By: Gregor Preac
November 13th, 2015. People-bombs in front of the Stade de France stadium in Paris, attack on the Bataclan disco and Parisian cafes. 130 dead, about 490 wounded. Massacre. ISIS. In the name of Allah. Allah is great! Wonderful god, wonderful people who follow him like that! A faith of peace! Because only the faith of peace can “calm” people like that!?
On March 13th, 2016, an attack on Brussels Airport and the Brussels Metro station followed: 35 dead, 340 wounded. On July 14th, 2016, 87 people died in a terrorist attack with a truck on the seaside promenade in the French resort of Nice. The modern European terrorist record of Al Qaeda with the bomb attack on the Madrid railway station on March 11th, 2004, with 193 dead and about 2,000 wounded, still holds.
Is it Islamophobia, if we ask ourselves, what will happen to terrorism in the EU this year? It may not be a bad thing to warn security services that Ramadan is between April 2nd and May 2nd this year! Or is it also Islamophobia to indirectly mention that the probability of terrorism around Ramadan is statistically the highest?!
A few days ago, at the marathon trial in Paris, which began on September 8th, 2021, almost six years after the massacre in Bataclan, the only survivor of the ten attackers Salah Abdeslam, a 32-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent born in Brussels in the infamous Muslim district of Molenbeek, was questioned for the first time. They are sentencing 20 suspects allegedly involved in attacks or planning, in logistics, including six in absentia (five are likely to have died fighting in Iraq and Syria, one is in prison in Turkey). The “wasteful” trial is expected to last until May 2022 with 145 days of interrogations, 330 lawyers, testimonies of 300 witnesses… Suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in the planning, wore a blast jacket in the attack, but denied whether Abdeslam had changed his mind about “flying to paradise”, dared to say in court: “I have never killed anyone, I have never injured anyone, I am not a danger to the public!” Well, habibi, Abdeslam, you could have prevented the killing if you had reported it to the police. You knew, you cooperated, and now you consider yourself innocent? Does faith allow you to do that?
What is the problem with Islam?
The problem of Islam is that it is not (self)critical or responsible and that jihadism, radicalism, fundamentalism are actually the heart, the essence, the meaning of Islam, orthodoxy. The majority in Islam approves of jihadism and terrorism or, in fear of radicalised perpetrators of Islamic crimes, does not publicly condemn or do anything to stop radicalism. How can it be, when everything comes from the Quran, all jihadism, all violence, all hatred, all war against infidels! Salah Abdeslam also told the judge the following: “According to Sharia law, no Muslim can leave Islam, be killed without revenge, or live in slavery. We can live our faith as we wish; we will not change our faith to please others! When I saw my brothers being killed in Syria, I had to do something!”
As slavery, Abdeslam, as I conclude from the statements of many Muslims I met along the way and from the texts of Islamic “scholars”, probably thought that Muslim immigrants in Europe live in slavery when they have to adapt to democracy, pluralism, secularism and other religions, customs, cultures, atheism, women’s equality, the ban on the burqa and the niqab in public in France!
Before radicalism, they usually deal in drugs
Most of the young terrorists in the attack on Bataclan were from the Molenbeek district of Brussels, and Moroccans by birth. There, the family, neighbours, neighbourhood successfully hid Salah Abdeslam from the police for four months! In Belgium, he has already been sentenced to 20 years for participating in terrorist attacks in Belgium. Many terrorists were involved in drug trafficking before radicalisation, many were “party animals”, i.e., entertainment, dancing, alcohol, drugs, women. Then faith strikes back. Implanted in a male child. Violence of religion, family, environment, culture, ghetto, ancestral world, medieval customs, books. Revenge. Ticking bomb!
Will Salah Abdeslam be a hero or a criminal among Muslims in France, Belgium, Morocco, the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and the world? Along the way in Islamic countries, I still often come across images of Osama bin Laden and the words that Osama is a hero, a martyr, a fighter for freedom and the victory of Islam!
Gregor Preac is a writer, poet, journalist, photographer, and traveller.