Once again we must bear witness to the destructive hatred of religion and the devastation that comes with blindly following a script without a thought to the consequences. This series of coordinated attacks is the deadliest to hit Paris since World War II, and the repercussions will be devastating. It’s a sad state of affairs that people automatically jumped to assume that Islam was responsible. It’s even worse, however, that people forget the victims in lieu of protecting their faith.
Perhaps the worst thing anyone can do right now is tell other people how they should feel; that she should direct their anger elsewhere; that they should point their rage in the ‘right’ direction. This is undoubtedly the best option in the long run, but to rob someone of their right to anger immediately after they have been robbed of someone they love is cruel and only serves to create more resentment to those innocent Muslims who did nothing wrong. Let people feel their anger and sorrow as they are entitled to it, and they will come round to realise that these were the acts of extremists who don’t represent an entire religion, but don’t try to silence their grief or smother their opinions at the present.
Killing scores of innocent people aside, these idiots have only served to give more people reason to hate Muslims. In the long run there probably will be severe backlash against the Islamic community, but I think we can all agree that at this very moment that the suffering of those affected both physically and mentally from such atrocities and the trauma of 130+ dead far outweighs the hurt feelings of Muslims. To add monikers like ‘the religion of peace’ to try to defend Islam is pointless. No religion is peaceful, that is a tried and tested fact from countless wars and conflicts up to the present done in the name of a faith that not everyone shares. Every major religion has been hijacked by extremists killing innocent people in the name of their faith, so don’t try to tell me Islam is innocent.
Of course everyone is too scared to offend anyone nowadays, so there will be very little in the way of discussion concerning the very real problem of religious extremism. Maybe Islam didn’t cause this, but religion can certainly be held responsible in some way. But just because I haven’t specified which religion doesn’t make it any less about Islam, any less than the crusades were caused by Christians or the Ikkō-ikki rebellion was caused by Buddhists or that the aggressive resettlement by Zionists was caused by Jews. Terrorism is definitely the immediate cause of these horrible crimes, that much is true. But religion has definitely played a part in it. The entire argument is akin to ‘guns don’t kill people; people do’. Like it or not, the people who committed the crimes followed Islam and were Muslims; don’t try to play semantics with the reality of it.
Right now, however, it’s not ideal to focus on those responsible as much as we should bow our heads for the deceased. More often than not, nowadays, we are quick to forget the victims in favour of political leverage, attacking an ideology, or gathering popular support through social media such as Twitter or Facebook. If you have a shred of sympathy for the victims in Paris and the families and friends of those affected, you won’t burden the attacks in Paris with political bandwagon. That isn’t me saying don’t speak your mind or don’t see the wider picture or implications. I’m simply trying to point out that the well-being and memory of the victims is worth more than capitalising on this travesty or by sympathising with the lesser of the two.
Yes, Israel is horrible and they have a terrible human rights track record, and something has to be done about their actions regarding Palestine; yes, the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan were terrible, and have claimed thousands of innocent lives; yes, the US and the UK have hypocritical approaches in the international stage regarding terrorism. And yes, there are other tragedies going on right now in the likes of Japan, Mexico, Iraq, and other nations worldwide, and they deserve their own mourning and moment of silence. But they deserve them in their own time. The kinds of people who divert attention away from what has happened in Paris with clichéd responses such as ‘but what about X happening in Y?’ or ‘it’s only a tragedy when it’s in Western countries’ are missing the point. It’s an immediate, very near threat which has happened to a country that is one of the geographically closest to us, one of our most important economic partners, and one of our closest military allies. These very same people seem to stay awfully quiet about the other thousands of horrible things going on in the world, yet accuse others of being selective for caring more about their home city/neighbour’s city when they are hit by a crisis.
Right now these other events are not the focus of what has happened in Paris and trying to compare other, equally terrible events will only scatter people than unite them.