7th Rangers: Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ - Intolerance for free expression is rooted in classical Islam. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Fighting Seventh
The Fighting Rangers On War, Politics and Burning Issues
Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ - Intolerance for free expression is rooted in classical Islam. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Thursday, January 08, 2015
National Review : The future must not belong to those who brutalize free expression in the name of Islam. There are now at least twelve confirmed dead in the terrorist attack carried out by at least three jihadist gunmen against the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo.
While it practices equal-opportunity satire, lampooning Islam has proved lethal for the magazine, just as it has for so many others who dare to exercise the bedrock Western liberty of free expression. Charlie Hebdo’s offices were firebombed in 2011 over a caricature of Mohammed that depicted him saying, “100 lashes if you don’t die from laughter.”
You will find a number of offenses for which flagellation is the prescribed penalty. To take just a couple of examples, “the penalty for drinking is to be
scourged forty stripes,” although the caliph (the Islamic ruler) is
authorized to increase this to 80 stripes — although he must pay an
indemnity if death results. . . . Pretty moderate, right? (Reliance,
p. 617, sec. o16.3.)
For adultery “the penalty consists of being
scourged one hundred stripes” — and that’s if the adulterer “is not
considered to have the capacity to remain chaste” (e.g., if she “is
prepubescent at the time of marital intercourse).” “If the offender is
someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to
death.” (Reliance, p. 610, sec. o12.2.)
What Charlie Hebdo
has satirized is a savage reality. That reality was visited on the
magazine again today. As night follows day, progressive governments in
Europe and the United States are already straining to pretend that this
latest atrocity is the wanton work of “violent extremists,” utterly
unrelated to Islam. You are to believe, then, that François Hollande,
Barack Obama, David Cameron, and their cohort of non-Muslim Islamophiles
are better versed in sharia than the Muslim scholars who’ve dedicated
their lives to its study and have endorsed such scholarly works as Reliance.
Let me repeat what I have detailed here
before: Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State did not make up sharia law.
Islam did. We can keep our heads tucked snug in the sand, or we can
recognize the source of the problem.
