignoring the hate crimes perpetrated by European Muslims on Thursday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.” Frum said that “the
Jonathan Laurence, and associate professor of political science at Boston College and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in Slate that Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front political party, is “ready to seize the moment” after Wednesday’s Islamist massacre at the offices of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Leaders in San Diego’s Muslim community have issued strong words of condemnation against Wednesday’s attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris that left 12 dead, but have also questioned the unrestrained exercise of free speech concerning religious figures, suggesting it may cross into “hate speech.”
Our response should be hope: hope that ridicule and not retaliation is our response. Because in the bleak twilight of French grief, when it seems that nothing could ever make good on the loss and violation that these animals have unleashed in one of the world’s great capital cities, what ought to ring out loud and true are not the echoes of gunfire—but guffaws at the proposition that subhumans with submachine guns will undo the achievements of our civilisation.
Charlie Hebdo editor and cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier, also known as Charb, appeared on a hit list in the March 2013 issue of al-Qaeda’s Inspire propaganda magazine. Twitter accounts posted the same picture on Wednesday, but with a huge red X over Charbonnier’s picture.
On Thursday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked what France had to do given its “anti-immigrant stance in some quarters” in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. During an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas
The President of the Quebec Muslim Association accused the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo of inciting the Islamist terrorist attack that led to the killing of at least 12 people at the publication’s offices in Paris.
