‘Resistance’ in Kathmandu
In reaction to the murder of Nepalese workers by terrorists in Iraq, mobs attack the Muslim community and property, and Muslim foreign embassies, in Kathmandu until the army puts a stop to their spree. Stephen Spencer, commentator on Islam to Fox News and C-SPAN, comments on his Jihad Watch blog: "Resistance vs. appeasement, from Daniel Pipes at FrontPage".
Nepalese responded to this atrocity by venting their anger by assaulting the Muslim minority in Nepal. Hundreds of infuriated young men surrounded Katmandu’s one mosque on Aug. 31 and heaved rocks at it. Violence escalated the next day, with five thousand demonstrators taking to the street, yelling slogans like “We want revenge,” “Punish the Muslims,” and “Down with Islam”. Some attacked the mosque, broke into it, ransacked it, and set fire to it. Hundreds of Korans were thrown onto the street, and some were burned….
Thus did a frustrated, enraged, and powerless people overwhelm their authorities and target close-by innocents.
The French's negotiations, which actually resulted in their hostages being freed, is dismissed as "appeasement", a clapped out fifty-year old insult. Now, comparing one's enemy to Nazis or Hitler has long been considered the ultimate cheap shot which basically loses the argument. Isn't it time that this tired and inappropriate comparison went the same way?
In the piece Spencer links to in FrontPage magazine, Daniel Pipes quotes one Norbert Lipszyc (appropriately pronounced "lip shits") alleging that France has "publicly confirmed its dhimmi status", dhimmi being used as a term of abuse for non-Muslims who negotiate with Muslims of any stripe, or seek to accommodate us (or them, if we are talking about terrorists or other criminals). It's alleged that France is letting Muslim organisations act as "a sort of substitute for the French foreign ministry". He concludes:
Returning to recent events: the abhorrent Nepalese violence reflected an instinct for self-preservation — hit me and I will hit you back. In contrast, the sophisticated French reaction was supine — hit me and I will beg you to stop. If history is a guide, the Nepalese thereby made a repetition of atrocities against themselves less likely. And the French made such a repetition more likely.
The fact is that France occupied a huge swathe of the Muslim world during the colonial era. Its period of occupation of Algeria was notoriously brutal, and it continues to oppress Muslims in France. Perhaps they like doing deals with corrupt Arab governments in order to sell them arms, but the fact is that you can't respect a nation which makes out that its republic is threatened by schoolgirls in headscarves.
